Yummy Tummy Koalas are filled with personality

Meet Kevin: He just turned eight and likes to play cricket. Bubblegum is his favorite treat and he thinks bedtime is the worst time of day.

Bruce likes to skateboard and eat chocolate. He thinks pink is only for girls and shudders at the sight of brussels sprouts.

Cath is terrified of spiders and her favorite color is rainbow. When she grows up she wants to be a cat. Or at least get a pet cat for her birthday.

Who are Kevin, Bruce, and Cath? They’re not kids—they’re koala-shaped cakes.

Top Taste approached Landor with a simple brief: develop a brand for a snack-sized, koala bear-shaped mud cake that comes in three flavors. It must be bursting with personality, appeal to kids of all ages, and stand out from every other snack product in the supermarket. From this, we created the Yummy Tummy Koalas.

Chocolate, caramel, and white-chocolate flavored cakes became a trio of adorable personalities brought to life through the packaging’s simple and bold illustrations, vivid colors, and fun typography. Kids get to know all about the characters right on the box.

And it doesn’t end there. Each box of Yummy Tummy Koalas was designed for play: Limited edition boxes were filled with stickers for accessorizing the characters. Kevin could look cooler in sunglasses while Cath played netball and Bruce learned to snowboard. The Yummy Tummy Koalas proved so popular, we even made plush toy versions that were given away as a special promotion.

The result? An irresistible brand that people want to buy again and again. Yummy Tummy Koalas entered the market in May 2009 and the packaging alone, without any other marketing support, helped the brand achieve 26.2 percent in sales above forecast in the first 16 weeks. It also grew Top Taste’s share of the competitive snacking cakes segment, which is dominated by private label, by an impressive 1.4 percent. In 2011, Yummy Tummy Koalas’ packaging won Landor a bronze Design Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.