The Hickensian

14.02.06 What have you done Walkers?

56 comments
Tagged with: design, logo, packaging

Walkers Crisps are a solid British tradition (Fact Fans: Britains biggest selling brand for the last 2 years), with a branding that has been developed over the last 100 years to what was recently this:

I nearly spluttered over my sandwich today when I saw the ‘new’ Walkers branding:

What ugliness is this? Shiny gold effect gradients on blocky italic text? And what has happened to the Walkers typeface? What was once a bold, contemporary, yet with a sense of its tradition, typeface has been replaced by some skinny monstrosity! The whole effect says to me “Late 80’s Sci-fi action film’, not crisps.

The cost of this reversal of good taste? Â£20m of course!

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No.1

∞ Kenny said 1492 days ago:

I think the gold ends are a bit too much. The new updated logo is nice, but yes the “flavour text” is so retro sci-fi.

No.2

∞ Phil Sherry said 1492 days ago:

WHISKEY. TANGO. FOXTROT.

No.3

∞ Jon Hicks said 1492 days ago:

“WHISKEY. TANGO. FOXTROT.”

LOL! :D

No.4

∞ Zach Inglis said 1492 days ago:

I actually thought the recent TV ads were getting poorer and poorer.

I’m not liking a single element of the new stuff (except the flavours sound interesting), the gold edges are always fun too i guess.

No.5

∞ Rob Wilmshurst said 1492 days ago:

My first thought when I saw them in Tesco’s:

“whoah. crisps 2.0.”
There’s even an ajaxy loading widget on the Cheese and Onion pack! “sunseed loading…” maybe.

No.6

∞ Chris said 1492 days ago:

It could be worse.

They could’ve swapped the colours around.

Where would we be then!?

No.7

∞ James Darling said 1492 days ago:

They want to get the idea across that walkers has changed to try and remove the whole food phobia we have going on over here. No-one’s really going to remember that they’ve lowered salt and other things, but they will remember a NEW WALKERS, it’s so different we use a different font and everything.

And yes, the font is horrible. It’s how to really remind people that walkers is no longer owned by a small british family in the english countryside. Pepsi own them. (They also own nobby’s [insert snack here], which seems to be a direct competitor to pub food)

RIP Golden Wonder, may nik naks live on.

No.8

∞ Adam Schilling said 1492 days ago:

And just in time for Captain Cordell Walker (aka Texas Ranger, or Chuck Norris) to lead their b-grade marketing campaign.

At least Chuck kicks ass. This bites!

No.9

∞ Jon Hicks said 1492 days ago:

“It could be worse. They couldâ€™ve swapped the colours around. Where would we be then!?”

Ah! Very good point Chris!

No.10

∞ Northshore said 1492 days ago:

Cheese and Onion…Blue..no!

Bring back Golden Wonder all is forgiven…

Cheese and Onion – Green
Salt and Vinegar – Blue
Ready Salted (not this plain nonsense) – Red

It was good enough for Ringos so its good enough for me!

No.11

∞ Northshore said 1492 days ago:

What’s with the time machine…not only do you have future Walkers Crisps…my comment was posted 11 hours ago?!?

No.12

∞ Martin Smith said 1492 days ago:

It was very, very far from broke and some marketing tw**t has convinced Walkers to fix it. Probably with lots of blue sky, top down out of the box thinking… there was probably a mood board involved too!

No.13

∞ Wade Winningham said 1492 days ago:

Hmmm… Looks exactly like the Lay’s logo now.

No.14

∞ Jan BraÅ¡na said 1492 days ago:

What the hell did they do to the poor crisps? It looks like nowadays everything needs to be cool, fresh, shiny and polished. All those Kodaks, Intels, UPS, AT&Tâ€¦ Yeah, tradition wrecking is the new black ;)

No.15

∞ Jon Hicks said 1492 days ago:

Wade – same company really, just a different name in the states.

No.16

∞ paul haine said 1492 days ago:

It’s very exciting packaging, I can’t help but feel it should be accompanied by a loud fanfare, or possibly the theme music from Dallas.

No.17

∞ Mark Lawler said 1492 days ago:

lol

The first thing I thought when I saw the new packaging was the Back to the Future movies. Looks like you did too!

No.18

∞ Adam said 1492 days ago:

They remind me more of a ‘Barry Scott’ style cleaning product with all the italic fonts and shadow detail. But then I prefered the packets with windows, it was good to see how richly coated in E113 your potato snacks were.

No.19

∞ Jon Hicks said 1492 days ago:

Back to the Future – yes thats it!

No.20

∞ nikki said 1492 days ago:

Seabrook crisps seem to have ‘updated’ recently too.
Somehow the experience just wasn’t the same…

No.21

∞ Egor Kloos said 1492 days ago:

Being half Irish I spit on Walkers. Tayto all the way!

Anyway, flag waving aside. I must agree, what on earth have they done? Very 80’s indeed. The 80’s these days is something cool for those who don’t remember. Walkers have gone tacky, just like a pair of oversized shoulder pads.

No.22

∞ Kate Bolin said 1492 days ago:

I don’t see Worcester sauce flavour among their flavours.

Life just isn’t worth living anymore.

No.23

∞ Nick Day said 1492 days ago:

Nooooooo… horrible rebrand there, big mistake Walkers. Agree that the gold ends just takes it over the top.

No.24

∞ Austin Schneider said 1492 days ago:

I wanna know what the old bags looked like so I can make my opinion.

No.25

∞ Anonymous said 1492 days ago:

Anyone have some photos of what the old packaging looked like for those of us here in the USA?

No.26

∞ Olly Hodgson said 1492 days ago:

Dum, dum, dum, Another brand bites the dust.

That’s just rubbish.

No.27

∞ Ellen said 1492 days ago:

At least it’s still called Walkers. We Dutchies have been eating Lay’s over the past 5 years :( It used to be called Smiths …

No.28

∞ David Hughes said 1492 days ago:

I hate the need felt by marketers to abandon classic designs and branding for something newer and always poorer.

Look at the Radio Times – the Radio Times script logo has been there for ever and was a complete classic but now it’s just another italic sans serif piece of nastiness.

Then there is the Kodak logo. It’s been there forever and has been tossed away for another blander version.

This smacks of new Marketing Director trying to make his mark.

Two words for all of these marketing types Coke Classic nuff said

No.29

∞ mAce said 1492 days ago:

I fell out love with crisps when they started bagging them in foil. That’s just wrong, and don’t give me fresher and crap, they just want to sell me stale crisps that ain’t soggy.

As for the branding, nothing is as bad as the Walkers Cheese Heads, if i want my packet to look like it had been shipped in a dust cart I’d do it my self…

Cheese and Onion are GREEN!

GRRR… these snack monkeys are twisting my lemon lamb!

No.30

∞ Josh Williams said 1492 days ago:

Yep, looks like they’ve been bought by Frito Lay. Leave it to some big Texas corporation to go and ruin your local chips.

No.31

∞ Pierce said 1492 days ago:

Hopefully this awful new packaging will slow the undermining of Tayto that these horrible crisps have been attempting since they started selling them here a few years ago.

No.32

∞ Dave Simon said 1492 days ago:

What really matters is whether or not they have a good Salt and Vinegar chip…um, crisp. (Had to translate from American English, my wife still sometimes calls them crisps from her time in the UK.)

No.33

∞ Will said 1492 days ago:

Either Walkers ripped off Frito Lay, or Frito Lay ripped off Walkers:

Or else they’re maybe one owns the other…?

No.34

∞ Will said 1491 days ago:

I’m guessing they have to be separate localized brands from the same parent company…

No.35

∞ Nik said 1491 days ago:

Damn, i’m not in the UK at the moment, so I did not even notice. That is pretty bad, looks like a logo for a washing detergent

No.36

∞ gb said 1491 days ago:

Let’s not forget that Walker’s also featured the Spice Girls on their crisps packets in the mid 90s… so they aren’t exactly beyond reproach as far as the packaging goes.

No.37

∞ Josh said 1491 days ago:

Nikki – Seabrooks did indeed rebrand, and the company I worl for did some work towards it (the photography of the crisps and retouching). The have redesigned to incorporate the foil pack which is now industry standard. BTW We were not involved in the design of the packs, and I hate it, even though they wanted it to look similar, without the window.

We also did some promotional photography for them, and we had every design of Seabrooks crisps ever produced in our studio. I can just about remember the packaging from the time before the last set, and it is definitely the best.

No.38

∞ Scott Johnson said 1491 days ago:

PepsiCo owns both the Walkers brand and Frito-Lay.

No.39

∞ Edward said 1491 days ago:

Has anybody seen this:
http://walkers.corpex.com/

*shudder *

No.40

∞ Miko Walczuk said 1491 days ago:

Looks like soda pop type.

No.41

∞ Nathan said 1491 days ago:

In Australia, they’ve actually abandoned the Lay’s brand name. It used to be that Smith’s was used for the crinkle cut, and Lay’s for the thin cut chips – until they killed them off, and introduced Smith’s Crisps in their place.

Upon going to smiths australia site (and pepsi as well), the Lay’s brand has completely vanished.

No.42

∞ Chris said 1491 days ago:

As soon as I saw this I immediately thought of the UK adverts for Budweiser (the ones where they create crazy new football rules for the american audience – “nil nil? Time for Overtime MULTI-BALL!!!”).

I can easily imagine the new Walkers adverts being a serious version of these… Oh dear.

:o)

No.43

∞ mears said 1491 days ago:

Using my scroll wheel to go up and down the page, the packaging appears to say ‘wankers’

No.44

∞ Denis Radenkovic said 1491 days ago:

SpaceWalkers

:-)

No.45

∞ Adam said 1490 days ago:

The gold gradient on the flavour is just cheesy (Pun intended) and tacky :\

No.46

∞ Andy Budd said 1490 days ago:

I agrees. It’s absolutely terrible.

No.47

∞ Gordon said 1490 days ago:

LOL

Listen to the designers going nuts… you’ve fallen for it completely!

It’s dead obvious what they are doing, change the logo and packaging and hope that it detracts from the fact that the packs are now smaller than before with a crisp/bag ratio that is, frankly, insulting.

And you lot are banging on about the design… mind you. It IS bloody awful. Real McCoys anyone?

No.48

∞ Dave said 1488 days ago:

To my mind it looks like a rip off of Walkers original packaging, like you’d find in a “Pound Shop” or the like – except it isn’t. They’ve actually done it to themselves…..

No.49

∞ Manfred said 1488 days ago:

That yellow globe looks like a baseball to me, even though the color is wrong, and the writing reminds me of “Lakers” (I know, that’s basketball, but it all spells American sports to me).

But it is ugly.

No.50

∞ boere said 1488 days ago:

I bet some Walkers suit went ‘it would be really kool, and down with the kids if we make it look like a prop from the tron movie…’

Nevermind, they wiil no doubt feel a sales pinch as embarrassed customers go elsewhere. And within 6 months release Walkers ‘the original’ design packets with faux brown paper appearance and rustic branding

No.51

∞ Shane said 1486 days ago:

I saw them for myself yesterday. That old design is very BBC – understated quality. The new design is more like Sky Sports – does the job, but is a little bit tacky and OTT.

I can confirm however, that they still taste the same.

No.52

∞ gecko2 said 1477 days ago:

I reckon it has something to do with Chelsea Football Club’s owner Roman Abramovich. He’s got the manager Jose Morinho making them. Look a this page – http://walkers.corpex.com/cr15p5/crisps.asp

No.53

∞ walkersemployee@pepsico.uk.com said 1477 days ago:

I work for Walkers Snack Foods.
let me try to clear up the logo for you all

Walkers crisps and snacks are owned by americans and have been for many years ( 12 I believe ).

And they are Pepsico. Int

They own Pepsi, Torpicana, Quaker, Walkers ,Doritos, PJ’s and others LIke Nobbys

The new logo on the crisps is a slow move towards the frito lay logo. and has slowly begun to grow to this over many years.

Pepsico own snack foods all over the world and Frito Lay America is the company hq for snacks.

I guess in another 18 mths or so the next banner will change even closer to the golden globe of Frito Lays.

As for your Walkers crisps they are made in Leicester and Peter Lee and are made from the best sourced spuds in the UK.

Monster Munch Wotsits and squares are made in Coventry

Quavers french fries between Lincoln and Coventry

I’ll keep u posted with any more news, but

PICKLED ONION CRISPS ARE BEING WITHDRAWN THIS YEAR. WITH HEINZ TOMATO WORCESTIRE SAUCE

No.54

∞ DJ Jaybee said 1475 days ago:

With wonky Walkers spending so much on pants ads and strange rebranding choices – they will have to stick even less crisps in their air-pumped reflective packs that don’t fool us into thinking that there are more in there than there actually is.

These are the guys that took over Monster Munch “The biggest snack pennies can buy” and shrunk them so small that they were no longer suitable for monsters, only for baby pixies – and then try to justify it and fob us off with talk about ‘trips to mouth’.

Walkers suck… so the logo suits them fine. :)

No.55

∞ Jon Carr said 1473 days ago:

Oh thank god… like minded people… I thought I was the only person in the country who thought the ‘new’ design looked shocking. Ah well… never liked Walkers anyway… they bore me with their averageness… much prefer a good ol’ Monster Munch, Dorito or Wotsit… ooo hang on… apparently Walkers own all of those. Damn. Lets hope this re-branding isn’t right across all their product lines.

No.56

∞ Tony Conolly said 1472 days ago:

Hooray, Walkers have reduced the salt content in their crisps. I now have even more reason to add my own supply as I’m driving along the highways and byways. Actually, I’ve just stopped buying their now tasteless product.