Tag: mobile gaming

Codes for baseball-themed mobile games are the new prize to be found inside America’s favorite junk food.

Cracker Jack, America’s favorite caramel coated popcorn and peanuts mix, which is famous for the iconic prizes found in each bag, is trading in its traditional toy surprise in a new approach to appeal to mobile consumers. Soon, those who dig into their bag of the sweet treat will find Cracker Jack mobile game codes instead of the classic toy.

Mobile technology will bring the new iconic prize to life.

The mystery prize that was once found in each bag of Cracker Jack will be replaced with stickers featuring digital codes for mobile games, providing mobile users with “baseball-inspired mobile digital experiences.”

In a recent press release, Haston Lewis, the senior director of marketing at Frito-Lay – the company that owns Cracker Jack – said that “The new Prize Inside allows families to enjoy their favorite baseball moments through a new one-of-a-kind mobile experience, leveraging digital technology to bring the iconic Prize Inside to life.”

According to the Huffington Post, the new prizes will be available in four themes: Dance Cam, Dot Dash, Baseball Star and Get Carded. The Blippar app, which is available for both Android and iOS, will be required to activate the prize.

The new Cracker Jack mobile game codes sticker prize is part of a broader marketing effort to maintain consumer appeal.

Not everyone who loves the tasty popcorn snack, which has been around since 1896, is likely to be happy with this prize change. For some, these little toys have become collectibles. In fact, Cracker Jack prize collecting is actually a serious hobby for many long-time fans and there have been several books published on the subject. However, be that as it may, companies need to make changes to ensure that they continually remain relevant to present day consumers.

A spokesperson from Frito Lay, Joan Cetera, commented that the change in prize design is part of a much larger marketing effort to stay relevant within a fast-changing consumer landscape.

In addition to the new Cracker Jack mobile game codes, the brand’s logo and packaging will also be restyled.

Thought this doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to many, a study has just confirmed this suspicion.

EEDAR, a video and mobile games research firm, has now released the results of a data analysis it has conducted in order to confirm what many people have suspected about game app use for some time now.

Mobile device owners tend to use their gadgets to play games to pass time, not for the challenge or fun of it.

Though it is not entirely surprising, it remains quite interesting, particularly for developers of mobile games and especially for those creating multiplayer experiences. According to the report from EEDAR, about 74 percent of people in North America who play game apps do so in order to kill time. Twelve percent do so in order to interact with other people while 16 percent do so in order to be able to compete with other propel.

This helps to expand on the insight that was offered by Flurry in a mobile games study conducted last year.

Flurry, an analytics company owned by Yahoo, reported that there had been a notable decline in the average amount of time users were spending on mobile game apps. That report was created in 2015. Simon Khalaf, an exec at Flurry, explained that American mobile game players weren’t spending as much time on those mobile apps as they had bumped up the amount of time they were spending watching other people while they played.

This helped to explain why there had simultaneously been a boost in the amount of time spent on sites such as YouTube and Twitch for watching other people playing games on their consoles, computers and their mobile devices as well.

Patrick Walker, an EEDAR exec, discussed this shift in mobile games trends when he spoke at the GDC 2016 with regards to player engagement. Among the subjects on which he focused was the reason people in North American and Japan were playing these game apps. In Japan, only 5 percent had said that they were playing in order to compete with others, less than a third of the North American statistic.