How long can KFC's Duck Duck be popular this time?

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As one of the representative characters of the well-known IP Pokémon, recently, the Duck Duck music box has been rapidly fermented through the Internet, and Duck Duck has successfully emerged from the circle, becoming another popular item among young consumers after Lingna Belle and Bing Dun Dun. "New Favorite". Just this past weekend, many people's circle of friends was swiped by the magical Duck Duck music box.

For a time, the price of Duck Duck has skyrocketed. The Beijing News Shell Finance reporter randomly asked some sellers and was told that Duck Duck's gift price has risen to 159 yuan. On the second-hand platform, there are many "scalpers" selling at high prices, with the price exceeding 100 yuan. Calculated at 500 yuan, the price of only one package of toys is already 70% of the price of the package itself (calculated at 69 yuan). times more. Up to the fire of duck, it can be said that a "duck" is hard to find .

Why is KFC's Da Duck so popular? Since the previous round of "DIMOO Co-branded Blind Box Package" launched by KFC and Bubble Wharf went out, how long can this round of DIMOO be popular?

Why is the Duck so popular?

The Duck toy that is currently popular all over the Internet is actually one of the toys that KFC launched in the Children's Day package on May 21 this year.

According to the KFC App, there are four types of Pokemon toy packages for this Children’s Day, priced at 69 yuan, 109 yuan, 73 yuan and 115 yuan, each of which can be gifted with a Pokemon co-branded toy, including Duck Duck. One, in addition to the Duck Music Box, there are Pikachu Music Boxes, and Pikachu Water Bottles.

In fact, according to the popularity in the animation, Pikachu should be the protagonist - but this time, its limelight was all robbed by the duck. As for the reason, after the toy is started, it will play magical brainwashing music while rhythmically rotating its body to "dance" , coupled with the cute expression of the Duck itself, it is natural Formed an inexplicable laugh.

What really made this toy popular on the Internet was the ingenuity of netizens. As long as people put pieces of paper with different short sentences on the hands of the Duck, the Duck will become a The custom-made Duck can play magical music while waving pieces of paper with different characters written on it. Therefore, in the past few days, the appearance of the Duck Duck that appeared on the social platform has been continuously upgraded.

Initially, netizens stuck a note paper on the wings of the toy, and wrote simple words, such as "get up with nucleic acid", "come to play with duck", "get rich overnight with duck". Later, more netizens joined the "duck" team, put on wigs, hairpins, and various decorative components such as "hard-core" weapons, constantly upgrading and "unlocking" new gameplay, and made emoticons. , related topics quickly climbed the hot search, forming a screen-swiping effect. Being funny, coupled with the huge space for secondary creation, Dak Duck has quickly become a hard currency that is as popular as Chaowan.

At present, most of the large and small KFC restaurants all over the country are caught in the dilemma of "duck" hard to find - the package has been sold out on the KFC APP, and it is obviously in short supply . On the online trading platform, the Duck Duck music box has been hyped several times, with prices ranging from hundreds of yuan to thousands of yuan. Calculated at the minimum package price of 59 yuan, the toy has at least doubled.

At present, in the second-hand market, the price of a Duck Duck music box generally ranges from 50 to 100 yuan. At the same time, there are also many "scalpers" selling at high prices, with the price exceeding 100 yuan. You must know that the price of a KFC children's meal for two is only less than 70 yuan. Now a Duck toy can easily change a meal for two . What's even more outrageous is that some people even put the reachable duck toys limited in the mainland on the coal stove, a second-hand trading platform in Japan, and the price is as high as 15,999 yen (about 836 yuan).

There are also the same style of Duck music box toys on the Internet, and there are sellers who take orders for wholesale. In an online trading wholesale market, a seller from Jinhua City, Zhejiang said that 1,000 batches were approved, and the unit price was 25 yuan. On another second-hand trading platform, the wholesale price of 100 pieces ranges from 3,800 yuan to ten thousand yuan.

Sellers who have "play tickets" have more "professional" food substitutes, that is, the buyer pays for the package, and the seller eats the food in the package and mails the toys. But whether it is second-hand or on behalf of eating, the price of the duck has risen, higher than the price of the package itself. Up to duck fire, obviously.

How long can the Duck be on fire?

At present, although the Duck is on fire, it is not certain how long it will last.

At the beginning of 2022, KFC was named and criticized by the China Consumers Association for giving away Bubble Mart's co-branded toy "Dimoo" in the package, which caused consumers to spend money to find "food substitutes". At that time, there were 7 kinds of toys matched with the KFC package, which were distributed randomly in the form of blind boxes, of which there was a 1:72 probability of hidden models, and a KFC store had only 36 package quotas, that is, every two stores can only have one hidden item. payment.

Therefore, in order to collect all the toys, some consumers did not hesitate to spend 10,494 yuan to buy 106 sets of meals at one time; some consumers bought the "eat-for-you" service for "seeking a baby", and hired someone to buy the meal-for-you package to get a blind box. There is even a phenomenon of directly throwing away the food that cannot be eaten.

Soon, on January 12, "China Consumers Association named KFC Bubble Mart" on the hot search. The China Consumers Association pointed out that KFC sells instant edible products in limited-edition blind boxes to stimulate consumption by means of "hunger marketing". This leads to unnecessary food waste for consumers to over-buy in order to obtain limited-edition blind boxes.

Less than half a year later, KFC's co-branded IP toys have sparked a craze again. Although there is no "hidden model", the phenomenon of eating and hyping toys is exactly the same as at the beginning of the year.

Essentially, the price of a commodity is affected by its supply and demand and by its value itself. This means that this short-lived madness that collectively revolves around a commodity will not last long. At that time, the scalpers and buyers who were running around for the Duck toys before may be starting a new round of competition around a new popular product on the Internet. In the end, the disappointment may be the children and fans who originally only wanted to have a Duck toy.

In the final analysis, whether it is to fry shoes, fry trendy cards or fry figures, the rules are always the same. If something is popular, you can snatch it, regardless of whether you really need it or not. After all, due to speculation or the need to follow the trend, these short-lived hits will always have an unbelievably huge market, but they will always become unpopular after a short period of madness. Maybe it won't be long before the price of Duck toys in the second-hand market will drop to normal levels.

Although each of us has the right to choose which products we want to buy, rational consumption and not blindly creating demand may be the most correct consumption concept at the moment.

Buy a toy free package

In fact, in recent years, "toys (blind box) + set meal" -to achieve the effect of 1+1 greater than 2 through co-branding, has become an increasingly common and commonly used marketing method in the catering industry, especially KFC. Pokémon, Minions, Hamtaro, Meow Xiaoqi, Tusky, Pleasant Goat, Cat and Mouse, etc., these popular IPs, KFC has produced co-branded toys, and KFC is also dubbed by some consumers as "hidden toys". factory".

In March 2020, KFC also collaborated with the popular mobile game "Genshin Impact", and purchasing designated packages will include in-game props and limited badges. According to public information, players queued for 12 hours at that time just to buy limited products. Not long ago, KFC also launched the Spring Festival Gathering Bucket Package, which means that you will get a Bing Dun Dun stamp when you buy the package. The package, which goes on sale on January 28, is worth 109 yuan and includes two burgers, three drinks and some snacks. There are two shapes of the seal, namely Bing Dun Dun holding the Winter Olympics flag and Bing Dun Dun holding the cheering banner. There are a total of 15 stamp patterns sent, which correspond to the 15 events of the Winter Olympics.

And KFC's unsightly financial report data may be one of the incentives for its continuous linkage with IP . On May 4, Yum China Holdings Co., Ltd. disclosed its results for the first quarter of 2022. In the first quarter of this year, the company's total revenue was US$2.67 billion, a year-on-year increase of 4%; net profit was US$100 million, a year-on-year decline of 57%.

Regarding the decline in net profit, Yum China said that it was mainly due to the decline in operating profit and the loss caused by the company's market value equity investment in Meituan. During the reporting period, the company's operating profit was US$191 million, a year-on-year decrease of 44%. Specifically, in the first quarter of this year, the same-store sales of Yum China's two major brands KFC and Pizza Hut fell by 9% and 5%, respectively, and operating profit fell by 33% and 50%, respectively .

One of the main reasons for the decline in KFC's profits is that young people are no longer keen on a series of Western-style fast food chains such as KFC in an environment surrounded by Chinese Internet celebrity restaurants. In order to capture young consumers, KFC began to consider co-branding with IPs such as animation and games that young people love, and summon young people through younger marketing methods such as blind boxes and games.

McDonald's, also a fast-food giant, also makes good use of this sales method . According to McDonald's official website, in 1979, McDonald's launched a series of toys with Happy Meal in the United States, which practiced the combination of toys and food, and achieved great success. In 1990, McDonald's launched the first set of Happy Meal toys in the Chinese mainland market, and now it has launched a new set of toys every four weeks on average. In July 2020, McDonald's and Minions launched a total of 70 blind boxes, all of which were sold with Happy Meal. In February 2021, McDonald's also cooperated with Marvel to launch a total of 12 toys in the Marvel Heroes series.

In China, other food brands have also applied similar marketing methods, and have increasingly emphasized the concept of "blind boxes" in recent years. In December 2019, RIO and ACTOYS jointly launched a cat bell blind box. During the event, you can get a cat bell blind box when you purchase products over 149 yuan at the designated link. In August 2020, Luckin Coffee launched the "LINE FRIENDS Mid-Autumn Festival Gift Box", each gift box contains 6 flavors of mooncakes and 1 LINE FRIENDS blind box. In January 2021, Hsu Fu Chi and Bubble Mart jointly launched a New Year gift box, which includes Hsu Fu Chi products and Bubble Mart BUNNY winter limited blind box.

But obviously, "toy (blind box) + package" is not a master key for traffic. The essence of co-branding is to cross-border connection with potential consumers who may not be in-depth reach, so as to form brand exposure and mutual benefit, but now, this model has gone in the opposite direction . Whether it is toys or blind boxes, people need to buy a large number of packages in order to get their favorite styles, which makes the brand ignore the attributes of its own products in marketing, without considering the food intake of individual consumers, in order to pursue the sensational effect of marketing And creating scarcity has caused certain chaos, including food waste.

Buying a package to send a toy has become a package for buying a toy and returning a pearl, but that's all.