Halloween used to be all about candy, but increasingly some of the buzziest seasonal products are beverages with brands borrowing from drop culture, including using scarcity, limited availability, distinctive packaging and serial marketing campaigns, to expand the holiday into an entire season for collecting coveted releases.
This week, Coca-Cola introduced Fanta’s Haunted Universe, an original Halloween entertainment world that promises new “stories, content, experiences and surprises throughout the season,” while long-time rival PepsiCo brought back a “fan favorite collaboration” with gummy candy brand Trolli and Mountain Dew for a limited-edition Mango Pineapple Punch beverage that it explicitly positions as a “drop.”
Hershey, Alani Nu, Chobani and others also are getting into the spirit with limited-time-offerings, collaborations, distinctive packaging and social media campaigns that are designed around anticipation, scarcity, partnerships and influencer marketing, which are mechanics more commonly associated with the beauty and fashion industries than the beverage aisle.
The shift from LTO to drop
Halloween has long been a season in which brands build excitement, and sales, by introducing new flavor, shapes and packaging or bringing back fan-favories.
For example, Mars recently launched seasonal twists on its core brands, including Snickers shaped like pumpkins or filled with green caramel, M&M’s blends with orange and black pieces and Twix in the shape of skulls.
Not to be outdone, Hershey has its beloved pumpkin shaped Reese’s Pumpkins, Count & Witch-themed KitKats and Hershey Cookies ‘N’ Crème Fangs. Mondelēz also is getting in on the action with Oreos with orange-colored crème and Halloween-inspired embossing and Sour Patch Kids Monzer Heads.
While only available for a limited time, these beloved seasonal staples build excitement in part through anticipation for the annual return and their broad accessibility once they hit shelves, which brings in consumers from across segmentations.
Drops, however, take the fear-of-missing-out up a notch and urgency to finding and buying the products because they are usually available not only for a limited time but also limited in quantity and distribution points with no guarantee they will be back next year.
Mountain Dew and Trolli are tearing a page from this playbook with their collaborative launch Mango Pineapple Punch beverage launch announced Aug. 24. The brands are offering limited edition Mountain Dew x Trolli Kits available exclusively at Walmart.com, which are only available “while supplies last.”
While kits cultivate social currency with scarcity, exclusivity and distinctive or collectible packaging, the brands also hedge their bets by playing the more common LTO card and making the sodas without the bundled candy available at more retailers and Pizza Hut nationwide through October.
Coca-Cola’s Fanta captures Halloween through IP
Rather than building buzz through LTOs, Coca-Cola’s Fanta goes beyond drop culture to create an entire Halloween franchise with the debut this week of its Haunted Universe.
For two years, Fanta collaborated with major horror film franchises, including Universal Pictures and Blumhouse last year to create limited-edition flavors featuring Chucky, Freddy Fazbear and M3gan. Before that, in 2024, it teamed with Warner Bros. for a Beetlejuice themed line-up.
This year the beverage behemoth moves from “collaborator to creator – building original characters, story and an entertainment universe of our own,” said Ibrahim Khan, global VP of marketing at Fanta. A nearly two and a half minute trailer released Aug. 24 opens with a shot of a haunted house on a hill and a two-second overlay of “Fanta Presents” followed by two minutes of dramatic introductions to four characters “inspired by classic horror legends” before cutting to a six-second shot of two men sipping and toasting with orange Fanta cans.
Even though Fanta makes only a brief appearance, the visuals are engaging and designed to draw in consumers, who the brand says, “can expect the world to continue unfolding as Fanta’s full Halloween campaign launches on Aug. 26.”
Serialized commercials like those promised by Fanta can be wildly successful, as in the case of Taster’s Choice 1990s television campaign featuring two neighbors who share a slow-burning romance that began when one ran out of coffee and borrowed some from the other. Millions of viewers tuned in to see how the relationship would evolve.
Collaborations are a cornerstone for drop culture
Mountain Dew and Trolli is not the only beverage-candy collaboration creating collectibles this Halloween – Hershey announced last week that Reese’s is partnering with The Nitro Bar to create a limited-time Reese’s Pumpkins PB Whip Latte.
The partnership underscores two key cornerstones to drop culture: collaborations that expand each brand’s reach to diverse consumer segments and manufactured scarcity.
The duo will offer the Reese’s Pumpkins PB Whip Latte at a pop up Sept. 14-15 in New York City and at The Nitro Bar Sept. 18-20. To build on the anticipated buzz, they will make the recipe available Sept. 14.
Chobani takes drop culture mainstream
Drop culture doesn’t necessarily mean exclusive access. It can also mean giving a staple grocery product the aura of discovery and scarcity, as in the case of Chobani’s Ube Sweet Cream Dairy Coffee Creamer, which dropped earlier this month.
The company promises it uses “real ube, farm-fresh milk, cream and cane sugar for a rich, authentic flavor without ‘spooky’ ingredients,” or artificial flavors or colors.
Ube’s purple hue recalls a popular accent color frequently used to offset Halloween’s more prevalent orange and black combination. But the seasonal connection doesn’t end there. The packages feature wispy ghosts floating over a softly curving purple horizon with slices of ube stacked on the side. The design was created by Patricia Doria, a Manila-based artist from the Philippines, where ube is widely enjoyed.
“Flavor Drops are all about discovery. Most people’s morning coffee is something they don’t want to mess with, but sometimes changing it up is how you find something you love,” said Jackie Morrogh, director of platform growth at Chobani. “With ube, we wanted to reward curiosity every step of the way, from the packaging to the ingredients, to the flavor in your cup. For the people who grew up with ube, we hope it tastes just like you remember. And for those trying it for the first time, we hope it inspires you to seek out more ube.”
The long-term opportunity from limited-time offerings
As Morrogh notes, drops are about creating cultural moments – not simply putting another product on shelves.
This is key for brands competing for attention in an increasingly crowded, even if extended, Halloween season. The goal becomes creating products and experiences that consumers incorporate into their traditions, talk about, share and look forward to year-after-year.
In this way, the products become more than an limited-time product. They become a limited-time cultural touchpoint.
