Changing the name, even temporarily, of an already well known and universally adored snack to something completely different sounds like a ridiculous idea, right? Well on October 23rd, 2024, Pepperidge Farms, the company behind Goldfish Snack Crackers, felt differently, believing that dropping a limited edition version of Goldfish under the new title Chilean Sea Bass would prove to be a masterful marketing strategy.
Why would they do this? Looking at this new name idea, it’s pretty difficult to automatically pick up on what their vision must’ve been. After all, Goldfish is a catchy and fun title that millions of people already know this brand under, while Chilean Sea Bass is a wordy and bizarre name for the crackers that would likely confuse a lot of young snackers who were already familiar with the simplicity of the name Goldfish. As it turns out, the company actually didn’t have their child snackers in mind at all during this rebrand. Instead, they were focused on expanding the reach of their company to include adult snackers too.
By changing their name to Chilean Sea Bass for a brief period of time, the Pepperidge Farm company feels that they are distinguishing themselves as a much more sophisticated brand intended for more adult audiences in addition to their existing young audience. The company believes that seeing a name like this will encourage adults to revisit their favorite childhood snack by promoting the fact that the crackers are for customers of all ages. The Chilean Sea Bass packaging is a limited edition offer, but the company feels just getting the word out about the fact that they do consider adults to be just as much a part of their consumer base as children will lead to more adults buying the snack going forward.
If this strange decision for a rebrand makes you a bit confused or even outraged at the altering of such an iconic snack, don’t worry. Not only are these Chilean Sea Bass packaged Goldfish exactly the same as the originals in terms of taste, but you likely won’t even run into them when browsing grocery store shelves anyway. This is not only due to the fact that they are a rare limited edition product, but also because they’re really only being sold online. So if seeing Goldfish under this new name makes you upset, you probably won’t have to worry about it for much longer. However, if you can somehow get your hands on a Chilean Sea Bass bag of Goldfish, I’d recommend holding onto it. With there being so few of these packages out there, someone will undeniably be dying to get their hands on some of these unique Goldfish soon, and they’ll be willing to pay a whole lot for them. Chilean Sea Bass might just turn out to be a great investment.