Just past the Spring Festival New Year's Cargo Festival, casual snack brands ushered in a grand battle.

Data show that the cumulative sales of three squirrels' annual festival exceeded 2.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 55%; the turnover of branded nut gift packs in the Jitterbug Mall increased by 263% year-on-year, of which the turnover of bicarbonate nuts and pine nuts increased by 174% and 670%, respectively. In addition, the historical turnover of the gift box co-branded by Wang Xiaohuang and Crayon Xiaoxin has exceeded 200,000 orders.

A generation has a generation of New Year's Eve, this year, in order to meet the New Year's Eve with young people as the main force of consumption, casual snack brands have obviously used a lot of thought.

01 Product focus on emotional value, pinpointing the preferences of young people's New Year's goods
According to data released by AliMom in December 2024, 83% of young people (18~34 years old) consider themselves to be the decision makers for CNY (Chinese New Year) consumption.

When you search for “New Year's goods” on Xiaohongshu, the platform automatically associates tags with “young people”. It can be seen that the main force for buying New Year's Eve goods is the post-90s and post-00s young people.

Young consumers buy New Year's goods, pay more attention to meet the emotional value and personalized needs. This point, through this year's Spring Festival, casual snack brands in the product approach, or can be glimpsed.

Combing 2025 Spring Festival casual snacks brand approach, in terms of products, there are three major initiatives.

First, the launch of the Year of the Snake limited products. The Year of the Snake elements into the product packaging, such as Qiajia Foods, Xu Fuji and other brands to launch the Year of the Snake limited to the gift box of nuts, candy gift boxes, etc., to attract consumers to buy.

Open the major casual snacks online store, you can also see the red Chinese New Year promotion activities.

Second, innovative gift box combinations. Many brands have launched large packages or oversized gift packs to meet consumer sharing needs. “Bigger than the face of the Xanzibao oversized jelly, can be a backpack of large packages of Weilong spicy strips, three times the size of the Fun Duo Duo cookies, snacks than the children are still taller than the gift package,” nowadays, such a large package of snacks, in the supermarket is very common.

This year's Spring Festival, Ritz launched half a person high, 1 kg of large packages of potato chips gift box, Qiajia Foods launched 2.8 kg of oversized gift packages, Yantianpuzi launched containing 200 small packets of explosive spicy halogen gift box.

In fact, as early as 2024, the prevalence of large packs of snacks began to prevail in the market. This craze is further continued in 2025.

Third, cross-border co-branding cooperation. According to Tech Planet's incomplete statistics, more than 30 brands have made co-branding cooperation with Crayola, Butter Bear, Wang Xiaohao, Seal of the Gods Movie and so on in this year's New Year's Eve.

For example, Wang Xiaohuang co-branded with Crayon Shin-chan, Hsu Fu Chi created “New Year Candy” series of Chinese New Year IP, Liangpin Puzi and “Chinese Peking Opera” IP showed Peking Opera faces and traditional decorative patterns on the gift box, Baiguoyuan launched a Chinese New Year co-branded gift box with Lu Jianying, the inheritor of the Suzhou embroidery. Lucky Chips and Hatsune Miku launched a gift box of potato chips.

“We launched a variety of peripheral products through the Want Want IP image, in addition, will be based on different nodes to plan the marketing theme to launch a customized version of the gift box, and co-branded with a number of games to launch a limited edition of IP gift packs, to provide consumers with different forms of purchasing scenarios.” Want Want side of the relevant person said.

Behind the brand's approach, catering to the trend of young people as the main force to buy new year's goods, we can also see that the “emotional value” gradually replace the purely practical attributes, become a key force to drive the performance of the New Year's Eve growth. Whether it is linked with ip, or large packages of snacks gift packs, to meet the emotional value of consumers.

02 Rush to mass-market snack stores, the layout of WeChat gifts
In addition to product changes, this year's New Year's Eve, casual snack brands also have new attempts in the channel.

On the one hand, to strengthen cooperation with the quantitative snacks channel. For example, Ritz cooperated with the snacks mass market brand Goodwill to launch the “Spring Festival brainwashing song” “Goodwill Ritz to come”, to strengthen the association between the brand and the Spring Festival scene, and to improve the exposure.

Previously, three squirrels not only stationed in snacks are very busy, but also acquired a snack chain brand “love snacks”; Liangpin Puzi incubated a new brand of snacks “snacks stubborn home”.

On the other hand, online channels are also casual snack brands continue to increase the place. Snacks are very busy with the Shake Shot Heart Day, and more than 20 snack brands for the New Year's Eve live broadcast, with total sales exceeding 30 million yuan.

In addition, WeChat launched the “gift” function earlier this year, has also become a major entry point for casual snack brands to power the New Year's Eve.

During the Spring Festival, Bohu Finance noticed that WeChat dialog box appeared a new function “gift” option, and attached a striking red dot, reminding users to click to understand. Click on this function, you can see many gift options, including three squirrels and other brands launched the Spring Festival gift package.