Cuties (the tiny little clementine tangerines/oranges)

[hops&dreams]

Has anyone else noticed that these were not nearly as "available" this year as in years past? Last year, I ate a TON of Cuties. I was buying a 3# (?) bag twice a week at Sams Club for a couple of months! This year, my Sams club only has Halos, which aren't as good as the Cuties. I finally saw some Cuties at Target, and bought a bag. They are very, very small - not much bigger than a golf ball - and when eaten are very tart. At this point, I'd rather eat the Halos.

Anyone know what happened to Cuties this year? Bad crop? bad weather for them? Maybe only my area hasn't had them?

I'm only asking because I know that I brought a brand new bag of Cuties with us on our Spring Break Road trip which was one year ago this week. And we ate Cuties through 7 states. They were such a good snack and made the car smell nice. If I had gotten the bag I have now, I would have chucked them out the window in the first state!

 

[PrincessJo]

Haven't noticed any difference here in Texas. They are everywhere... I have 4 sitting right here next to me on the desk

 

[StitchesGr8Fan]

We've had Cuties at our stores this year, and they look and taste awful. We switched to Halos. I miss the good Cuties.

I'm glad someone else noticed!

 

[EMom]

The produce guy gave me the following story yesterday. I am not sure if it's true, but he said Halos/Cuties are the same thing. He said two people/factions had owned Cuties, but they had a split. One side kept 30% of Cuties land/whatever else they owned and was allowed to use the CUTIES name. The other faction got 70% of the company assets but cannot use the name CUTIES.

 

[EMom]

BTW, the Cuties I have gotten over the last two months have been awful. Mushy and nasty. I bought Halos this week and so far, DD has no complaints. They look better than the Cuties I bought recently.

 

[StitchesGr8Fan]

Just looked it up. Halos and cuties are the same fruit. They split the land equally. Looks like halos got the better part of the land!

 

[Piper]

I object to the commercials showing the child shaming the parent for wanting the fruit. Excuse me, but who paid for them in the first place?!? Just another way the media is reinforcing the idea that children are "entitled" and smarter than their parents!

 

[Sparkly]

I object to the commercials showing the child shaming the parent for wanting the fruit. Excuse me, but who paid for them in the first place?!? Just another way the media is reinforcing the idea that children are "entitled" and smarter than their parents!

There used to be a ad for Oreos with a obnoxious little girl telling her dad she couldn't have any of them- but her dad paid for them not her!

 

[lynxstch]

We've bought them a lot lately (Walmart Supercenter)..one batch will be big and juicy and sweet, and the next small and tart and fairly dry. And the prices are ridiculous. Last week a 3 lb bag was $4.48 and a 5 lb box was $5.68. The bags were full of very small fruits, the boxes were full of bigger ones. We have just been attributing it to the crazy weather everywhere.

 

[summerblue]

I have not had issues finding Cuties here, but there do seem to be more stacks of Halos, I bought a thing of Halos a couple months ago and they were very sour, so next time I bought Cuties as I had always before they were horrible, I tried again a couple weeks ago and still awful. Today at the store they had a small bag of clementines that gad four in the bag for .97 so I hit them to try, they are called Citrines, hopefully they will taste better than the Halos and Cuties have been.

 

[muffyn]

hmm,
the cuties & halos differ around here.
cuties are hard to peel & the halos are really easy to peel, even says so on the box.

cuties here tend to be tarter than halos.


I have both boxes in fridge now.

 

[Soldier's*Sweeties]

hmm,
the cuties & halos differ around here.
cuties are hard to peel & the halos are really easy to peel, even says so on the box.

cuties here tend to be tarter than halos.


I have both boxes in fridge now.

I always thought Cuties were clementines and Halos were mandarins

 

[Christine]

I always thought Cuties were clementines and Halos were mandarins

I thought the same thing.

I haven't seen much of the Cuties this year but I did buy the Halos. Wasn't impressed but from reading other threads about fruit, I seem to be in the minority.

 

[MIGrandma]

I've gotten good Cuties and good Halos, and bad Cuties and bad Halos this year. More bad than good though so stopped buying them altogether. Sad because they are...were...my favorite wintertime fruit. Hopefully next year they will all be better. I still see them in stores, but even when they're good I stop buying them in February as it seems like they start getting dry towards the end of the season.

I, too, hate that commercial where the kid doesn't want his Dad eating one. Like the PP said, who bought them?! Dad!! The kid is a little brat!

 

[Micca]

Story about cuties: My wife bought a box of them and while we were transferring the groceries from the car to the house the cuties got left in the garage.

A few hours later I got into my car and backed over the cuties! Two observations about this: 1) The garage never smelled so fresh and citrus-y, and 2) I became a "Death Cab For Cuties"

 

[MichelleVW]

BTW, the Cuties I have gotten over the last two months have been awful. Mushy and nasty. I bought Halos this week and so far, DD has no complaints. They look better than the Cuties I bought recently.

Same here....so I've been buying the Halos. Every now and then I've been getting a bad one...but for the most part they are pretty good.

 

[KaLyn]

Story about cuties: My wife bought a box of them and while we were transferring the groceries from the car to the house the cuties got left in the garage. A few hours later I got into my car and backed over the cuties! Two observations about this: 1) The garage never smelled so fresh and citrus-y, and 2) I became a "Death Cab For Cuties"

Hahaha, cute!

 

[denisenh]

I am a fan of both and I notice that halos have been delicious and cuties have been hard and dry. I was interested to find out the difference after reading this thread and found this.




Friday, Nov 29 2013 11:00 AM

Paramount goes head-to-head with its own success

The Bakersfield Californian Cuties and Halos are produced by different growers, but are essentially the same fruit.
BY JOHN COX Californian staff writer jcox@bakersfield.com
It's a tall order even for the branding geniuses who made Cuties a household name: top their own phenomenal success.

Delano-based Paramount Citrus this week kicked off a five-year, $100 million marketing campaign to persuade consumers to switch from Cuties to "Halos" -- as in, "pure goodness," according to the new advertising tagline.

The catch is, there's no physical difference between the two products. Grown mostly in the Central Valley, they're a type of mandarin known as clementines or, depending on the time of year, murcotts.

There is, however, a very real financial distinction.

Paramount's Los Angeles parent company, Roll Global, no longer has rights to the Cuties name -- even though its in-house marketing agency did the product branding work that industry people credit with changing the way produce is marketed.

Paramount agreed to give up the Cuties brand this past spring as part of a corporate divorce from Pasadena-based Sun Pacific Marketing Cooperative Inc., which now owns exclusive rights to the product name. Both companies kept about 13,000 mandarin acres each in Kern and other parts of the southern Valley.

Halos hit store shelves across the country earlier this month. Some retailers, including the Target at Valley Plaza mall, sell them alongside Cuties -- and five-pound bags of each sell for the same $6.99.

Paramount's strategy is not only to recapture the children's market Cuties has come to be associated with, but also expand it to everyone else, said Paramount Citrus' vice president of sales and marketing, Scott Owens.

"It's appealing to a much broader audience," he said.

With that in mind, Paramount has produced three 30-second commercials for broadcast on cable and network television. The company plans to reinforce its message with a social media campaign, a smartphone game app for kids and merchandise giveaways.

The TV commercials focus on children who go from nice to ornery when adults try to take one of their Halos.

"They're angels, unless you mess with their Halos!" reads a company news release on the campaign.

OBSERVERS IMPRESSED

Industry expectations are high. Roll Global, after all, is the company behind POM Wonderful, which introduced Americans to pomegranates, a fruit many people east of the West Coast had never even heard of. Roll also owns Wonderful Pistachios, whose domestic sales have been supported by a series of hip, celebrity-laden TV ads.

Then there's the campaign's price tag. Wisconsin produce marketing executive Melinda Goodman said $100 million may be the most money ever set aside for a produce marketing campaign.

"I think it's a number we've never seen before," she said.

The Halos campaign represents a relatively new idea in produce marketing, she said. In years past, fruit was fruit: Growers and grocers did little or nothing to distinguish one brand from another.

Paramount's work with Cuties helped change that, she said.

"They've done a great job of creating brands" that are relevant in popular culture, she said.

At the same time, conventional wisdom holds that even the best produce branding can achieve no more than 40 percent to 50 percent marketshare, she said.

What Paramount has going for it is consumer demand for mandarins already established by Cuties, said Goodman, managing director of FullTilt Marketing, which also has offices in Florida and Minnesota.

"Now all they have to do is get consumers to recognize that (Halos) brand," she said.

Central Valley produce marketer Julie Lucido agreed that Paramount has led the industry with its marketing expertise.

"They were at the forefront by establishing Cuties," she said, adding that the scope of the Halos campaign is impressive. "They've made a commitment."

Even so, she said the brand's success isn't a given. Some Cuties fans will inevitably stick with that brand, she said, and Halos' quality will have to be consistent if it is to win repeat customers.

If it succeeds, Paramount has a shot at stealing marketshare from Sun Pacific, said Lucido, a marketing professional at Fresno-based Marketing Plus.

"If the fruit inside the Halos bag is just as good (as Cuties), it's going to become interchangeable. It could," she said.

Sun Pacific did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But the company hasn't stopped marketing efforts to either consumers or retailers; the company touted its fruit at a recent industry trade show.

Owens, the sales and marketing executive at Paramount, said much is riding on the new campaign. He emphasized that as more of the company's citrus groves mature to bear fruit, consumer demand must be there to buy and eat it.

Not that he's worried. For all the success the Cuties campaign enjoyed, Owens noted that it was a much more modest effort than the Halos drive, lasting only about two years.

He also said that continued marketing might is crucial to prevent brands from shriveling over time.

"It takes work and it takes investment," he said. "That's where we think we're going to win."

 

[Tuffcookie]

OP, I couldn't find Cuties this year either so I bought what the grocery had, which were the Halos.

The Halos were not a sweet as the Cuties. If they are one in the same, maybe the weather affected this year's crop?

TC

 

[tvguy]

There has been an explosion of people selling them (and strawberries) out of the back of pickup trucks/vans on street corners here in the past 2 years. 2 bags for $5 is the going price. Judging from the pile in the back of the pickup, supply isn't an issue. I haven't bought them in several years (Doctor says no oranges, too much sugar) so can't speak to quality. The orange ban also sucks because I have 2 orange trees in my backyard.