The rules around food marketing have undergone massive changes this past year. Only foods that are HFSS-compliant can be advertised, which means the high sugar snacks and sweets adverts stuffed into cartoon ad breaks are no more. Instead of foregoing all advertising, former Warburtons marketing director Mark Simester has launched Jungle Squad: a HFSS-compliant cake bar brand, with each pack containing collectable trading cards.
To be HFSS-compliant, Imaginakery’s Jungle Squad cake bars have 60% less sugar than the average cake bar. Getting kids to be healthier is always a good thing. In real numbers, a Jungle Squad cake bar has 3.2g of sugar. Compared with the 12.4g in a single Mr Kipling Angel Cake slice, it’s quite an impressive saving.
The cake bars can be bought direct from Jungle Squad in a bulk box of 30 (enough for a full month of lunchboxes) with six packs of trading cards bundled in and each cake is in the shape of a lion’s head. The box of 30 will set you back £11.99 plus postage.
The only downside being the box of 30 is a single flavour (either strawberry or lemon), so could get quite boring by the end of the month.
Go to a supermarket, however, and you can buy smaller packs of five for £1.90 (£1.25 with a Tesco Clubcard). If your kids are in it for the game cards, they’ll be nagging you to buy pack after pack as the supermarket-size only contains three cards. You can chop and change the flavours a bit with the individual packs.
So, other than less sugar what’s actually in them?
- 88kcal (lemon) and 89kcal (strawberry)
- 4.2g fats (0.4g saturated)
- 1.2g fibre
- 1.5g protein (lemon); 1.4g (strawberry)
- 0.15g salt
Like most things, the card game also has an accompanying app for on-screen playtime. While the physical cards are a draw, it probably isn’t enough to distract the kids from their screens, so creating an app doubles the opportunities for kids to be playing Jungle Squad.
The brand launch has also seen quite a big social media push, so it’s only a matter of time until your kids start asking for Jungle Squad.
Available in Tesco.
