Monday, March 27, 2017

A Change in a Jiffy


I found it oddly troubling that the packaging for Jiffy Corn Muffin mix changed.  Not because it changed per se, but that the change was so arbitrary.
I've eaten Cornbread Pecan Waffles most weekend mornings for years.  I store the Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix boxes in the pantry - always facing forwards.  This puts the picture of the "Jiffy-Man" on the right.


When I purchased a new box of mix recently and put it away after grocery shopping, the Jiffy-Man was no longer on the right.  Carefully looking over the box, there weren't any other changes.  The only change was swapping the left and right panels on the box.

I work for a large company that can at times be bureaucratic;  at times can be very bureaucratic.  I wondered if this change to the box was part of some orchestrated project at Chelsea Milling Company.  Did people sit in a conference room, discussing the merits of moving the Jiffy-Man to the left of the box.  Were there packaging experts and baking experts and management all discussing how this might raise sales?  Was this part of some larger-scope project to standardize packaging across the Jiffy line-up and save manufacturing costs?
I guess I could understand if this was a total redesign of the box, but there were no other changes other than the left and right panels had been swapped.  Maybe the Chelsea Milling Company engineers even diagrammed out the change.

Could the Chelsea Milling Company brand managers and bean counters have projected why spending time, money and energy to change the box was worth it?


They didn't change the box to update the nutrition label.  They didn't add a new recipe - not even one for cornbread pecan waffles.  They didn't redesign the iconic front to make it more appealing to Millennials.  They just swapped left a right labels.  I guess it could be a mistake; the box printing company just got confused.  Possibly this box is a unicorn of premixes, akin to the Inverted Jenny of stamp collecting.  Or maybe there are two box makers, and one of them works from a different set of standards.  Maybe, the corn being used to make the Jiffy mix with the Jiffy-Man on the left is genetically engineered to have its DNA helixed to the left.  The Horror.  The Horror.

I contacted the Chelsea Milling Company, but they said they wouldn't respond in writing.  The conspiracy deepens...

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