Walking down the cereal aisle today, I observed three dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent box designs for Grape-Nuts Trail Mix Crunch. A week ear­lier, I had noticed only two of of the three and assumed that they were tran­si­tion­ing in a new look. But today, three entirely dif­fer­ent boxes were on the shelf, each one con­tain­ing exactly the same prod­uct. (Yes, I com­pared the ingre­di­ents and nutri­tion “facts” tables.)

This, despite claims that the mid­dle prod­uct had a “great taste and lighter crunch” (always an impor­tant fac­tor, no?), while the cereal on the right had “MORE! Raisins & Almonds,” a state­ment which, one could argue, does not make any par­tic­u­lar claim due to its bro­ken gram­mat­i­cal struc­ture. It will form asso­ci­a­tions in people’s minds, just as men­tion­ing “Iraq” and “Osama bin Laden” in the same breath will, but only because peo­ple are lazy, and not because of any truth­ful or mean­ing­ful claim. The box on the left does not men­tion Grape-Nuts at all.

Can any­one sug­gest a rea­son­able expla­na­tion for this? Could they be market-testing mul­ti­ple designs to see which one sells best?