Authored by Lauren (Dooley) Brand, Ph.D., Sr. Director, Strategic Product Insights
The candy world’s most divisive chick turns out to be a masterclass in emotional branding, and seven decades of data says their polarization is actually a nostalgic product feature.
Every spring, without fail, the conversation starts again. Someone posts a photo of a neon yellow chick on social media. Someone else replies that they are the greatest candy ever made. A third person says they would not eat one if offered. The debate is instant, familiar, and for consumer insights professionals endlessly instructive.
Peeps are, by almost any conventional metric, a polarizing product. Yet they have been a fixture in American Easter baskets since the 1950s, generating the kind of cultural conversation that most brands spend millions trying to manufacture. Year after year, they sell and not because they have won over the skeptics, but because they have never needed to. The question worth asking is not why so many people dislike Peeps. It is what this brand understands about emotional branding and consumer behavior that most brands struggle with at times.
Curion recently fielded three separate Curion Poll PULSE surveys totaling more than 19,000 responses from U.S. consumers to understand the Peeps consumer in full: sentiment, purchase behavior, and consumption habits. On sentiment alone, the split is almost mathematical in its precision. In a survey of 4,752 consumers, 24.2% love Peeps and 23.3% like them, nearly half the population. On the other side, 17.4% don’t like them and 8.1% actively hate them.
What we found is that polarization is not always a liability. Peeps, having passionate advocates on both sides of the debate keeps the brand perpetually in the cultural conversation. That attention is extraordinarily difficult and expensive to manufacture artificially, theirs of course is organic.
Perhaps the most strategically significant finding is what actually drives the purchase decision. When we surveyed more than 8,000 consumers on why they buy Peeps, taste ranked well below tradition. Nearly one-third (32.9%) cited holiday tradition as their primary motivation, 28.4% purchase them as gifting or basket fillers, and 23.4% are driven by nostalgia.
"For a meaningful segment of American consumers, buying Peeps has nothing to do with wanting to eat Peeps."
It is a seasonal ritual, a signal that spring has arrived, that the holiday is being honored. This is the difference between a product people choose and a product people reach for without thinking. The latter is far more durable.
Consumption behavior adds another layer of nuance. While 56.6% of the 6,235 consumers surveyed eat Peeps straight from the package, a loyal and deliberate minority does something more intentional: 10.8% let them harden before eating, 8.6% roast them, 8.5% use them in s’mores, and 6.4% microwave them. For a subset of consumers, Peeps function less like a grab-and-eat candy and more like a seasonal ingredient a versatile marshmallow format that adapts to personal preference. That behavioral diversity is a signal worth paying attention to, why? Because the consumer is already doing the product development work.
And since we’re known at Curion for going deeper into product performance behavior, we evaluated Peeps using the Curion Score, our composite measure of product performance based on consumer response across sensory and emotional dimensions. The product earned a 6.7 Overall Liking score, placing it below the confectionery/non-chocolate category average.
But when we look at that number alone, it really misses the real story. Texture is a genuine and measurable strength; consumers respond consistently to the airy, soft marshmallow quality. Flavor balance, however, is a clear opportunity. Consumers perceive the vanilla as too subtle against an overwhelming sweetness intensity and that imbalance is likely a structural contributor to the very polarization the brand has learned to leverage.
"But why should you, my reader, care? Because understanding why a product performs the way it does is what turns a data point into a strategic direction. This is one of the best ways to “get rid of the data noise” and focus on what will move the needle."
The broader lesson for CPG brands is this: in a fragmented snack landscape, the brands that endure are rarely the ones that out-perform on pure taste metrics. They are the ones that occupy emotional branding and real estate competitors cannot easily replicate. Peeps do not need to be everyone’s favorite. They need to be unforgettable. And they have been doing that for seven decades. A product that inspires indifference rarely survives. A product that inspires opinion, even divided opinion, can last generations. Every diorama contest, viral taste test, and “stale vs. fresh” argument is, in effect, earned media. Not every brand can manufacture that kind of cultural presence. But every brand can study it.