Chips Ahoy’s New Stranger Things Cookie Shows How Snack Brands Win Gen Z
- Zenia Pearl V. Nicolas
- 6h
- 2 min read
Chips Ahoy is stepping into a new cultural lane with a limited-edition Stranger Things cookie, signaling how legacy snack brands are evolving to stay relevant in a fandom-driven, Gen Z-shaped market. The campaign introduces a dark-themed chocolate cookie with a strawberry center designed to resemble the show’s eerie Upside Down universe, as first reported by Business Insider (Business Insider).
Beyond the flavour twist which Allrecipes notes is the brand’s first cookie to feature a fruit-filled centre (Allrecipes)—the collaboration leans heavily into experiential branding.
The packaging glows in the dark, the theme mirrors 1980s retro nostalgia, and the product activates an augmented-reality game through a QR code. Marketing Brew describes this as “gamifying the Upside Down” through digital layers aimed directly at Gen Z engagement (Marketing Brew).
The timing is equally strategic, coinciding with the final season of Stranger Things. As Delish notes, the flavor rollout aligns with a global surge in nostalgia-led content launches (Delish).
This collaboration reflects a deeper shift that snack brands are no longer competing only
on taste, but on cultural relevance. Chips Ahoy is blending entertainment partnerships, bold flavour experimentation, and digital immersion, an approach increasingly shaping consumer expectations across Southeast Asia, including the Philippines.
It’s still too early to know how widely the cookie will roll out, but it reflects a broader shift in how brands are blending product ideas with cultural moments and light digital features.
References
Business Insider. (2025). Inside Chips Ahoy's plan to win over Gen Z — with help from Netflix's “Stranger Things”. https://www.businessinsider.com/chips-ahoy-strategy-gen-z-stranger-things-new-flavor-pairings-2025-11
Allrecipes. (2025). Chips Ahoy is releasing a first-of-its-kind cookie and the flavor is stranger than you think. https://www.allrecipes.com/chips-ahoy-stranger-things-cookie-11774959
Marketing Brew. (2025). How Chips Ahoy gamified the Upside Down. https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/2025/08/28/how-chips-ahoy-gamified-the-upside-down
Delish. (2025). Taste test: Chips Ahoy’s Stranger Things collab cookie. https://www.delish.com/food-news/a65492895/chips-ahoy-stranger-things-taste-test
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