• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer @mahoney_sarah, November 27, 2024

Supermarkets have long known they have gift-giving superpowers: Who hasn’t raced into a grocery store at the last minute and desperately grabbed a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates or a limp poinsettia? But this year, CPG Insider has been impressed by the clever concepts some brands are introducing, hoping to land on hungry shoppers’ gift lists with inspired limited-edition products.

*Hellmann’s Mayonnaise wants to convince party guests that a bottle of Mayonnaise Blanc is the perfect hostess gift, featuring creamy, tart lemon notes from the private reserves of Hellmann’s founder, Richard Hellmann. The wine-shaped bottle is wrapped in a sleek, blue velvet ribbon as a nod to the jar’s signature design.  

The Unilever brand gave people just two days to enter their names on a microsite, and will award a limited number of the bottles (which open to reveal an 8-ounce jar of mayo) to lucky recipients.

*Bumble Bee Is bringing back the Tuna Lovers’ Advent Calendar, and this year, the fish-shaped calendar sings. (Good luck getting that yum-yum jingle out of your head.) Priced at $30, this calendar contains 12 tuna snacks.

*Hidden Valley, the salad dressing brand owned by Clorox, offers sets of a Ranch Holiday Card Collection at $18 for an eight-pack. Each card opens to reveal a surprise serving of zesty Hidden Valley Ranch.

Prefer sweet over savory?

*Brach’s, America’s leading candy cane brand, offered the first hundred visitors to its site the chance to get a customizable holiday song. Users answered a few questions, picked a genre and shared a memory in return for the song, pressed on a collectible vinyl record.

*Pepperidge Farm, owned by Campbell Soup, sold $50 Rachel Antonoff-designed cookie jars for a short time earlier this month. Crafted in ceramic with a vintage toile de jouy pattern, the jars are shaped like the company’s distinctive packaging.