Christmas packaging stretches beyond M&Ms and Coke

Once confined to red and green M&Ms and soft drinks with Christmas packaging, the holiday product category has continued to expand this year, including everything from toilet paper with pictures of Santa Claus to peppermint-flavored coffee.

Glade, owned by SC Johnson, has created a holiday line of themed candles, with scents called "holiday memories" and "baking with grandma." Ziploc bags are available with snowflake and penguin graphics, and even Coffee-mate has gotten into the act, introducing eggnog and pumpkin-spice-flavored coffee creamers.

Part of the enthusiasm for holiday products is that they are a cheap way to dress up a home for the season. For many consumers unwilling to invest in more expensive items like cloth napkins from Crate and Barrel, disposable items seem to be a sensible substitute.

"It's one of the few consumer product categories where the product itself is displayed in someone's home," said Steve Erb, the associate marketing director for Kimberly-Clark's Kleenex division. "It's a low-cost way for people to add to their holiday decor." Viva, the paper goods company owned by Kimberly-Clark, offers holiday placemats adorned with snowflakes and colorful Christmas tree ornaments, as well as holiday-themed paper towels and Kleenex, which is packaged in a glittery silver oval-shaped container.

Most holiday products do not require elaborate advertising campaigns to sell at a brisk pace. Kimberly-Clark limited its promotion to in-store displays and retailer ads, often grouping holiday paper products in the same display to tempt consumers to buy the entire line of paper napkins, Kleenex, paper towels and placemats.

The company also counts on spontaneous purchasing decisions to sell products.

"Impulse shopping around the holidays is very big, especially when it comes to entertaining," said Jim Matheson, the associate marketing director for Viva. (Another plus for marketers is that giving a product a holiday theme can move it from its usual place in the store to the high-traffic aisle dedicated to seasonal items.)

After testing flavors like peppermint mocha, gingerbread and eggnog in 2004, Coffee-mate introduced coffee creamer in a pumpkin-spice flavor this year. The advertising campaign, created by McCann-Erickson in Los Angeles, included print ads in magazines like Southern Living, Cooking Light, Parents and Country Home. In one 15-second television commercial, a voiceover features a woman reading a fairy tale while an animated snowman and gingerbread man have a snowball fight in the background.

According to data from Coffee-mate, the new pumpkin-spice flavor is already third in popularity in the coffee creamer category, behind French vanilla and hazelnut.