YOGO, Chupa Chups and Gravox are rapidly falling out of fashion with Aussie shoppers.
Sales data from market research firm Euromonitor reveals changing consumer habits are taking their toll on certain items — many of which may not have long left on supermarket shelves.
For example, bar soap sales have declined 18 per cent over the last five years, from $133.6 million in 2010 to $109.7 million in 2015, according to Euromonitor.
A recent survey found just 15 per cent of Australians aged 18-24 used bar soap in the previous month, compared with 30 per cent who used body wash or shower gel. According to a US survey, more than half of young Americans thought bar soap would be covered in germs.
And despite a surge in popularity which saw lollipop sales surge to $37 million in 2013, sales had plummeted by 17 per cent to $30.6 million two years later.
MasterChef-loving gravy snobs could be partly responsible for the fall of gravy cubes and powders, sales of which declined 20 per cent since 2010 to $41 million. After all, how hard is it to deglaze a pan?
And shocking as it may seem, people just aren’t perming their hair as much as they used to. Sales of perms and relaxants, always a niche market, have plummeted by one third to $200,000 in the same period.
Melbourne University online consumer psychologist Dr Brent Coker said millennials were just the latest generation whose change in behaviour and preferences were sending once-popular items out of business.
“A lot of these products just aren’t necessary anymore,” Dr Coker told the Herald Sun last month. “For example, younger people might not like using serviettes because they don’t like sitting down at the dinner table. It’s not a formal ritual anymore. It is grab food, have it on your lap and watch Netflix on your iPad.”
Another product headed for the scrap heap seems to be the battery toothbrush — the crippled cousin of the electric toothbrush — which saw sales decline 40 per cent from $53.1 million to $31.9 million between 2010 and 2015. In the same period, electric toothbrush sales increased 29 per cent to $37.8 million.
Deodorant cream, another niche item, apparently some sort of cross between a moisturiser and a roll-on deodorant, also seems doomed. Sales plummeted 58 per cent between 2010 and 2014 to $500,000, and Euromonitor recorded no data in 2015.
And despite almost 3.2 million Australians eating the likes of a Dairy Farmers Custard, Yoplait, YoGo or Fruche every month, sales of dairy desserts have fallen by 15 per cent since 2010, from $285.1 million to $243.4 million.
Sales of chilled noodles such as Japanese soba have halved in the same period, from $22 million to $10.9 million, while fromage frais and quark sales fell 13 per cent to $72.6 million.
It comes after Procter & Gamble warned that sales of its once-popular Downy fabric softener had fallen 26 per cent since 2007 due to millennials who simply “don’t know what the product is for”.
P&G doesn’t sell fabric softener in Australia, where the top two selling brands are Cuddly and Fluffy, both made by Colgate-Palmolive. Euromonitor data shows Aussies still love their fabric softener, with sales increasing 22 per cent since 2010 to $111.4 million.
In November, a leaked memo from McDonald’s revealed internal alarm that only one in five millennials had ever tasted a Big Mac. Michael James Delligatti, the creator of the iconic burger, passed away shortly after.
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