Trends & Artefacts: choppelganger edition
In this week’s edition of Trends & Artefacts, we round up the snackable trends, stats and insights from around the world, including:
Freeze-Dried Candy Turns Chewy Into Crispy
Fortnum & Mason Chocolate Bars Include Sheet Music
Red Berries Reshape Luxury Perfume
Explainer: Choppelganger
Barbie Doll Cakes Fade From Celebrations
Freeze-Dried Candy Turns Chewy Into Crispy
Small businesses are transforming Skittles, gummy worms and taffy using freeze-drying tech that removes 98% of moisture, creating puffed, crumbly versions that rack up 18 million TikTok views. North Coast Candy Co. reports 400% annual growth since 2020, with older customers returning for tooth-safe hard candy alternatives despite prices hitting $10 for four ounces. When nostalgic sweets need structural reinvention to stay relevant, does novelty extend a product's life or just admit the original no longer works?
Fortnum & Mason Chocolate Bars Include Sheet Music
Each of the 16 bars in the retailer's new collection is paired with an original piano composition designed to mirror its flavour profile, with musical notation revealed as the packaging is unwrapped. Composers Nathan Britton and Jasmine Meaden created scores that track the taste journey from first bite to final note, turning consumption into a multi-sensory ritual. When eating chocolate requires a soundtrack to feel complete, are we enhancing experience or admitting flavour alone no longer holds attention?
Red Berries Reshape Luxury Perfume
Raspberry and cherry notes are surging in fine fragrance, driven by TikTok visibility and a 363.6% year-over-year rise in raspberry perfume searches. Brands like YSL and Room 1015 are pairing red berries with oud, tonka and Sichuan pepper to create bold but refined accords that feel expressive rather than sweet. If fruit can only earn luxury status through complexity, does simplicity still have cultural value?
Explainer: Choppelganger
A mashup of "chopped" (unattractive) and "doppelgänger," the term describes someone who looks almost like you but noticeably worse. It started from a dyslexic misread on X in May 2025 and spread across TikTok by December, racking up millions of views as people roasted exes, friends, and themselves. When slang evolves this fast from accident to vocabulary staple, what does that tell us about how meaning gets made online?
Barbie Doll Cakes Fade From Celebrations
The buttercream-skirted cakes that dominated Latin American pastelerías in the 1990s and 2000s are now rarely requested, with quinceañera clients choosing tiered fondant designs instead. Wilton still sells doll picks and acknowledges nostalgia for the format, but modern bakers report the shift towards sophisticated three-tier cakes began around 2005. When generations stop wanting the cake that defined their childhood parties, does that signal evolving taste or just the death of maximalism?
