Why Products With Disastrous Usability Survive For Ages?

 To be successful in business you need to have a damn good product or service.

Recently while shopping - it was a week prior to Halloween and we were raising candy begging kids preparedness - I bumped into a huge bag of Carambar.

Memories from my childhood came up. Usually we got these at the local swimming pool in summer, or in winter when ice skating.

I immediately remembered how this mixture of caramel was sticking between the teeth. Always a bit afraid that it would never get off. It was so damn sticky but exceptionally delicious.

We bought the bag - it was a blend of different flavours. I could not remember that Carambar would come in flavours different than caramel. Maybe I just can not remember any more, or they've been adding in efforts of innovation initiatives some other flavours to the portfolio.

Halloween came, and unfortunately no kids were ringing the bell at the door. This led me to test this awesome product on my own.

I opened the bag and started to pick some of the bars and started to open them. - Immediately I had another very strong memory. The fact that you could never remove the packaging in one piece. Even worse, the fact that there were always - no matter how sophisticated your strategy of unpacking was - little pieces of the packaging material left sticking to the very sticky Carambar. 

Yes - in terms of unpacking usability, one of the worst products ever seen. And this for decades!

Now, since innovation is new flavours instead of making the original even better, I tested all versions in the bag.

They are all delicious. The innovation initiative obviously has been optimised for the right endpoints.

But packaging, ... total disaster!

I hope they did the testing of the packaging paper in terms of toxicity well, since I do not see kids being patient enough and having the right surgical skills to unpack a Carambar correctly getting access to clean and pure Carambar. 

Doing a bit of research. Carambar was invented in 1954. As it seems the product has been around eversince. The brand changed ownership which is nothing but uncommon for candy products.

One thing which is specially mentioned is a fact about the packaging. It's not the usability which sticks to consumers minds but another feature. - A special feature and French tradition is the packaging, which is printed on the inside with jokes or wisdom to amuse the consumer.

So, as it seems to consumers, the tricky unpacking is off set with some humour and jokes. - I just never got the paper staying in one piece for me to read the jokes.

Reading about importance of usability, there are numerous studies that proof that poor usability results in customers not buying from you.

Nevertheless, there are poor usability products surviving for decades.

What is usability? - It's when you don't get frustrated about the product you are interacting with?

Now in terms of Carambar? - The struggle in unpacking might increase the desire for the delicious sweet. And the sweet flavoured sticky Carambar is tasting so good that all the pain in getting to the point of tasting it is forgotten. - Is this the success of a product surviving already almost three quarters of a century?

What do you think? - With seven decades of success, would it be time to invest into packaging innovation? Or would this even destroy the authenticity and originality of the product?