Remember the barcode battles?

Remember the barcode battles?

I was where I have most of my good ideas (in the shower) this morning when, out of nowhere, I remembered Barcode Battler, a rudimentary handheld gaming system from the early 1990s that allowed gamers to use barcodes to create additional characters and power-ups.
 
The actual system itself wasn’t really that popular outside of its Japanese homeland, struggling against Nintendo’s Game Boy and Sega’s Game Gear, but could be seen to be a very early precursor to today’s QR codes and snap tags.
 
While modern-day marketers and brand owners are puzzling over how to maximize the interaction between consumers and product packaging, the Barcode Battler system actively encouraged users to take barcodes from everyday food, healthcare and cleaning products, and use them to add to their existing gaming experience. This captured the imagination of some in the 1990s’ gaming market, and were it not for the poor user-game interaction, bad graphics and lack of sound effects or control, may well have faired better against more-advanced rivals.
 
How to capture the imagination of today’s consumers, who are fed a constant stream of information and media, is a key question facing brands and retail chains, and is an area in which printed packaging can most definitely provide a solution as a physical link between consumers and the increasingly important and powerful digital world.
 
It’s one reason why European carton association Pro Carton is using “Packaging in a Digital World” as the theme for its next congress, running April 18-19 in Düsseldorf, Germany.
 

David Pittman

David Pittman

  • Former deputy editor