It’s red, its go’ey, its laced with colored grit… and those are just the selling points. Call it bizarre, but H.J. Heinz is banking on the fantasy factor to sell its new, developed-in-Canada kiddie ketchup Sparky.

Taking cues from the popularity of teenage superher’es like the Power Rangers and Sailor Moon, Heinz marketers are trying to reach the under-eight set with appeals to self-actualization ­ by consuming a weird-looking elixir, they too can attain magic powers. A summer tv campaign, developed by DDB Canada, features the Sparky character, a go’ey, morphing, beast-in-a-bottle who can assume genie-like powers by eating the ‘sparkles’ in his ketchup. He helps a young french fry in the 30-sec. spot do the same.

The question is: can he also convince young Canadians to eat something that, to jaded adult eyes, looks yucky?

Rosanna Totino, brand manager, ketchup for Heinz Canada, says she thinks the ‘gross’ reaction is an adult one. ‘When kids see it they don’t see ‘gross,’ they see a character. (In focus groups) they often play with the bottle. It’s almost like a toy with ketchup in it.’

She may have something there. Sparky is actually a child’s brainchild, straight from the imagination of a Heinz executive’s young daughter. According to the company, the little girl wondered aloud one day what would happen if she added cooking sparkles to ketchup, her mom was intrigued and an idea was born.

Ketchup is a $85 million business in Canada, according to ACNielsen, with sluggish year-to-year growth rates for volume consumption (about 3% a year). Heinz saw an opportunity to grow the market with a niche product aimed at kids, and Sparky was the result.

‘Our research shows that Sparky will be an incremental purchase,’ says Totino. ‘Mom will buy the regular ketchup for herself and Sparky for her children, so [we] hope to get more money out of the same shopper.’

Holding what it estimates to be 73 per-cent of the market, Heinz marketers had pretty much achieved what they could in terms of grabbing market share from main ketchup competitor President’s Choice. Add to that the popularity of non-traditional toppings like salsa and the rationale for a radically-new product becomes clear.

But buyer skepticism at the distributor level is also a challenge for Sparky marketers, so they’ve developed a ‘surveillance video’ of kids’ reactions to the product and its accompanying ads. Heinz shows it to grocery chain buyers to help them get past appearances.

The strategy seems to be working. Totino says even non-grocery retailers Wal Mart and Toys ‘R’ Us, are thinking about stocking Sparky as a complement to their existing product lines.

‘The fascinating thing about kids is that they know the whole thing is imagined ­ they just don’t care,’ says Catherine Frank, group account director at DDB Canada. ‘At a certain age their little brains go, ‘Well, if you’re going to insist that it’s not real, okay, but that d’esn’t matter.”

Sparky is on the shelves in most markets this week and the tv campaign by DDB Canada is slated for nationwide rollout on June 2, with targeted viewing times in the after-school, lunchtime, and Saturday morning zones. ddb also handled media.

In addition to tv, Heinz is using a store-level promotion with Crayola to supply a free six-pack of crayons with every purchase and take advantage of the ‘wholesome and fun’ associations that crayon products evoke. The crayon package features an image of Sparky calling ‘Let’s colour together,’ which in turn is connected to a direct marketing campaign. Kids are encouraged, via telemarketing and pos displays, to enter a coloring contest. Winners get to spend a ‘Fun Day’ with a life-size Sparky mascot featuring music and numerous events.

Since advertising directly to children is illegal in Quebec, Heinz has engaged a children’s theatre group, La Groupe Jeunesse, to visit 4,000 Quebec schools and put on a short skit featuring the Sparky mascot.

Sparky was developed in Canada for the Canadian market. There are no plans at present to release it in the u.s.