It’s Monday, I’m Nithya Sudhir. I collect words, chase patterns, and write about whatever makes me curious.
The format flip: Why we love products that change shape
When I say shampoo, what do you picture?
A liquid. A bottle. Something you flip open, squeeze out, lather up.
Except now, imagine a bar. Like soap.
Interesting, isn’t it?
The rise of shape-shifted everyday products
Products are shape shifting. And it’s not just shampoo.
Today, there are tooth-not-paste tablets, detergent sheets, spray moisturisers, mouthwash tabs, sunscreen sticks and much more!
Every aisle in the store is slowly morphing into a shelf of strange little shapes. But why do these new forms instantly pull our attention?
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One of the reasons brands reinvent old formats is simple: the planet. For example, the UK throws away 520 million shampoo bottles every year.
Knowing that, shampoo-bars make sense. Right?
Others reinvent because old formats are becoming stale, overused or simply losing relevance.
Think of compact powders replacing bulky liquid detergents, or stick serums replacing dropper bottles. Categories evolve when formats feel outdated, and they should.
But, what does a new shape do to the brain?
What actually happens in our brain when a familiar product shows up in an unfamiliar form?
Apparently, when we spot something that’s changed its usual shape, the brain perks up — almost like a tiny alert going off: “Oh wait… what’s that?”
Novelty triggers increased activity in the hippocampus and reward circuits, nudging us to pay closer attention.
And it’s called the Novelty-Encoding Hypothesis.
Back in 1995, two psychologists, Endel Tulving and Neal Kroll, ran a simple experiment.
They handed people long lists of words. Some of these worlds, they’d seen before, some completely new. And then they took away the lists and asked them to recall the words.
And something interesting happened: even though familiar words should have been easier to retrieve, the new words were the ones people remembered best.
What Tulving and Kroll found with words happens with products too.
If we’ve been using something the same way forever, our brain stops noticing it.
When the form suddenly shifts, when it looks or feels different, the brain treats it like a small discovery.
Different enough to notice, familiar enough to trust
When brands think of reinventing, how different should they think? Experts say don’t reinvent the wheel. That makes us not care so much.
Designer Raymond Loewy, who designed the Air Force One logo, the Coca-Cola bottle, the Shell Oil logo and the US Postal Service logo, says in order to design for the future, brands need MAYA: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.
“The adult public's taste is not necessarily ready to accept the logical solutions to their requirements if the solution implies too vast a departure from what they have been conditioned into accepting as the norm." — Raymond Loewy
MAYA is basically the newest version of a thing that still feels like the thing. The products need to land in that sweet spot between “ooh, cool” and “okay, I get this.”
Toothpaste you can chew.
Globally, around 1.5 billion toothpaste tubes are thrown away each year; in the United Kingdom alone, 300 million go to landfill, and each tube can take centuries to break down.
Huppy offers toothpaste in the form of chewable tablets instead of traditional paste in a tube.
Packaging is designed to be plastic-free, refillable tins, and compostable refills — different from plastic tubes that fill up landfills.
Rated 4.9 out of 5 based on 2,462 reviews.
Personally, I love their branding — the cute and bright colors, their flavours, and how transparent they are about their ingredients.
Huppy leverages the Novelty Effect by marketing the new shape and new experience. No tube, no paste. Just chew a tablet. This especially gives early-adopters a tangible reason to swap from the old format.
What brands can learn from Huppy
Huppy shows that the easiest way to create fresh excitement isn’t changing the formula, it’s changing the format.
In addition to that, when something looks intentionally designed, clean lines, neat shapes, little details that feel “engineered”, people assume it works better. Even if the formula inside is the same. That’s the Effort Heuristic.
Sometimes, all consumers want are clearer design signals that say: “We thought this through for you.”
Maybe the real joy of these format flips is that they open the door to even stranger ideas. Dish-soap bombs, Protein paper, Juice pearls… who knows what’s next?
How's the depth of today's edition?
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See you next week,
Nithya
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