Actually, I was surprised they took against the brand.The psychology of feeding the kids was good, and was the sort of approach I used over the years. Anyone who believes children do not influence what their parents buy is wrong!
I agree with that. However, the feedback from the parents who saw the brand was not good. The use of the skulls was not good. The linking of dinner with deadly, and healthy with horrible was not good.
Basically, any decent retailer knows they would would struggle to shift the product as it was.
To try and illustrate what I think would be the difference between what could turn out to be a good idea and what they actually did, imagine what a parent would think of 'Bats Blood Pasta' labelled as 'Ghoulish Grub' but with an equally heavy emphasis on the healthy aspect of the food. Brighter packaging and highlighting the lack of additives, low sugar, and such like would have been a big plus compared to the negative signals of the branding they chose.
The kids would still be enthralled by the name, but the parents would be reassured by the fact that they were buying something that was relatively good for their offspring, and not something that is going to make the little ones think it is OK to eat or drink something with a skull on it.