The Bomb Pop Update utilized customization that UGC games like Roblox allow, and it brought a memorable experience that enhanced gamers’ play experience rather than disrupting it. In presenting the program as an update, we fit right in with the culture of gaming where publishers and developers release updates, seasons, and chapters in order to reinvigorate player interest and keep the play experience. Instead of building a game and spending thousands of dollars to drive players to that experience, we met the players where they are and gave them a fun experience where they could play with our brand.

Traditionally, Bomb Pop sales peak during Independence Day (July 4th US holiday) due to its red, white, and blue colors. To get tweens to remember our name all year, we needed to extend past the summer months. August is back-to-school month for most of America, leaving behind summer and heading into fall. We leaned into this moment in order to extend summer and drive sales after peak seasonality.

Bomb Pop is one of the most popular ice pops in the USA. People know the red, white, and blue colors and iconic rocket shape, but have some trouble recalling the name. With other ice pops on the market, we needed to drive awareness with tweens so they remember the Bomb Pop name.

Tweens have “ad blindness,” so we knew traditional advertising wouldn’t work on this audience. To make them see us, we needed to not only show up where they were but add to their experience rather than advertise to them. With this in mind, we landed on Roblox as the right environment — an immersive platform with widespread popularity among tweens.

We partnered with developer Moonrock to naturally integrate Bomb Pops into Restaurant Tycoon 2 in Roblox. The immersive brand experience gave tween gamers what they wanted — an in-game update to sell new items. The Bomb Pop Update let tweens serve up eight different pops on their menus, and 80+ custom Bomb Pop items they could use to express their creativity as they built their virtual restaurants and homes.

We needed to feel organic to a game tweens already love, we looked to developer Moonrock to help us create The Bomb Pop Update. Advertising wouldn’t appeal to this audience, so teams worked closely to implement an update in the game that would be additive to the tweens’ experience within Restaurant Tycoon 2.

For two weeks, our update let Restaurant Tycoon 2 restaurant owners serve up new items — eight types of virtual Bomb Pops — to their customers to earn limited-edition gear to upgrade their restaurants, turning Restaurant Tycoon 2 into a red, white, and blue bonanza.

This included developing in-game mechanics for serving the Bomb Pops, designing reward items for players, and ensuring a consistent Bomb Pop experience that enhanced gameplay. We seeded the integration on platforms tweens frequent, YouTube and TikTok, with gaming influencers and trailers, previewing the update and building excitement ahead of the official launch.

The two-week activation saw over 1.7MM total plays, and users sold over 48.6MM Bomb Pops — more than double their top-selling in-game item, the cheeseburger — making it the most-sold food item ever on Roblox. With an average of 29 minutes, time spent was 133% beyond Roblox branded-experience benchmarks.

The update garnered nearly 600k hours of playtime and gave players a new way to interact with Bomb Pop. Gamers didn’t just serve Bomb Pops — they started a restaurant revolution, using limited-edition items to transform their restaurants into everything from a gaming lounge to a beach club.

Even more significantly, sales in the real world were up with an immediate 20% increase and saw brand awareness lift (double the benchmark on TikTok/YouTube) during this time. By giving gamers exactly what they wanted in a game they loved, we proved that the virtual world can drive epic real-world business results.

To create the update, the agency and Moonrock teams worked closely in order to organically integrate Bomb Pop into Restaurant Tycoon 2. Together, we set out to update the game so restaurant owners could sell eight different pops. In addition, we created 80+ limited-edition Bomb Pop items that gamers could use to update their restaurant and homes.

Just as we’d settled on Roblox to reach our tween target, Roblox introduced new advertising guidelines that restricted advertising to kids on the platform. In response, we worked closely with Moonrock and Roblox to have our plan vetted and implemented age-gating for the experience that would allow us to proceed. In addition, we used those same gating capabilities to launch our Bomb Pop Update in the US. At the same time, international players experienced an ice pop update with generic ice pops in place of our iconic Bomb Pop shape.