Fayrefield Foods is trying to do for dairy what the Kinder egg did for confectionery with the launch of a kids yoghurt that comes with its own collectible toy.

The company, which owns the Collier’s Cheddar brand, has secured the marketing rights to a Hello Kitty-branded yoghurt targeted at young girls and a yoghurt with adventure game character Gormiti for boys. Both come in split pots containing low-fat strawberry yoghurt in the top half and a toy in the bottom half.

The yoghurts are produced in the Czech Republic and supplied by Czech company Dairy4Fun. They went into Morrisons last week and launch into Asda this weekend (rsp 79p).

Fayrefield Foods sales director Dan Harper said he believed the yoghurts would increase loyalty in the UK yoghurt fixture and persuade consumers to be less promotions-driven in their purchases. “They are aimed at driving premium growth in the fixture through the collectability aspect of the toys,” he added.

Fayrefield was already working on further character-licensed dairy products in the UK and had already secured licences through Dairy4Fun, Harper said, although he would not be drawn on details. There would be additional yoghurt flavours to strawberry in the range, he added.

Although character licensing was already well established in yoghurts - including Winnie the Pooh yoghurts from Ubley - Fayrefield’s yoghurts were the only ones to include a toy in the product at the moment, Harper claimed.

He added parents did not need to be concerned about the toys presenting a choking hazard as the toy was in a separate container to the yoghurt.

In the 1990s, Onken offered a collectable toy with its Frufoo kids yoghurts, but pulled them as the toys were too expensive to produce.

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