The re­tire­ment of the his­toric Crix tin in April was not an easy de­ci­sion for Bermudez Bis­cuit Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed to make. But ac­cord­ing to Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er Ke­van Ma­haraj, it was nec­es­sary.

“It wasn’t tak­en light­ly,” Ma­haraj said.

He said tak­ing the tin off gro­cery shelves for good was some­thing they were con­sid­er­ing for ap­prox­i­mate­ly two years but it was on­ly fi­nalised re­cent­ly.

“Part of the rea­son be­ing the re­cent sup­ply chain con­straints and in­crease in ship­ping cost due to the pan­dem­ic,” he said.

Ma­haraj said the re­tire­ment was al­so guid­ed by con­sumer in­sights as their needs evolved and they want­ed crack­ers that were eas­i­er to car­ry and store.

But even with the com­pa­ny’s re­search, peo­ple seemed dis­ap­point­ed about the de­ci­sion and took to so­cial me­dia.

One per­son tweet­ed: “Did Crix even ask us if we are okay with this?” An­oth­er said: “My chil­dren will nev­er un­der­stand beat­ing an emp­ty Crix tin while singing coal pot.”

Ma­haraj said they have stock of the com­ments. He re­vealed that he too re­mem­bers us­ing the Crix tin as a wick­et when he and his broth­ers would play crick­et.

“My mom wasn’t hap­py about that be­cause you could imag­ine the noise,” he joked.

But he de­scribed the tin as an in­te­gral part of the coun­try that dat­ed back to pre-war days.

The Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er ex­plained that the Crix tin start­ed in the for­mat of an oil drum in the 1930s and evolved in­to a small­er tin, a re­cy­cled cook­ing oil tin, in the 1950s. Ma­haraj said af­ter that the com­pa­ny start­ed man­u­fac­tur­ing the tins on its com­pound up un­til four years ago when they start­ed im­port­ing from Chi­na.

“The ac­tu­al tin plant was age­ing and the cost of main­te­nance was go­ing up,” he said.

And while all the us­es and mem­o­ries are rea­sons why peo­ple would be hurt by the re­tire­ment of the tin, there was one group who may al­so be fi­nan­cial­ly im­pact­ed.

Those who por­tray the blue dev­il char­ac­ters dur­ing car­ni­val, they use the Crix tin as their in­stru­ment.

One per­son tweet­ed: “This af­fects me di­rect­ly. As a car­ni­val char­ac­ter d blue dev­il, this what we beat our rhythm on.”

While an­oth­er called on Crix lovers to unite and talk to the com­pa­ny: “Ap­proach Bermudez to have the tins re­leased ear­ly in the Car­ni­val sea­son for a lim­it­ed time. In­stead of the tra­di­tion­al red la­belling, Bermudez could go blue. The Blue Dev­ils and the Crix tin are much-loved tra­di­tions.”

Ma­haraj said all the com­ments were ap­pre­ci­at­ed and have served as a cat­a­lyst for new ideas on how the brand can de­vel­op mov­ing for­ward.

“The tin has re­tired but it’s not strange to hear peo­ple come out of re­tire­ment for pe­ri­ods in time, so I could put that on the ta­ble,” he said.