Long-established brand icons such as Toblerone chocolate and Polo mints would be considered unacceptably innovative by marketers looking to launch them today and would be "either strangled at birth or sent back to the drawing board", according to a leading design consultancy.
While innovation was once seen as a vital tool in the consumer goods armoury, SiebertHead, one of the UK's biggest packaging design houses, believes that risk-averse marketers are now squeezing out creativity in the interests of short-term profitability.
"Every new product or pack concept is researched to death nowadays - and many great ideas are thrown out simply because a group of consumers is suspicious of anything that sounds new," said Satkar Gidda, SiebertHead's sales and marketing director.
"Conservatism among the buying public, twinned with a generation of marketing directors who won't take a chance on something that breaks new ground, is leading to supermarkets and car showrooms full of me-too products, line extensions and minor product tweaks."
Gidda believes that the notion of triangular chocolate - launched in 1908 - would today be considered too "difficult and too risky" as a proposition, as would a mint with a hole, introduced 40 years later.
Among the innovations dreamt up by SiebertHead in the past two years were Phileas Fogg snacks in pyramid packs.
"With this product we were told by the client that we were acting against the accepted category norms but we strongly believe that breaking new ground is what we are being paid for," Gidda said.
Clive Grinyer, director of design and innovation at the Design Council, sympathised with SiebertHead's view: "I don't for a moment believe that consumers themselves don't want new ideas and breakthroughs but I do feel frustrated by the general conservatism that is sweeping through British corporations.
"Decisions made solely by marketing departments and market research companies are by their very nature unlikely to set the world alight and it is short-sighted to base all new product decisions on them," he said.
The Chartered Institute of Marketing is conducting an online survey of innovation among 13,000 members. Early results from about 200 replies suggest that while 33 per cent of respondents believe that innovation "creates strategic competitive advantage", 42 per cent agree with the proposition that their own corporate culture is "the key constraint to innovation".
Mike Detsiny, the CIM's director of marketing and training, said: "There still seems a long way to go until the innovation process is deeply embedded in the culture of companies and its use still seems predominantly tactical."
Grinyer claims that despite the billions of pounds poured into research by the food and drink giants, "a quick look at the average supermarket will demonstrate that most packaging in this area is me-too and very unoriginal".
Coley Porter Bell, a marketing consultancy whose clients include Cadbury's, Kimberly-Clark and Nestle, believes research is due for a shake-up.
"Clients are under more financial pressure and the requirement is for profits this year, not two years down the track, which can mean they are reluctant to do more than tinker with tried and tested products," said Cheryl Giovannino, chief executive. "Our challenge is to provide clients with both an inspiration and a safety net and that includes backing our creative hunches with research that looks as much at what clients will want in the future as at what they have wanted in the past."