Pizza Hut just brought out my inner 8-year-old, served her up on a personal pan pizza, then promptly sliced her into quarters.

If you’re a bookworm Xennial like me (also known as a geriatric millennial or a baby GenXer), you probably remember a program called BOOK IT! If not, here’s a quick primer: Elementary-age students the country over would get big purple pins, and every time they read a book, they’d get a little star sticker to put on their pin. When the pin was filled up, they could present it to their local Hut and get a free personal pan pizza. It was a delicious way to celebrate reading (while also incorporating a fun promo keepsake in the form of the oversized BOOK IT! button).

It’s not a stretch to say I was VERY invested in this program as a kid. In fact, a few years ago, I actually found one of my old BOOK IT! pins in the back of a drawer at my dad’s house. It was still in pretty good condition for being (mumble, mumble) years old. Talk about lasting impressions!

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But that brings me to today. Tapping into the unending well of millennial nostalgia, Pizza Hut announced a new Camp BOOK IT! initiative, a summer reading program that’s an extension of the traditional school year reading program. Parents can register their children ages 4 to12 in the virtual camp, which runs from June through August. Throughout the summer, families will get fun reading recommendations and activities, as well as access to a digital dashboard to track their reading progress. Once the reading goal is reached, parents will receive an emailed certificate with a serialized code for a free one-topping personal pan pizza. (Email is nice, but I still miss the tangible sense of achievement from a big, ol’ button covered in stickers.)

“The BOOK IT! program was such an integral part of the heyday of Pizza Hut and the childhoods of those we’re reaching with our Newstalgia campaign,” Lindsay Morgan, chief marketing officer of Pizza Hut said in a press release. “It’s amazing to now be able to make reading fun for the next generation with great pizza, great books and engaging activities to fill their summer break, especially as uncertainties remain in the coming months.”

Now, here comes the part where the Hut tore out my still-beating (cheese-stuffed, deep-fried) heart. The pizza chain created some limited-edition, vintage-inspired BOOK IT! T-shirts, being sold for $10 plus tax while supplies last. Well, supplies, I’m sorry to say, did not last. My eager little one-click shopping fingers were not quick enough to snag one of these sweet tees before they sold out.

The limited-edition, vintage-inspired tee is sold out on Pizza Hut’s BOOK IT! e-commerce shop.

Still, it’s a great example of the power of nostalgia married with smart swag. We’ve seen countless examples over the last few years of brands capitalizing on these limited-edition merch drops – whether it’s a McNugget-shaped body pillow, a mac & cheese-covered hoodie or a branded beer mitten, people are willing to shell out their hard-earned cash to represent their favorite brands in cool, creative ways.

And I have to give Pizza Hut some credit for deploying nostalgia in a fun and heartwarming way – when their competitor Domino’s decided to choose violence, bringing back the unsettling, irritating and unnecessary ’80s icon the Noid.

Nobody wanted this. What's next? Clippy merch??? Leave the Noid in the graveyard of irritating mascots, please.https://t.co/ZO29zuSUfk

— Theresa Hegel (@TheresaHegel) April 26, 2021

For younger folks – or those with selective memory loss – the Noid was a bunny-suited antihero that appeared in Domino’s commercials and tried to prevent pizza deliveries. The Noid is appearing in new television commercials as well as the newest installment of the “Crash Bandicoot” mobile video game.

I think I’ll stick to pizza with a side of books, thanks. If you need me, I’ll be diligently refreshing the BOOK IT! shop site to see if they’ve restocked their tees yet.

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