What is the best way to manage add-on products in Magento?

Question

I have an Magento-based ecommerce store and I want to have product add-ons (e.g. chocolates) that customers can add to their orders.

• Add-on products should not be visible in the regular catalog.
• My products either will have add-on products or not (i.e. I'm not doing different combinations of add-ons for different customers)
• If I add a new add-on product, it should show on every product that has add-ons enabled

What is the best way in Magento to create add-on products? Are there any modules that will work well for this.

Answer 1

Some solutions I can think of:

I

• Create all your add-on products as normal products.
• For each product that has add-on, add the add-on products to cross-sell or related-products of the product.
• Set the visibility attribute on 'Catalogus' and don't add them to any categories.

II

• (Create all your add-on products as normal products.)
• Make grouped products of your product and any add-ons you want to add.
• Set the add-on products on 'Don't visible individually' and probably the original products also.
• Add the grouped products to the category structure.