Real LIVE Wacky Packages

1974 art for ScreamSicle - From the book Wacky Packages New New New published in 2010 by Abrams  

I grew up buying Wacky Packages trading card gum stickers and I putting them all over my notebooks and dresser. ( I wish I didn't) but I still love them to this day. There have been hundreds of them made over the years and there has even been a resurgence of interest in them with the Topps company putting out collections and books and new stickers!

So, I almost couldn't believe it when I saw Nestle's daringly humorous move to temporarily change their best selling candy bar packaging for a novelty halloween theme. These are real live Wacky Packages!

I must say that the Kit Kat design here is rather lame. The Kat is pretty cool but none of it says Halloween like the other three do. Below are some of the other candy bar related wacky package stickers Topps put out. But like I said there are hundreds of these little designed paintings of all sorts of products. In another post I'll put up some more of my favorites.

 1974

 1974

 1979

 1979

2006

D-N-Aid to the Rescue!

I was remembering the old packages of Lik-m-aid from when I was a kid, you know that colored, flavored sugar powder candy in an envelope pack. There have also been many variations like Pixy Stix and then I remember these plastic fruits with the powder inside, and then there were the packages that had a candy stick in a separate attached pouch so that you didn't have to get your finger all sticky, plus with the stick you got more candy.....more sugar. What those guys didn't do was make the stick into a candy finger.

I was also thinking about Kool-aid, sugar, artificial colors and the transformative powers of these items on our body and minds, though perhaps only temporary. But what if we take it a step further and rearrange a few deeper physiological and psychological attributes of our human form? Soon we will have the option to choose the body and mind of our children through the manipulation of their DNAs.

When I was creating the design and art for my D-N-Aid packages I had a specific era of design in my memory bank. It was vague and I have seen the packages here and there since but I did not want to look at them when it came time to design mine, I just wanted to work from my vague  recollections. This way, I would have something similar (hopefully) without copying or I could get something very unique if my memories were totally out the window. I had no memories of what the backs looked liked though so I just made something which was pleasing to me.

I wanted to do a rainbow of flavors which gave me the fun assignment of drawing different characters for the packages. Yeah there should have been at least one more woman. The doctor was going to be a woman but it just wasn't happening on the drawing board. In fact I actually started this project a year ago. I had the package design all done at that time, and I started drawing one of the charicatures, but It just wasn't the right touch I wanted, so I abandoned the project for the time until this past October, and somehow, all the characters just rolled off my mouse. (yes these are computer aided drawings done in adobe illustrator using the pencil tool and a mouse)

Here are a couple packs of the real stuff that I had when I was a kid as well as the Fun Dip candy that I remembered seeing but was already an adult to want any. Then below that I've included some older era Lik-m-aid package graphics. Enjoy!