Time To Blossom, Hershey

This package is way overdue for a redesign, or, go back to the old one. It probably changed to this ugly thing when Hershey took over this confection from Lowney. The photo of the chocolate looks awful even though they used the same image as the previous package. It’s a bad colour reproduction. And the yellow colour of the box looks weird too as if it’s a miss-tint of yellow, more on the green side than orange which unfortunately does not show in this photo below.

I don’t know how the sales are of these things. They must be alright because they are still making them. I love them (even though hey are terribly sweet) and have been eating them for over 40 years. I am really glad they, in this day and age where food stuff packaging is all plastic or foil-sealed, that they have remained wrapped in the old fashioned chocolate bar foil, and are in a box that you don’t have to rip open.

https://youtu.be/xgawtIMv39s

Here is a link to a great commercial for Cherry Blossom from the 70’s

This is what it feels like to eat these things!

OH! I would be So Happy!

I was sitting at a coffee shop before work and In the corner of my eye I saw the chocolate bar stand and the side of a box of Oh Henry chocolate bars. But I couldn’t believe my eyes as I saw the words SO Happy instead of Oh Henry. Brilliant I thought, what a great idea for them to do that. But when I actually looked, I saw it really ‘only’ said Oh Henry. 

And this got me thinking. It’s a great Idea. Now to sell them on it. (Hershey). Let’s make this happen!

So this is what I came up with by mimicking the current Oh Henry wrapper design.

Smarties Evolution - Packaging

In the late eighties Nestle bought Rowntree. I suppose, as a transitional package, Nestle didn't want to put their logo on the front. (The same thing happened with the Kit Kat wrappers.) In the scanned boxes below you will see various changes they made over the years, from their Nestle logo design to even the grams they offered, taking more and more away. Scaries came out a six years ago and they have been offering it every Halloween time since. The bottom one is the most recent as of Fall 2018 and is made up of 3 separate compartments, each with their own opening.

Black Bart's Black Licorice

Large Box with 12 big cigar-sized pieces.

I can's seem to make candy without designing and making a package to go along with it.

Often, the idea to make something starts off as an idea for a christmas present for 

someone in particular.

 Bottom of box with Black Bart's head you can cut out. But who is gonna do that?

Aside from the large cigar sized pieces I made a variety of sizes and put them into small 

cellophane bags and designed a different package to put them in. The construction of 

which was based on an envelope.

Roca Poetry Vaisius Chew

I could not find any peppermint Roca in the city last year for a birthday gift so I had to make my own. And of course I can't make candy for gifting without designing and making my own packaging for it. I like how the single page packaging wrap works for the various shaped pieces, then a single sticker to hold it all closed and tight.
 

 My gals name is Jacque, hence the name Roca Jack.

 I know a friend named Andrew Vaisius 

who grew whiskers on his faceius.

                                                                  RP

My friend Andrew is a much better poet than I will ever be. You can chew on his word morsels for a long time. They kinda stick to your teeth though.

This is a little novelty packaging idea I came up with, perfect for a single shot of poetry when you need your next fix. No need to rush through a whole volume. Just chew on this for awhile. Then when you are ready, you can have another. Rot your mind, not your teeth.

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!

Chewey Goodness

The taste left by this very chewy caramel candy made me feel a bit different. I couldn't find any information on the candy company. I don't know if they have been around for awhile, but the wrapper looks somewhat modern, though it could be up to 12-14 years old at the same time. Maybe that's why the candy tasted strange. Or maybe it was just a foreign flavor that I was not used too. Or even just the fact that the candy idea is odd to begin with. Who would have given this candy the production go ahead?

Thumb In My Brain

     I don't even know what is going on here! This thing is so silly. I was into making artist trading cards at the time and this is an offshoot of some of the other cards I was making, though those were not cards either. So this was some years ago and I made about ten of them.

     Under neath the fingerprint layer is red satin that you can just barely see through the slit. I guess the idea of having just cut yourself and licking up the blood. For another product, I can just imagine having a soft candy finger with red liquid candy inside. The candy package comes with a pin or a little blade (could be plastic) that you would poke or slice into the candy finger and suck out the blood. I guess this is not too far removed from my next item we have here today... ZOMBIE POPS.  These do not exist three dimensionally.... only in your mind. Squishy black cherry eyeball with cherry licorice muscle. Mmmmm  

        

Pollicks™ ACTION Candy

Counter display with Pops - 2010

One of a first set of three prototypes - 2008 - acrylic on wood block pop & ink jet wrapper 

FINE ART YOU CAN TRUST

     I try to make art that has a bit of  twist to it. Even though it is possible to make real lollipops, they just don't last. Sure they are yummy for a while, but these little sculptural novelties will never go sour.

     The image way at top is how they ended up for my Visual Chew show in 2010.  I made a batch of 17 acrylic pops on wood. The wrappers are silk screened with a cut out plastic window and the boxes were silk screened as well. The blue images above is one of a set 3 of the first prototypes that I made.

     On the back of those wrappers I had a little bio I wrote of Jackson Pollock. I thought that not everyone would know who he is and hence not totally get the concept and slight play on the name. He is one of my favorite artists and this is what I wrote: Jackson Pollock(1912-1956) He was an American expressionist painter who had a controlled and systematic method to his dribbling and splattering of paint onto huge canvases laid on the floor. These paintings broke the mold of representational art and in his use of new techniques, demonstrated the artist's physical involvement with the work.

     For the silk screened wrappers I had to forgo the write up thinking that the type would be pretty tiny and I was unsure of my silk screening skills. ( Yes I printed these!)

 

     Below are some of the wrapper design ideas I was toying with after those prototypes and after I decided that I wanted to silk screen them. With the earlier prototype wrapper I had printed them off my ink let. I was not about to try and reproduce all those colors and shading.

 

     I knew that I always wanted to use the old popsicle wrapper design for these Pollicks™ and they would not have been complete without the collectable wrappers to trade in for exciting prizes. My screen for printing could only hold 4 wrappers so I only designed 4 backs.

 

 

     The idea for Pollicks goes back to 2006 and you can see how my original conception of the lettering has remained pretty much in tact. The first wrapper idea in the sketch is fully realized below. I really do miss the multi-colored lettering in the design. 

Display from Visual Chew show at Martha Street, 2010. Photo by RonD.

     This past summer my friend Ken Gregory was into making candy for a project of his and he offered up his help in realizing an edible multi-flavored PoP!  Thanks Ken.  The middle though, is a hard candy like the outside dribbled part. One day I will figure out how to make a nice Nougat for these little canvases and to fully realize what I envisioned this edible version to be.