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?

Flavor Codes

One of my favorite all time graphic designs has got to be the Old Dutch chip bag and box packaging trim you see here. Just the trim - it's simple, bold and effective, and very festive. Old Dutch chips were the potato chip brand in my youth and today they still carry on with the best potato chip on the market. There are only three ingredients in their regular potato chip: potatoes, oil, salt. And this is the bag we are seeing here on this wall on Pacific Avenue here in Winnipeg. I don't know how long or who painted this graphic but I only noticed it this past winter. I went back last week for another photo but there has been some new activity on the wall.

Can you guess what Old Dutch product this top blue 'code" is from? How about the many other potato chip flavors Old Dutch offers. Here are BBQ, Onion & Garlic, Sour Crean & Onion and All Dressed.

2-Color POP Box

I have a few old candy boxes and these pictured below are a couple of my favorites. I absolutely love the bygone era of simple graphics in the use of basic one or two-color design.   

Turkish Delight Box 5.5 x 9.75 x 3.25 inches

A turkish delight wrapper today. In a way it's really not that much different than the old.

Hershey's Almond box 5 x 7.5 x 2.25 inches

This is a very well crafted box and probably sturdier than need be for it's rather smallish size. The inner box also has printing on the sides that mirror what is on the outside box cover and the bottom of the box has a caution label that want the store owner to make sure to take care of their chocolate bars.

Super Freeway

This is an amazing eye catching ad I pulled out of a 1953 magazine. I could imagine in it's day, a huge billboard along side of the new super freeway.  I love the wonky hand lettering.   

FUN GUM TIME!

     It really is modeling clay and not gum. Though I suppose you can do this with gum but it would get dangerously sticky. But as it is now with the modeling clay, it's still dangerous because kids will just automatically eat this out of the package if they are not told because it really looks like gum. Not just the package but the clay as well. That's what gave me the idea for this.

     I was at a craft store with a friend and they wanted to see all the clay colors the store had to offer. When I saw the pink clay, a huge slab of bubble gum came to mind. (yeah, candy is always on the brain) "I should do up a package for some fake gum and put the clay in it. (Any excuse to do some graphic design.) But then I thought right away that it would be kind of dumb because what was the point of using something useful for an unuseful purpose? I would be wasting the clay for the sake of creating graphics and packaging for a fake gum. So, how can I turn this into an actual product? I wondered. Well, it already is modeling clay, So let's keep it as modeling clay but as a double bubble portion, to just fiddle with, and chew on with your fingers!

     It was super duper fun coming up with all the different inserts. Then of course, silk screening the pop display boxes and printing up a few 'what if' shipping boxes. What if I had a truck load of these. Those boxes you see below are unfortunately empty. I'll make just one box at a time. That's 60 pieces to cut out of the clay and wrap individually by hand. Yeah, they cost way more than 25 cents at this rate, but it's fun. It's something to give out or put in my Nakfactorium Gumball machine. And believe it or not, this photo below is not photoshopped. 

Here are some of the activity inserts. 1 of 30 different activities comes with each piece. There are also some fun facts as well.

Caramilk Secret Evolution

A NEW TASTE IN A NEW FORM

     Fry's and Cadbury's were two huge chocolate makers each with a long history before they merged in 1919. The Canadian based  Fry-Cadbury of Montreal first sold the Caramilk bar in 1968 and remains to this day as a Canadian-only item. Currently the bars are produced at one location, the company's Gladstone Chocolate Factory in Toronto.

  

 

    Last year I posted a visual evolution of the Aero chocolate bar wrapper with the main body comprised from the wrappers in my collection and with finding a few of the earliest designs on the internet. For my Caramilk evolution I have done the same, in filling out a few design gaps between this wrapper shown above and below, of what I believe to be the first wrapper, to where my run of wrappers start at 0108 00 04.

  

In 1969 Cadbury merged with Schweppes up until its demerger in 2008.

     There is a pretty big visual jump or perhaps lump in the designs with these two above and below wrappers, so it's possible that I am missing one or two, but I would not be surprised if this is it. From the time period of 1976 of the wrapper above (as shown by the Olympic symbol from the Canada Olympic games which were held in Montreal in 1976) and the obvious 1970's design motif of the wrapper below, there was not a lot of time in between these to have had multiple designs. I think its great how the pyramid shaped took on a hill-like appearance and the horizon lines took suit in that 70's vibra-tone. Kinda even looks like a geographic slice of the ground as if there is gooey lava inside. It also mirrors the profile shape of a section of the bar. Also notice the major shift back to Cadbury's older original logo design which they were using in their other chocolate bars. We will start to see this logo evolve as well! 

     Keep your eye on the swirl and look how many other changes you will find...

 

 

o108 00 04

     Between the above and below designs there were 7 other wrapper changes as shown by printing serial number at the top of the wrapper. But you can see that all those changes must have been promotion/contest offers like the one below with no real change to the actual lettering style or logo design. Even when there is an ingredient change or a change in the order of the ingredients, you will see a change in the serial number. 

o108 00 12 

o108 00 13

o108 00 14

o108 00 15

o108 00 16

o108 00 19

6-1470-178-002

6-1470-178-002

     The above design is current to date though there was a 003 design with a large key for a 250,000 dollar contest held last year, but a recently acquired bar had this 002 design.

     In February 2010 Kraft won a takeover bid to gain control of Cadbury for 18.9 billion dollars of which they had to borrow 11.5 billion.