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!
