Want Some Gum?…..

CHEW MY RUBBER BUM……COMICS!

I just had to do this considering how I am always trying to to package my art in some novel way suggesting candy and a visual chew. They are the size of a Double Bubble or Bazooka Joe and the comics page is one half of 8.5 x 11 in. To encourage the opening of this novelty (so many people like to keep my work in tact unopened which is understandable but then they are not enjoying the chew) I did not want to glue the sides of the wrapper to keep it closed so the idea of using the rubber band fits in well with the concept.

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.

Keep Foil Wrapper

Eat-Less - 2010 - silkscreened and formed - 10 x 2.7 x .8 in - edition of 12

     This is an empty calorie bar. On the back it says that there is absolutely nothing in this package, and there isn't! So often I make stuff with such valuable and choice material inside, but nobody wants to open the package for fear of missing out on its collectable value, like leaving a toy or action figure in the mint package. So in this case, as much as I actually wanted to have a comic book inside, I thought, why bother... the wrapper is enough. That's all there is. The visual gag is long lasting and it does actually go deeper than that. 

     These, I've been making since 1999 and is one of my earliest novelty items. It also happens to be number 23 of an ongoing series of books that I have called the Acid Man Society.

     At this time I was thinking about different ways of disguising a book and different ways of packaging my art. I was wondering , "where are some unlikely types of packaging where you may find a book inside but at the some time keeping the form of the package in line with a book format". Through previous issues of Acid Man I was already familiar with making tiny books and because the cost of making them had always been an issue, if I was able to make a book with with one 8.5 x 11 in sheet of paper, then all the better.  I also wanted to have a book in color which costs even more. I was thinking about gum wrappers ( I have a collection) I was looking at my "breath" doodles (I have a collection) - they were already small and narrow, plus they had the added hint of freshening your visual breath.   Oh wow, a Visual Chew! 

   

     These are the size of an actual stick of gum and to top it all off there is a white powder that gets all over you! Just like the real stuff.  On the edge of the wrapper is says: Keep foil wrapper to ensure collectable value. I really wanted people to open them up, not expecting them to put it all back together over and over again after showing people, but to keep all the components safe and sound and then at one point it can be reassembled carefully for it's collectable value. I've given some to people not even knowing there is a book inside and they just save them, thinking its just an old stick of gum. But I have that in another product of mine.  Later.

     Oh, You can go to Doodle Babel to get a taste of what these breath drawings are like or you can go to the Nakfactorium store online to order yours today! 

Kamels

     I love caramels so much that I started to make my own. But of course this was only an excuse to make a candy wrapper for them. At first I was going to call them Nakamels.  I devised a flat long wrapper design to house a single 2 x 4 x 3/16th of an inch piece of caramel. I wrapped a few this way, but then I started to think more upscale and cryptic, ancient and Egyptian. I had already had the Kamels lettering on this first design for no particular reason except that I always come up with options while designing something and even with this first design I obviously did not decide which name to use or I just wanted to misspell caramel so that I could use the letter K from my Nak name.

     So with the name Kamels came a whole rethinking of the package. They would be individual squares of caramel which is equivelent to 2 regular pieces that you would get with Reisens or Wherthiers. I weighed a number of these squares and on average they happened to weigh about 13 grams each - a nice cryptic number. 

     Of course with the word Kamel you get the association of a camel (I'm imagining some commercials already) and also the association of the middle east or Egypt, hence the pyramid. Now this is interesting, in Egyptian metaphysics, KA is the spirit. If you look at the ingredients on my wrapper, you will see that the last ingredient is........ 

But then I often  will get the reaction, "Ewww......what is Ka?". 

    

     It's a lot of work hand cutting the caramel, the wax paper, and tin foil to size and wrapping all the pieces. Oh but the joy, the joy of giving these away to friends is immense. And they are awsome caramels or should I say Kamels™

This is a wrapper that would house 4 individual squares.