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.

 

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  

        

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! 

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.