Holidaze Hi-C Horror Collection - Series 3

We are only 11 days away from Halloween and, thanks to my hectic schedule, I won't be getting to half of what I was hoping to before the big day.  It sucks, because I really wanted to pack in as much as possible to make up for the season that Hurricane Sandy stole from us last year, but real life and responsibility has been asking too much to devote my time to the fun stuff.  Oh well!  I can't complain too much because, in the end, my life is progressing and, maybe next year, I'll be able to do things I couldn't dream of doing this year.  It's all part of the plan, I guess.  But anyway, I'm back on this fine Sunday with Series 3 of the Holidaze Hi-C Horror Collection!!  As the banner depicts, this set is dedicated to the original Universal Monsters and is entirely retro!  I've had this planned since I first kicked off the collection, so I hope you enjoy what will be the final set of the 2013 Halloween season.

 

I intentionally avoided being too creative with the flavor names because I wanted these to have a retro feel and, to be honest, they weren't all that creative back in the day.  They were either overly cheesy, or painfully obvious.  Both of which I tried to be with these boxes.  That's not to say they aren't good, because I wouldn't post them if I wasn't proud of my work, but in order to create the right vibe, I went a different route with a few of them.

 

While I kept the characters in their original black & white form, I wanted the retro Hi-C box to represent them and their flavor in color.

 

Probably one of the most underrated Universal Monsters, but perfect for this type of project.  The flavor name allowed me to use green and yellow on a juice box and, that alone, is enough to make this one of my favorites.

 

 I call him Frankenstein, but some of you may call him "Frankenstein's Monster."  You're probably right and I'll take that on the chin, but to avoid any drama or arguments, I paid tribute to the classic "Monster Mash" song and named this "Monster's Mash" to create a Fruit Punch drink.

 

I love this one.  For this one, I did get a little overly creative with the name, but it came to me and I ran with it.  Between the flavor name and the colors, another underrated Universal Monster can't be missed.  How ironic.

 

This was the first Universal Monsters box I designed and, in all honesty, it's probably not the best.  It gets the job done and depicts Dracula and his love for blood well enough, but I could have done better.  I was just getting the ball rolling and wanted to use the most famous monster of them all to kick things off.  I'd drink it.

 

There's just something about purple, white, and black that works perfectly for a Mummy drink.  I don't know why, but I love the way this looks much more than I love the flavor name.  But it rhymed and that works enough for me.

 

Does a Wolfman drink water like a dog does from a bowl?  I have no idea, but I'm going to say yes.  He must be thirsty after all that howling, so why not sip some Wolfman Water and give yourself some flavor to soothe that sore throat.  See how much logic I have to put behind this to justify my names?

 

This one is my favorite.  The Bride of Frankenstein is far from my favorite Universal character, but "Something Blue" has been waiting to see the light of day since I first envisioned the juice box and it came out just as I imagined.  If you don't understand the reference, they claim every bride should have "Something borrowed, something blue, something old, and something new."  See the correlation?  Now we have a blueberry flavored Hi-C juice box to celebrate every and all Weddings.  If this were real, I'd expect every bride to walk down the aisle while sipping "Something Blue."

Thanks for reading (especially since I've become a ghost) and continuing to celebrate the season with me.  I wish I could get more out of it, but the next 11 days will probably be just as busy as the last.  I don't even have a costume or any ideas in mind :(  Hopefully you're all having a much more eventful October than my 2nd half has been.  If you have any stories or pictures to share and enhance the season, tweet me @HolidazeBlog.  I'll read them while I pretend to work :)

Hi-C Horror Collection - Series TWO

When I decided to kill time and enhance the Halloween season by substituting products with creativity, I never expected that the Hi-C Horror Collection would gain so much attention via Social Media.  While I love when anything on the site gains traction, my intention is always to add to our collective Halloween experience.  Thanks to Strange Kids Club, John at Freddy in Space / FEARnet, and WES CRAVEN (!) more people saw what Series 1 had to offer than I would have ever been able to reach on my own.  So, a huge thank you is owed to them, and anybody else who shared the boxes through Twitter, Instagram, on Social Media.  I always knew there would be a Series 2 but, with so many people loving the first set, I knew the pressure was on to bring it!  I used a lot of the most popular characters and films in Series 1, but I think Series 2 lives up to my first go-around.  In fact, I actually like this collection better!

First up, from Hatchet, I introduce you to Victor Crowley's "Swamp Cooler" Cherry Limeade.  The collest part about this box is the fact that it was named by Adam Green, the creator of Hatchet 1, 2, and 3.  I asked him if he had any ideas, and this was his suggestion.  I couldn't have named it better myself.  It's a great nod to Ecto-Cooler and stays true to the film.

Rosemary's Baby is one of the creepiest movies I've ever seen.  I still remember the first time I ever watched it.  It was dark and gloomy with all the lights out.  I knew I wanted to make one for this classic, and "Rosemary's Berry" just made sense.  Obviously, the box is based on the legendary cover.

"Saw Berry Swirl" was going to originally remain "Saw Berry," but I love the little red swirls on Jigsaw's Puppet and I knew I could incorporate that into the name.  I'm a big fan of Saw, and this was almost in the first set, but I wanted to save it for Series 2.

Leatherface is one of the most iconic horror characters in movie history and there was no doubt that I'd include him into the collection.  He was supposed to be in Series 1, but I illustrated him differently and didn't like it.  Originally, he was making a "sour face" to go along with his "Lemonface" flavor.  It just wasn't working and certainly didn't mesh well with his personality and reputation.  This box is much better, chainsawing through bloody lemons and all.

"Evil Red" was a pretty simple flavor name to come up with, but I think it works well.  My favorite part about this box is the way the blood drips from the star burst.  For as gory as that movie is, I wanted to do my best to add as much "red" as possible to signify that without straying too far away from being a kid's juice box.

I've never been a fan of Seed of Chucky, but I always loved the way he looked.  When I though "appleseed," I knew this was the best correlation.  Then when I read that Hi-C once had a real Candy Apple flavor, it worked out even better.  I wish I could really try this one, because I think it'd be great.

I'll admit, "The Pining" is kinda corny.  It's not the greatest name in the world, but it does rhyme with The Shining and that was good enough for me.  Besides, I needed a pineapple flavor and this was the best route in terms of finding one.  Despite the debatable flavor name, I love the way this came out.

Jumping from modern boxes to retro, I wanted to design a retro box for Psycho because of the classic black & white feel.  "Psycho Peach" is a play on word, but associating it with the film is a bit of a stretch.  Use your imagination, I guess.  But, here's a teaser -- Series 3 (or 4, depending) is already in the works and will be completely retro.  It will also feature actual images, rather than cartoon drawings, because legends shouldn't be tampered with.  That's all I'm going to say.

If you've seen The Conjuring, you're familiar with Annabelle the demonic doll.  Well, the actual Annabelle, stored away in Connecticut, is a Raggedy Ann doll.  That's the one I wanted to use for the juice box.  The flavor name, "Strawberry Banannabelle," is one thing, but if you look closely, the doll from the film is transparently hiding behind the case and over the Hi-C logo.  Just a way to bring the best of both evil worlds together.

I'm not sure how a Cotton Candy flavored Hi-C would taste, but just "Drink IT!"  In all seriousness, it would probably be pretty good.  Regardless, I wanted to incorporate a classic circus treat into the mix for Pennywise.  Prior to that idea, it was just going to be Kiwi Strawberry.  I'm happy I changed my mind.  This is one of my favorite boxes, especially because of the confetti background.

Nothing but alliteration for the flavor name, but I knew exactly what I wanted for the box.  Because Hi-C juice boxes are already yellow, I had to make it look like the original Good Guy box that Chucky came in.  This is one of my favorite boxes to date and, if anything was ever made for the new Curse of Chucky film, this would be what I want.

I absolutely love this box for so many different reasons.  "Mogwai Melon" was going to only be melon, but when I thought about the movie itself, watermelon made sense.  We all know what happens when Mogwai's come in contact with water, and if you look behind Gizmo, a mysterious Gremlin has already been exposed.  So there's a lot going on with this box and there's actually more of a story than just a design, which is why this might be my favorite box in the collection.

If you'd like to share these boxes (which I'd appreciate!) here is an Instagram formatted image for you to use.  You can also check out www.Facebook.com/Holidazeblog for individually formatted images!

I hope you enjoyed Series 2 of the Holidaze Hi-C Horror Collection!!