After hearing about the custom-printed M&Ms that Panic had at Macworld, I started searching around on the internet to find out where they got them. Of course, my first instinct was to check the official M&Ms website, but the only custom printing they seemed to have was 2 lines of tiny text, with lots of bizarre rules about what words you can and can’t use. Eventually I figured out that it’s the “Business” section that lets you print custom images, which stands to reason, considering that outputting a 1-bit bitmap image from Photoshop is clearly a task that requires a staff of at least 15 people.
But at any rate, before I figured out where they were hiding the cool M&Ms, I did a bit of googling and turned up tons of companies that offer custom-printed candy & mint tins in all shapes and sizes. Here’s a good example. There are some pretty great concepts in there, and it got me to thinking, “Damn! If I was some big-time Hollywood drug dealer, I would totally package my stuff in tins like this & print great slogans on there like ‘The World is Yours’ or ‘Choose Life’ and so on.” Unfortunately, I’m not currently a big-time Hollywood drug dealer, so I wasn’t able to get started on this plan right away.
Then today, I was reading this great blog about packaging design and I came across the following article about how Hershey’s IceBreakers brand was trying to market these awesome breath mint “pac” things that look like little bags of drugs, but then they had to recall them because they looked too much like little bags of drugs.
HAHAHA