Categories: Articles

Wacky Packages

Do you remember Wacky Packages? I used to love Wacky Packages. I even had this old electric bass that I plastered with Wacky Packages in lieu of a professional paint job.
My nephew was juggling a handful of cards, they dropped to the floor and as I picked them up I saw that they were Wacky Packages. Joy! It had been years since I last saw them and, for all intense and purposes, I thought they had gone the way of Popeye Candy Cigarettes.
My nephew walked me through some of them – from Mean Cuisine, Frosted Snakes and Macaroni For Geese to Sludgsickle, Lice Cakes and Chimp Stick. The parody of mainstream brands may have shifted a little since I last played with them (hey, there are a lot more brands to make fun of), but the concept has not changed.
The power of this all?
I know many famous people get all up-in-arms when they are spoofed on Saturday Night Live. At the same time, I remember a golden rule that one of my old music Editors once told me: “the only bad press is an obituary.” That coupled with the fact that the joke doesn’t work unless everyone is familiar with what is being made fun of speaks volumes to what Wacky Packages reinforces as far as branding goes. My seven-year-old nephew gets the joke when Wacky Packages parodies York Peppermint Patties. The fact that the sticker says CRAM instead of SPAM sends him into hysterics. He’s a smart kid (he is my nephew after all), but from a marketing perspective, it’s not just Topps Entertainment who are making out when a kid shells out some shekels for these stickers. The brand that’s being parodied is also given the covenant spot of being acknowledged as some kind of super-brand. Wacky Packages making fun of them only further proves their brand awareness.
Here’s a new paradigm: is your brand Wacky Packages worthy? What would Wacky Packages do to your brand?
I’m taking suggestions as of now for what a Twist Image Wacky Packages card would say. Email them to me. The better ones will get something funky from me.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.