2012 Halloween Packaging

You’ve waited all year… It’s finally here! It’s the annual Cool & Collected rundown of the best Halloween packaging designs (I really need to come up with a shorter title!). For the past couple of years, I have given my totally opinionated take on the food and candy packaging that best captures the Halloween spirit, and it’s time to unveil my favorites for 2012.

Believe it or not, there are people out there that will drop hundreds of dollars on a vintage monster cereal box, so in determining the best packaging, my main criteria is whether or not the package might be a collectible of the future (i.e. brands and product mascots are good.) So, without further delay, let’s eat!

First up is the much-hyped and hard-to-find Candy Corn Oreos. I believe these were only available at Target stores, and sold out lightning fast. The package design is pretty dull, but if Nabisco never releases these again, collectors might scramble for the package since these cookies were so hard to find.

The package for Halloween Oreos is excellent! The blue and orange colors just ooze Halloween, and the faceless witches brewing a cauldron of orange creme filling is a fun and creative way to show off the product. This is one of my favorite package designs on store shelves.

The General Mills monster cereals have been recycling the same box art for a few years (Boooooo!), but I don’t remember seeing these Count Chocula Treats before. The monster cereal characters are highly collectible, and this box might find its way into collector’s stashes, but I would have liked to see more effort put into the art.

Pillsbury teamed up with Disney this year and while the packaging is okay, the mere fact that it features Mickey Mouse gives it an edge in the collectibility ranking. Disney collectors are rabid and will throw money at anything if it has mouse ears on it.

Rice Krispies put out my favorite packaging last year, and they recycled the characters on this year’s box, but the background and special recipe has been updated.

The back side of this year’s rice Krispies box has another M&M recipe tie-in, making this box attractive to cereal box collectors as well as M&M and Halloween collectors.

I love this packaging for the Rice Krispies Treats Mini Squares! Kellogg’s really seems to be putting all their Halloween efforts into the Rice Krispies line, and it is certainly paying off.

While General Mills seems to have forgotten about their monster cereals, they do have some great Halloween art on the Lucky Charms cereal and Treats boxes. While at the store this weekend, i noticed that several General Mills cereals are running a Hotel Transylvania tie-in, which makes them even more collectible, especially if that movie were to become a Halloween staple.

Ahhh, it doesn’t get much better than this when you’re talking about collectible Halloween packaging. Cap’n Crunch that turns milk green! The captain carved in a pumpkin while surrounded by a bunch of spooky Jack o’lanterns! Swirling green mist! It brings a tear to my eye. I was never able to track one of these boxes down last year, so when I saw this in mid-September, I snatched it off the shelf.

Want to make your own Cap’n Crunch Jack o’lantern? No problem.

Overall, there are some really fun Halloween package designs on the shelves this year. Tomorrow, I’ll have another post which covers the one product that gets into the Halloween season better than any other.