Cavalcade of Awesome

If you read this blog you know I love both movies and promotional food stuffs like new soda flavors and candies. I love it even more when they are combined.

Here are some candies, pastries, etc that were re-branded to promote a movie. I’m going to exclude the Star Wars saga from this article because, honestly, I could do a series of articles on Star Wars and food branding.  Images are from my own Flickr stream unless otherwise noted.  See all images BIGGER by clicking on them.

King Kong Hostess pastries – Back in 2005, Hostess did a big promotion for Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. They added banana to several of their products. In the pics you can see Banana Twinkies as well as Banana Walnut mini muffins. Interestingly enough, Twinkies’ original flavor was, in fact, banana.

(Via Jason Liebig)
Hulk Sour Lime Life-Savers – A Hulk branded Sour Lime flavor promoting the 2003 Ang Lee Hulk movie. I don’t actually remember these at all, I just saw the wrapper pop up on my buddy Jason Liebig’s Flickr stream. Jason states that it may have been a Canadian only product.  I like this much better than I liked Ang Lee’s movie, and I haven’t even tried these.

Hostess Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pies – From 1991. This was sort of a dual promotion. The packaging used artwork from the cartoon, but it was released around the time of the second live-action movie. You can even see a movie promotion on the packaging.  Matt from X-Entertainment did a great write up of this product.  The pies were green and filled with vanilla pudding.  There were four package designs each featuring a different Ninja Turtle.

(Via Jason Liebig)
Hostess Hulk Cakes – From 2008 to promote the Incredible Hulk reboot with Edward Norton.  These were a Scary Cakes promotion for Halloween that featured green frosting and sprinkles on top.  Hostess also added the Hulk to their regular cup cakes, donuts and Twinkies products, but left the actual cakes unchanged. There was also an Incredible Hulk branded Air Heads candy.

Shrek Twinkies – I think Hostess did this for a few of the Shrek movies, but this particular box is for the last Shrek movie, Forever After. Hostess colored the creme filling green.  Gotta love a promotion that makes the product look like it’s gone rancid.

Hi-C Ecto Cooler – I know, I know, I’m really pushing it with this one. Technically, this promotion is for the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. BUT, that cartoon was based on the live-action movie. Regardless, this flavor has become legendary on its own and I felt it had to be included. Matt from X-Entertainment, again, did a great writeup on Ecto Cooler called the Ecto Cooler Bible. Following Matt’s lead I too searched and found the rebranded Ecto Cooler flavor Shoutin’ Orange Tangergreen and then wrote about it in my Ecto Cooler Redux article.  Surprisingly this flavor stuck around until the early 2000s.

Indiana Jones Snickers and M&Ms – In 2008 M&Ms and Snickers had a big promotion for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. M&Ms put Indy all over their packaging and even released a new flavor, Mint Crisp. Snickers released a new flavor also, Snickers Adventure Bar. It featured “coconut and exotic spices”.  It was a little strange, but overall it didn’t taste bad.

Transformers Snickers and M&Ms – For the second Transformers movie M&Ms had the robots all over their packaging.  There were 7 different M&Ms packages with different robots. See Optimus Prime here and Star Scream here. M&Ms even released a brand new flavor called Strawberried Peanut Butter (which is awesome, btw) that featured “The Twins”, M&M versions of Mudflap and Skids. Snickers promoted Transformers 2 with a Nougabot Bar. It was essentially a Snickers bar with yellow colored nougat.

Twilight candy hearts and gum – The candy hearts were a promotion for the first Twilight movie in 2008. There were three boxes, the picture above is box 1. Box 2 had Edward on it and Box 3 had Bella. The Eclipse gum promotion was for last year’s Twilight Eclipse (get it?).  I’ve spoken about Twilight several times on this blog, see my review of the first movie here.  I review New Moon here and I watch Eclipse here.

This entry was posted on May 12, 2011 at 12:49 pm and is filed under advertising, Ghostbusters, movies, pop culture, Twilight with tags advertising, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, movies, pop culture, Transformers, Twilight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.