Wacky Wednesdays – Martian Hats!

For today’s edition of Wacky Wednesdays, we’ll be going back to 1974 and the Wacky Packages Series 12 sticker, Martian Hats.

Based on Heide’s Mexican Hats candies, Martian Hats is another Wacky Packages sticker I have strong recollections of.   There’s just something about the composition and the alien with those pulpy UFO’s flying around – this one is pretty awesome.

Let’s take a closer look at the sticker:

Wacky Packages – Martian Hats – Series 12 1974

Due to my appreciation for the sticker, when I finally found an era-appropriate Heide Mexican Hats box, I was thrilled.   As a collector, I’d never seen one before, and there were no images of the correct style of box anywhere on the internet.  It was pretty great to track this one down:

Heide – Mexican Hats candy box – 1970

You’ll notice that the background of this actual Mexican Hats box is white, as opposed to the yellow used for the Martain Hats parody.  I have long-wondered about this.

My first thought is that I simply don’t have the correct box; that at some point after this white box was on shelves, a yellow version was produced.  As I highlighted here on the site yesterday, candy packaging is periodically tweaked and adjusted.  So a color change is the most likely possibility.

Another scenario is that the Wacky Packages artist made a choice to change the colors, perhaps to strengthen the look of the final sticker by making the background yellow.  But this seems unlikely based upon the fact that packaging colors and layouts were strictly adhered to with the parodies in Wacky Packages.  I can’t think of any examples of Wacky Packages with altered background colors as an artistic choice.

So, while I can’t be 100% sure that one exists – I do remain ever on the lookout for a 1970’s Mexican Hats “yellow box” version to add to my collection.

In the meantime, I used Photoshop to imagine how one might appear:

Heide – Mexican Hats candy box – color-altered yellow box version.

And that’s all I’ve got for today’s edition of Wacky Wednesdays.  See you next time!