Wednesday, October 11, 2017

#012 "Hostess Munchies" - 8"x8" acrylic on wood panel


Hostess, the Munchies and Ketchup chips.

The Hostess company (not to be confused with the US Hostess brand of snack cakes) was the leading chip company in Canada up until the early 90's. Throughout the 80's their mascots "The Munchies" were on TV commercials constantly and on Hostess merchandise as well... anything from stuffed animals to suspenders (which my wife had as a kid and still wishes she had). However, in the early 90's American chip companies started moving in and specialty upscale brands also took hold and knocked Hostess off the #1 perch. The brand was replaced by "Lay's" in a rebranding move but the Hostess name still survives on a few snacks such as "Hickory Sticks"... another Canadian exclusive.

The Hostess company is also credited with inventing the ketchup chip... a chip flavour rarely seen outside of Canada. Seems Canadians are the only ones that enjoy the strong taste and red fingers associated with them. As strange as ketchup may seem to some it is not even close to some of the bizarre chip flavours Hostess tried out in the 70's and 80's. The fabled orange, grape and cherry chips were a bomb and were discontinued after a few months.

(in case you are wondering about the messy linework... that is how bad the line work on the old packaging was, actually even worse, I cleaned it up a bit... ha)

See some terrible 80's commercials here:https://www.google.ca/search?q=hostess+munchies+commercials&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=LD-SWOCgNojajwSZrJLABA#q=hostess+munchies+commercials&tbm=vid


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