Although there are now many mystery toy brands available on the market, from the get-go, Zuru and Mini Brands have set the industry standard for trending toys and that influence puts the company in a fan-tastic place to change up their packaging to reflect the needs of the environment.
My initial concept was more of a set of four boxes within a larger outer box but I quickly moved on from this design because I felt it didn't encompass the experience of opening a real Mini Brands nor did it hold nearly as many minis. I kept pushing the idea and eventually I landed on the hexagonal exploding box where the pressure of the lid keeps the sides together.
This was my very first attempt at realizing some kind of die-cut in the physical plane so I struggled a bit with getting the sizes right. Since I was basically working out of my own imagination it took quite a few tries to get the ratio of the sides and bottom just right so the tension held everything together correctly.
Once a solid die-cut was assembled and tested multiple times I moved on to finalizing the graphics for the labels and getting everything printed and assembled. This part was probably the least nerve-wracking since at this point everything had been made and remade at least 6 times.
After finally successfully assembling a regular white box and a "special edition" holographic box as well as their contents and tags it was time for promotional photos! I wanted the photos to have a party feel: bright colours and lighting with lots and lots of confetti to celebrate the new packaging!
My biggest hangup with my design for this was ensuring that the whole experience of opening a Mini Brands capsule was still there to be experienced even with the new eco-friendly packaging. I think the exploding box was indeed the best route I do think that swapping the bio plastic bags out for paper would be an even better trade since that makes clean-up one step: gather everything and put it in the recycling.
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