The Boys.
How would you advertise an inappropriate, subversive product if you had to ship that ad to every home in America? To celebrate the third season of crowd-favorite TV show The Boys, Amazon tasked me with designing a shipper box campaign that captured the essence of the brand without offending every family that might receive the box. Being a fan of the IP myself, I imagined a world where The Boys (good guys) bought some products from Vought (bad guys) and defaced the hero-branded box in which their purchase was shipped.
For Amazon Prime Video.
A-Train.
Interestingly enough, A-Train wasn’t supposed to be featured on this OBA box. Our star character, Homelander, portrayed by Antony Starr, was the natural choice for the face of our marketing campaign. In an ironic twist of events, Mr. Starr embroiled himself in a bit of a drunken-punching-scandal-situation, which, if you know anything about the Homelander character, is all too fitting.
Perhaps it was a setup by the studio to garner some buzz? Perhaps it was The Fates having a little fun. Either way, we’ll never know, and I had to remake my art in the eleventh hour.
Being totally honest here… I think I like this A-Train box more than the original.
Don’t tell Homelander I said that.
Completed package design, prior to prep for flexo printing.
Homelander.
And, of course, as mentioned above, there was an original design featuring our favorite evil hero, Homelander. This design featured custom calligraphy by Yours Truly (me) and was translated into a variety of localizations for global rollout. Unfortunately, this box was cancelled in favor of the less controversial A-Train.
There was some chatter that the devil horns would have been “too edgy,” but let’s be honest: there is no such thing as “too edgy” when it comes to The Boys.