Wild Thingz
Project
Wild Thingz
How&How team up with Wild Thingz (previously Just Wholefoods) to build a category-defining rebel sweetie brand from scratch.
62% of parents are reluctant to give their children sweets. This isn’t surprising when the big brands are a sh*t-filled amalgamation of sugar, E-numbers, animal gelatine, palm oil, Talcum powder, and more. Yes there are better-for-you sweets, but their blanding (did our pen slip?) is just about as joyless as having no sweets at all.
If only parents could treat (aka bribe) their kids guilt-free. If only kids could taste the rainbow without all that rubbish.
Enter Wild Thingz.
Published
Jan 2025
Agency
How&How
Create a sweets brand that parents wouldn’t feel bad about, and kids would go mad about.
How&How were approached by Wild Thingz (previously Just Wholefoods) with a mission: to create a sweets brand that parents wouldn’t feel bad about, and kids would go mad about.
Organic, plant-based sweets, with no artificials and half the sugar. The canvas was blank. This was a full brand build – from concept to launch and beyond. It also involved crafting the shape of the sweets themselves too. Even better!
The How&How team looked around the category. The world of organic is wholesome, white and hemp-y. Think smiling snakes in perfect blades of grass. Yet the ‘bad sweets’ are an explosion of bright colours, flashy logos and exciting in-pack games. They started asking: why does junk get to have all the fun?
The industry was calling out for a challenger. A category-defining brand that has the ingredients of a saint, but the energy–and shelf appeal–of a sinner.
The visual identity captures the unapologetic side of nature.
First up, the name: Wild Thingz. How&How wanted the brand and product names to say organic, but with a rebellious twist. This is a world where kids can be kids and parenting doesn’t always have to look perfect.
They gave the brand a voice and an opinion: rebels with an anti-artificial cause. The messaging calls out the category for containing so much crap. Think punk not junk.
The visual identity captures the unapologetic side of nature: a logo made out of thorns and bushes; a venus flytrap mascot with a mohawk inspired by grunge-y skater brands; a rock-and-roll typeface; and dark, brooding colours (no white or hemp in sight). Hell, they even created 3D worlds complete with overgrown forests, rusty shopping carts and abandoned buildings. How&How then developed the product SKUs and designed packaging, point-of-sale media, launch assets and the website.
“We’ve created a whole world of playful plant anarchy.
It’s not everyday that we get to work so closely with a client, who is happy to go for it and push our idea to the limit.
Honestly, it's been f-ing fun.”
— Priyjah Paramasivam, Design Director.
