This article is rated TV-MA for lifelike depictions of grisly tomato violence. Reader discretion is advised.
Heinz, the premier name in condiments, is getting festive for Spooky Season. The brand just launched “Tomato Blood,” a Halloween-themed ketchup featuring a special label with the horrifying new name. The bottles will be available in grocery stores and at HeinzHalloween.com, an online store that has several other Tomato Blood tie-in items available for purchase.
One of those items is a costume kit, which includes a 20 oz. bottle of the ketchup, a variety of makeup items, a rhinestone sheet, temporary tattoos, vampire teeth and “spooky eyelashes.” The whole thing comes in a full-color box that is, per the item listing, “stuffed with everything you need to create the perfect bloody Halloween costume.”
There are also eight different costumes available on the site, as well as a branded mask (the PPE kind, not the Michael Myers kind).
https://twitter.com/HeinzTweets/status/1447913282044579840?s=20
For Heinz/horror fans in California, there’s even a live component. Starting on Oct. 21, the brand is opening a pop-up Halloween store in Los Angeles featuring Halloween merch and a costume-creation area with “interactive drip stations” that, we’re guessing, apply a Tomato Blood spatter of some kind.
All three elements—the live pop-up, the retail bottles and the online items—are tied together with some fun social media tricks and treats designed to create online engagement. The pop-up will be livestreamed on all of Heinz’s social channels, while the Tomato Blood bottles and merch are printed with a call to action for fans to share their costumes using the #HeinzHalloween hashtag.
“There are few nights more magical than Halloween, and for years Heinz has helped people make memories by helping them transform into the spookiest versions of themselves,” Ashleigh Gibson, brand director for Heinz, said in a press release. “We believe that if you have Heinz, you have a costume! This Halloween is no different, and we’re looking forward to seeing the deliciously spooky looks people come up with using Heinz Tomato Blood ketchup.”
The whole thing is pretty fun. And it’s nice to see a brand going all-in and taking its Halloween-themed marketing a step further than some basic branded items. Still, for as scary as Tomato Blood is, it’s far from the most terrifying, maniacal, bone-chilling thing Heinz has ever done.
Nothing will top the sheer, Lovecraftian horror that is Kranch.
