Chupa Chups just turned a packaging update into a Lucha Libre showdown

Can you remember trying to unwrap a Chupa Chups lolly as a kid? It's bloody frustrating. The wrapper won't tear and stay stubbornly closed. And you resort to using your teeth, sometimes painfully catching the edge of the packaging on your gums. And then, finally, after a small but humiliating battle, you finally get to the sugar inside. BBH knows this scenario only too well. As does Chupa Chups. Instead of pretending otherwise, they've decided to commemorate the struggle in a new campaign.

BBH London has launched 'No More Wrestling', an OOH campaign that announces the brand's new easy-to-open packaging. And it leans hard into the absurdity of the ridiculous effort required to unwrap a lollipop. As such, there are three oversized posters and a trio of Lucha Libre masks. Each one is made from the actual wrapper of a Chupa Chups flavour: Apple, Strawberry, and Cola.

The masks were designed in collaboration with Arturo Bucio, a Mexican craftsman who has spent over two decades crafting authentic Lucha Libre masks for wrestling icons, including Rey Misterio, Mil Mascaras, and Mystico. You'll be glad to know, this ain't no stock-photo Lucha wrestler situation. We're talking proper masks, built with the same love, but instead constructed from candy wrapper graphics.

Each design takes inspiration from all the details of its respective flavour, so every mask has its own character. The headline typography follows suit, and is lifted from the aesthetic of classic Mexican wrestling fly posters. Together, it gives the campaign a handmade, chaotic energy that feels right for Chupa Chups.

Creative Directors Stu Royall and Phil Holbrook called it an opportunity to "do something banging". And Global Marketing Manager Martin Hofling adds, "People have been wrestling with Chupa Chups wrappers for decades. But now that the fight is over, we wanted to mark the occasion with a set of posters that are as fun, distinctive, and iconic as the brand itself."

The campaign runs across the UK and Spain out of home and across socials. Media was planned by Wavemaker and Build Hollywood sourced flyposting locations where they should put up wrestling posters – as though they were advertising a real fight somewhere. It's as if someone said, "We need our ads to look like they were pasted up outside a boxing gym in 1987".

I love this sort of approach. When brands aren't afraid to confront the elephant in the room and overhaul its products in the process. In Chupa Chups case, it was all about wrestling to open its lollipops. The packaging is better now. The campaign is memorable. And rather brilliantly, Arturo Bucio got the absurd chance to make wrestling masks out of lollipop wrappers.