As Wicked waits to hit theaters on November 22, fans are grabbing up all the merch and collabs they can afford, sometimes decidedly picking a side with their color choice—pink for Glinda and green for Elphaba.
What is Wicked?
Do you remember the classic movie The Wizard of Oz? Well, in Wicked (which originated as a long-standing and hugely popular Broadway musical), Dorothy takes a back seat.
Wicked brings to the forefront the perspectives of the two witches: Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, Glinda the Good.
As Diep Tran for The New York Theatre Guide so aptly put it, Wicked is about female friendship, discrimination, and government corruption. The musical shows how these iconic characters (including the witches, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion) came to be.
Why are people so excited?
For many, seeing the Broadway musical is inaccessible, dictating the need for travel and expensive tickets.
Its movie adaptation is not only more financially accessible but also exciting for fans to see how a film adaptation (that promises to be a visual and audio spectacle) can bring the story to life in ways that are not possible on stage.
Plus, it has an absolutely star-studded cast in actress and singer Cynthia Erivo and pop star Ariana Grande.
Wicked merch takes over
Universal Pictures is obviously angling for Wicked to be a cash cow, releasing a staggering number and variety of collaborations, often playing up the pink and green representing the main characters.
Among the collaborations are Stanley cups, Squishmallows, candles, a hair brush, a LEGO set, men’s dress shoes, makeup, crocs, luggage, and even a special edition popcorn tub and drink tumbler, according to The Cut.
One of its more unique and affordable collabs is with baked-good-in-a-box giant Betty Crocker.
The sugar connoisseur now has a mix-to-reveal cake pop kit that shows up as green or pink when you mix the ingredients together.
How to hack the Wicked cake pops
Excited about the collaboration, some people are buying up several boxes of the cake mix in an effort to get the color they want. But some have been disappointed by their selection.
One woman bought four box mixes, and they all turned pink.
“I have a theory that they made the elphaba ones rarer to get since elphaba’s whole thing is that she is unique and there isnt anyone like her, so they made the majority glinda in the ratio,” a commenter said.
But this big-brain creator seemed to have figured out a simple hack to ensure you get the color you want every time.
“I have a hack where you can get the Elphaba cake pop 10/10, 100%,” Vivianne Mellon (@vivianne_mellon) says in a trending video with more than 60,000 views.
Mellon, who is in law school, explained that the FDA requires food items to be traceable based on where the item was made and the batch they were in. (You may have heard of things getting recalled based on a specific batch number.)
This is called a traceability lot code and can include several number and letter combinations indicating the manufacture location, company name, and grower according to the FDA.
Mellon noticed that the code atop the Betty Crocker boxes had the batch number followed by the letter K or N.
“If you want Elphaba, you’re gonna wanna look for K. If you want Glinda, you’re gonna want to go for N,” Mellon says.
Like the other creator, she found that the Elphaba boxes were less common, with there only being one box at her local Walmart.
And Mellon was able to prove her theory once she mixed up the cake pops and indeed got one green batter and one pink.
“Not so good at baking, but I am really good at reading labels. Use this power to your advantage,” Mellon concludes.
In a follow up comment, she added that she dug deeper into her hypothesis and found that the codes may be “swapped due to the batches being made by different factories.”
@vivianne_mellon #greenscreenvideo #wicked #wickedcakepop #elphaba #glinda ♬ original sound – Vivianne Mellon
Commenters react
“Your service doesn’t go unnoticed queen,” a top comment read.
“I can also assume that on the ingredients list they’d have to include what dyes are in each box cause people can have allergies and you could probably use that to tell,” a person said.
“This also works for all kinds of things. If you buy blind bags sometimes/ most of the time the barcode can tell you what’s inside,” another added.
The Daily Dot reached out to Mellon for comment via TikTok direct message and comment and to Betty Crocker via email.
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