The market is saturated with alcoholic beverages that concentrate their sales and products on a gimmick or theme. For Vermont’s Magic Hat Brewing Company, one glaring symbol and theme incorporated into the packaging of their brews stares out at you as you take a stroll down the beer coolers of the local grocery store. It’s the all-seeing eye, and while it may look like an isolated incident…upon further investigation, it seems that single eye symbolism and occult imagery is a recurring theme in some of the packaging designs used for the brewing company’s product line.
Below you will find a few observations:
Heart of Darkness: Heart of Darkness is a stout that leaves nothing to the imagination with its piercing single eye symbolism plastered on the labeling for this particular brew. Referred to as a ‘diabolically delicious stout,’ part of the description of the beer found on the company website reads: “filled with the howling of black dogs that haunt the long-forgotten shadows of the human soul.”
Night of the Living Dead Variety Pack: In the company’s Night of the Living Dead variety pack, advertisements boast ‘two newly summoned souls’ amidst dancing skeletons. One brew in the pack is called ‘Séance’ (which incorporates a hidden one-eyed owl) while the other is named ‘Deveiled,’ which is a play on words regarding the veils and skulls often associated with the Day of the Dead.
The Dream Machine: The eye found within the blue and lime green colorful explosion of Magic Hat’s ‘Dream Machine’ graphic stands out, and with reason…it represents a single eye symbolism that when coupled with the pyramid-like appearance of the ‘A’ in the word ‘Dream,’ creates a subtle all-seeing eye pyramid ensemble.
Other interesting designs used to market previous Magic Hat Brewing Company brews that are no longer available are found in a section of their website called ‘Reclusive Rarities.’ According to their site, these items have a chance of being reintroduced into the market in the future.
Bob’s 1st Ale – Referred to as their ‘flagship ale,’ this brew incorporates moon and star imagery with slight single eye symbolism, and distict-looking ‘Devil horns’ coming out of the ‘e’ in the world ‘ale.’
Hex – Of course, by the word and imagery, ‘Hex’ pays homage to witchcraft and has a kind of Halloween-like feel to the graphic interpretation of the amber ale.
Fat Angel – Under the guise of an ‘angelic’ brew, this pale ale shows a halo and wings in the forefront, but behind the word ‘fat,’ you will notice a demonic-looking pig character with two ‘Devil horns’ coming out of his head. The ‘A’ used to spell the word ‘angel’ also gives off the impression that it could represent a pentagram, and the squiggly tail-end of the letter ‘g’ in ‘angel’ resembles the same pointy tip as the Devil.
Howl – With a pair of creepy-looking eyes positioned in a night sky, the language used to describe this winter seasonal brew includes words such as ‘cold,’ ‘dark,’ and ‘eyes burning holes in sunless shadows.’
Roxy Rolles – There is something slightly demonic-looking of the figure used to represent the imagery for this autumn seasonal brew.