Every week, Nickelodeon awards one NFL player the Nickelodeon Valuable Player or NVP award. Winners are selected by votes from fans based on the impact they had in the previous week’s game. The honor comes with a trophy featuring the orange Nickelodeon blimp and four jars of the classic green slime. Honorees have been known to dump the slime over coaches’ and teammates’ heads, have the ooze poured on themselves or simply pose for a photo with the slime hat and plastic “drips” also included in the prize package.
Normally, when a call comes in for a custom foam insert, the customer’s priority is security or organization of the enclosed items. However, when the team from Nickelodeon first called Custom Case Group to create a custom interior for the trophy, slime jars and plastic decals, they only had one request: purple. The box for the award was bright orange with striking green and yellow accents. A bland interior would ruin the fun aesthetic.
Custom Case Group reached out to one of its supplier partners, Foam Industries, to deliver the solution. Its foam production includes surface printing, and any color or pattern could be designed on top of the inserts. Custom Case Group Sales Representative Ty Morgan suggested that, instead of printing plain purple, the foam could be designed to match the pattern on the bottom of the box. Nickelodeon jumped on the idea, and the team began working on building a prototype.
The layout for the foam cutouts was provided by Nickelodeon, but a few tweaks needed to be made before the final design was ready to be produced. Morgan noted that there were no finger notches in the foam around each object to allow players to grip the items and take them out of the case. He sent a model with finger notches added, which the Nickelodeon team noted should be bigger due to the size of NFL players’ fingers. After a few rounds of feedback on this and other design features, the group landed on the perfect cushion solution. Nickelodeon happily ordered enough to ship NVP trophies for the rest of the season.
This job represented a unique project for Custom Case Group. Most jobs focus on providing ultra-durable protection against any shippingconditions. However, with the new cushion solution, the trophy and slime will easily make the trip through first class mail, and military-grade protection was not necessary. Product safety is still important, of course. The foam is built to prevent jostling and damage, just as it is in any Custom Case Group product, but no other foam insert has sported a printed purple pattern. Nickelodeon’s focus on fashion as well as function was a fun challenge that allowed Custom Case Group to think outside of the box and be the NVP for a new customer.
