With a simple but effective premise of celebrity interviews over bites of increasingly spicy hot wings, Hot Ones consistently trends on YouTube as one of the hottest (yeah, we’re funny) web series. Imagine our excitement when the Heatonist, the supplier of the show’s infamous hot sauces, approached us to design unique challenge coins celebrating their first batch of The Last Dab Reduxx, the latest take on the spiciest sauce on the show.
The long and short of the matter is, we were ecstatic.
As the first subject of “The Coin Check,” our new blog series covering the designs of our favorite challenge coins, Heatonist’s commission topped our list, if only because so many of our own staff are fans of the show. In this article, we’ll be discussing the background of our client, the design choices that went into their challenge coin, and how you might be able to score one for yourself.
Heatonist Sauces and the Hot Ones Show
First, a little background on our client, Heatonist. The business was founded by “Hot Sauce Sommelier” Noah Chaimberg in Brooklyn, New York City, where it prides itself as a “Purveyor of Fine Hot Sauces.” Since 2013, the business has operated both a retail location and an online store where customers can purchase a variety of hot sauces including flavors from difficult to find sauce makers and the official hot sauces featured on Hot Ones. Online shoppers can subscribe to a Hot Ones subscription box which sends a selection of sauces every month along with occasional bonus swag.
On Hot Ones, celebrity guests ranging from Neil Degrasse Tyson to Wiz Khalifa are interviewed by the show’s host, Sean Evans, about their industry experience while trying to get through 10 exponentially spicier hot wings slathered in Heatonist hot sauces. The show is as much about the struggle to finish the wings as guest’s answers. Chaimberg is a common feature on the show’s channel as their “Hot Sauce Sommelier,” often dispensing sauce knowledge regarding the ingredients in the sauces and how to best enjoy them.
At Signature Coins, we were approached to develop a challenge coin that could visually match the heat and intensity of Heatonist’s latest rendition of the Hot One’s spiciest official hot sauce: The Last Dab Reduxx. We quickly learned that we had our work cut out for us. To put it in perspective, the products at the Heatonist are scaled 1 to 10. The Last Dab Reduxx is an 11 on that scale.
Designing the Last Dab Reduxx Coin
Designing a Hot Ones coin was an exciting prospect for our art team, many of whom are fans of the show. We had a lot of creative liberty creating the design, but we really wanted a coin that could capture the intensity of the show’s hottest sauce while commemorating the first batch in a meaningful manner. Heatonist initially approached us to produce 2500 challenge coins, one for each of the 2500 bottles originally intended to ship out with the flavor’s first batch. However, due to overwhelming popularity, the first batch ended up growing to 3000 bottles, and we ended up needing to create 3000 challenge coins.
Shape, Plating and Colors
The shape we went for with Heatonist’s commission from the start was a traditional circular coin. After deciding on a shape, the coin was stamped (or die-struck) from brass with artwork centered on both sides and text around the outside of the coin’s faces. If it sounds simple, that’s because it is, but the devil’s in the details.
We used a brand-specific enamel red color fill in the center with the logo at the front of the coin. For the plating, our client initially requested high polished gold plating. Over the course of our revisions, we also provided the option for using an antique gold plating. We recommended antique gold because it gave a classic look to the coin, and provided both improved contrast and clarity for the designs. Antique gold plating can also lend a somewhat “smokey” look, and this is a coin for a hot sauce company after all. We suggested against the original high polish gold plating because it could obscure details and clarity on the design we made for the back of the coin.
Sizing and the Front of the Coin
Chaimberg chose to go with a 1.75” coin size, which is also our most popular coin size. While most coins are 3mm thick, we bumped this one up by 0.5mm (17%) to give it a bit more heft. The final coin is 3.5mm thick and plated entirely in Antique Gold. Both sides of the coin feature different designs, with the front face hosting the iconic Hot Ones show logo in gold and raised at the center of the coin over a red background.
The text wrapped around the front face of the coin is meant to reference a few background elements about the hot sauce flavor. “Heatonist X Puckerbutt” was added to allude to the collaboration between Heatonist and Puckerbutt Pepper Company, the producer and supplier of the pepper used to give the Last Dab Reduxx its kick. Meanwhile, “The Last Dab Reduxx” names the sauce flavor this coin is commissioned after, with “Batch No. 1” indicating the coin honors the first retail batch of the flavor. Finally, the last bit of text reading, “Aug 2018,” highlights the month of the hot sauce’s release. Additionally, only subscribers of the Hot Ones subscription box during the month of August 2018 had a chance to receive one of these challenge coins along with a bottle of the Last Dab Reduxx in their box.
Back of the Coin and Unique Customizations
Meanwhile, for the back of the coin, the main star isn’t the celebrity guests featured on Hot Ones or the show’s host; the design focuses on the world’s hottest pepper, known only as “Pepper X.” According to the company, Pepper X is the world’s newest, spiciest pepper, and the pepper design you see on the back is actually based on an actual photograph of Pepper X provided to us by Chaimberg. We added a flaming background to the engraved design for reasons that might be immediately obvious to anyone who tries the Last Dab Reduxx.
Sequential numbering was added to every coin accompanying each of the 3000 bottles of hot sauce. When the challenge coins were initially delivered to the client, we had them bagged in sequential order in sets of 50. This helps our clients ship out their challenge coins to recipients according to the sequential order of purchase. For example, the bearer of the number one coin possibly holds the first bottle of the first batch, and the holder of coin 3000 might have their hands on the last bottle of the first batch. Sequentially numbering each coin in a commission, one of our many customization options, makes every coin unique to its recipient.
The text featured on the coin’s back face is also meant to reference a few background details about the sauce flavor. Specifically, “Pepper X” is the name of the pepper produced by Puckerbutt Pepper Company that gives the Last Dab Reduxx its signature spice. Meanwhile, “Stay Spicy” was a personal touch Chaimberg asked us to add to the back of the coin.
Redesigns and Challenges in Making this Challenge Coin
Before settling on the final design, we created seven different art proofs with varying revisions and changes to give a visual of how they’d look on the final product. The seventh design was ultimately the one we finally manufactured and shipped out as a physical product, and we’re happy to hear that people are responding positively to our coin.
Perhaps the biggest challenge we had with making this coin was the tight timeline. We were approached with the order in late July 2018 and needed to have it ready in time for the release of the August 2018 Hot Ones subscription box. To put it into context, it usually takes up to 14 days to deliver an order of completed coins after deciding on a final design. This timeline also doesn’t take into account how much time might’ve been needed to actually package the coins along with their bottles of sauce.
However, we’re proud to say we managed to create a finalized design from scratch after seven design revisions over the course of a single day, then have it delivered to the client two days early. Overall, we’re pretty proud of how this challenge coin came out, and we were happy to discover a lot of people talking about the coins they got from their August subscription boxes, with some of the more enterprising members of the community even selling their coins for top dollar on Ebay.
***Disclaimer: No, you cannot bribe, threaten or ask to get a coin directly from us. The only coins in existence are available through Hot Ones or scalpers. If you really want one, let Hot Ones, Heatonist or Chaimberg know, and maybe we’ll make a second series for a future release.***
Here’s a gallery of our changes from concept to coin:
