Sexy Packaging



A cover or packaging for a product uses overt sexual imagery (exactly how overt can depend on the product).

The product really could be anything: a movie, a game, even consumer goods. And it doesn't matter if the product actually involves sex or not. It could be covers for porn films, or it could be the sticker on a jar of peanut butter. What matters for this trope is the cover shows something sexy.

And the exact form doesn't matter, save for who is most likely to buy the product.

It can even overlap with Covers Always Lie if the product has a scenes like this in the cover, but not in the actual work. If this is so, then avoid it. They're probably polishing a turd.

Of course this is justified if the product actually is about sex in some form.

A Sub-Trope of Sex Sells.

A Super-Trope to Fanservice Cover, Contemptible Cover, Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Game.


 * UGO did a whole list: 25 Borderline Pornographic Album Covers. (might be NSFW)
 * R&B and Hip Hop covers often do this, like the picture, for Trina's Diamond Princess album.
 * Of particular note is Sugar Ray's "Lemonade and Brownies."
 * This cover for R&B group "Changing Faces",which is advertising something that's not on the album.
 * Ultra Records. Each installment in the Ultra.Trance and Ultra.Dance series feature a different bikini-clad girl on the cover.
 * There was a package that had a woman snuggling up in a white fox coat, and having a seductive look on her face. The package was for some incense, but it was "musk" scent, so it might have been a form of Sex for Product.
 * The cover of the insanely long-titled debut album by Bow Wow Wow drew in some listeners by depicting the (female) lead singer nude on its cover in an imitation of Manet's famous painting Déjeuner sur l'herbe. It also drew controversy since the lead singer was only 15 at the time of the photoshoot. Manager Malcolm McLaren was sued by her parents and reached a settlement that forbade him from marketing the singer in Fanservicey ways.
 * X-Blades does this a lot with the heroine (of course, within the game as well).
 * Nearly any magazine about custom cars has a woman draped over a car on the cover.
 * Jean Paul Gaultier iconic perfume bottles shaped as a corseted torso.
 * The Higurashi no Naku Koro ni anime covers are full of this.
 * OneChanbara
 * No box art for EverQuest came without that Firiona Vie (aka "that bikini-clad elf chick"). Strangely, SOE made a deliberate decision to move away from sexy packaging for EverQuest II - the initial release and the first expansion featured a scantily clad human chick named Antonia Bayle on the cover, but all the other expansion packs have featured images of that expansion's main antagonist.
 * Similarly, the Spellforce series.
 * Dungeons & Dragons
 * Earlier sourcebooks included OD&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry. Its cover got a naked young lady tied to an altar. This may also explain the appearance of more than one developer with exotic fetish of the word "Eldritch" in 3e era.
 * With prudishness added later on, the trend shifted to the valley between "Chainmail Bikini" and "You Have Got to Be Kidding Me!" - an example on the latter border is the cover of The North box set. There's a giant frying some chick on a stick over bonfire, but he left her underwear to preserve the modesty.
 * The Ravenloft supplement RR7: Van Richten's Guide to Werebeasts features cover art depicting what is possibly supposed to be a painful transformation into a terrible beast under the light of the full moon, but... there's a woman who Looks Like She Is Enjoying It so much that she's about to tear off her  nightgown. Then again, Gothic Horror as such  displays similar undertones every so often, so it's not entirely bedside beside the point.
 * A series of "historical" d20 game supplements were published by Avalanche Press. All of the books featured a scantily clad large breasted woman on the cover, even for settings set in the most frigid climates.
 * The St. Pauli Girl Beer logo certainly helps push the sales.
 * Arkista's Ring for the NES pictures Christine in a Chainmail Bikini.
 * Covers for Battle Chess show the queen in a much skimpier dress than in the actual game.
 * The Elder Scrolls: Arena is notorious for its Contemptible Cover featuring a warrior woman in a leather bikini standing in a colosseum, largely because the game contains neither sexy women nor gladiatorial combat.
 * Oh, lord Record of Agarest War US packaging. The entire outer box for the limited edition is covered in the most Fanservicey images they could pull from the game. For reference, the actual game is a Dating Sim/Strategy RPG which is pretty Fanservicey at times, but is not nearly the wall-to-wall sex romp they try to make it seem like.
 * Most Roxy Music album covers are like this.
 * YMMV about its sexiness, but seemingly Najica Blitz Tactics' DVD sets contained female panties inside. Given the abundance of female undergarments featured in the show, it's quite fitting.
 * The original Psycho poster had Janet Leigh in a bra as the central image.
 * The rerelease of 69 Boyz 199Quad album had this as it's cover. Was also done for their Greatest Hits album.
 * All of the Erotic Lounge album covers.
 * Lady Gaga's The Remix. Weirdly, while her videos/concerts are filled with fanservice, this is her only album cover with it (all others have just her face).
 * The Australian 'special edition' DVD of Clerks (which they called the 'Snowball Edition') proudly displayed the logo atop the midsection of a bikini-clad model. Because, you know, that perfectly sums up a black-and-white movie about the drab life of a convenience store clerk.
 * The cover for the 1965 LP (that's the big black disk-like thing that makes sounds) Whipped Cream And Other Delights is literally the only reason anyone remembers that musical group. At least that album included a song named "Whipped Cream".
 * Spoofed in an episode of Family Guy where Meg gets a makeover and becomes a pop starlet. The family's producer says they need to get her half-naked and slap her on the album cover in order to attract listeners with "hot jailbait ass". The covers shown include Meg as the Statue of Liberty ("Statutory") and her sitting naked in a frying pan ("Meg On Your Face").
 * The Noob shows how this is done.