Gauntlet Gallery
What is Shepard Fairey’s piece called “TrustoCorp x Obey Cereal”?
Artist Statement
Our friends at TrustoCorp are back to their old tricks again. Known for their street interventions and “reverse shoplifting”, the collective is once again visiting stores and placing their products into the natural shopping environment. But, this time they’ve enlisted some help from some other artists. First up is a collaboration with Shepard Fairey where the new flavor of Trusto Cereal is the “OBEY” flavor – which combines their own signature tongue-and-cheek artwork with Shep’s classic Andre The Giant imagery. Expect little touches such as interactive bar codes that actually work when scanned. There’s 10 Trusto x Obey boxes that will be dropped in ten random supermarkets in the greater Los Angeles area at the end of this week. How do you find these? Well, stay tuned to the Trusto (@trustoCorp) and AM (@arrestedmotion) instagram pages as these will be the only places where the location will be revealed. Remember, it’s first come first serve, so good luck on figuring out how to get them out of the store! In addition, for the rest of the month, Trusto will be dropping 10 cereal boxes a week. The following collaborations feature artists like The London Police, David Flores and Cyrcle.
Summary
TrustoCorp x Obey Cereal is a 2013 sculptural collaboration between the TrustoCorp collective and Shepard Fairey, taking the form of a physical cereal box for an invented "OBEY" flavor. The piece merges TrustoCorp's tongue-in-cheek, parody-product aesthetic with Fairey's classic Andre the Giant imagery, and includes interactive bar codes that work when scanned. It was produced as a First Edition object numbered 10, distributed through TrustoCorp's signature "reverse shoplifting" method by placing the boxes in real Los Angeles supermarkets for finders to claim. The work sits at the intersection of street intervention, consumer-product parody, and OBEY branding rather than a conventional framed print.
Why It Matters
This object is notable as a rare Fairey collaboration that lives entirely in the language of consumer packaging and street prank rather than the gallery print. By inventing an "OBEY" cereal flavor and seeding the boxes into actual supermarket shelves through TrustoCorp's "reverse shoplifting" tactic, the project pushes Fairey's Andre the Giant icon back into the everyday retail environment where his sticker and propaganda work began. The interactive working bar codes add a playful, conceptual layer that ties parody packaging to real commerce. For collectors, the appeal lies in its unusual format and its place within a wider 2013 TrustoCorp series that also enlisted The London Police, David Flores and Cyrcle, making the Fairey collaboration the marquee entry in a broader artist-collective experiment. It captures a moment when OBEY iconography was deployed as a satirical brand inside a critique of consumer culture, blurring the line between artwork, product, and public intervention. The combination of corporate-style parody and grassroots street distribution makes it a distinctive document of how Fairey's imagery functions in commercial and pop-culture contexts.
Collector Perspective
This piece appeals to collectors drawn to Fairey's collaborative and street-intervention work rather than traditional editioned prints. Its sculptural cereal-box form, OBEY parody branding, and connection to TrustoCorp's reverse-shoplifting concept make it a conversation piece for those who value conceptual and pop-culture objects. It fits naturally into a collection focused on OBEY iconography, artist collaborations, or unconventional formats, and stands out on a shelf precisely because it mimics a real consumer product. Because it was a small, finder-claimed object seeded into supermarkets, owning one carries a sense of participation in the original street drop. Collectors should weigh that its value rests on novelty and provenance rather than print rarity or documented market depth.
Historical Context
Produced in 2013, this object belongs to a period in which Fairey frequently lent his Andre the Giant icon to outside collaborators and street-art collectives. TrustoCorp, known for parody products and "reverse shoplifting" interventions, anchored a month-long 2013 campaign that also featured The London Police, David Flores and Cyrcle, with the Fairey collaboration as the opening flavor. The work reflects the maturation of OBEY iconography from grassroots sticker campaign into a recognizable brand that could be satirized and repackaged as a fake consumer good. Distributing the boxes through random Los Angeles supermarkets and revealing locations only via Instagram situates the piece in the social-media-driven street-art culture of the early 2010s, where the drop itself was part of the art.
FAQ
What is TrustoCorp x Obey Cereal?
It is a 2013 sculptural collaboration between the TrustoCorp collective and Shepard Fairey, made as a physical cereal box for an invented "OBEY" flavor. It combines TrustoCorp's parody-product style with Fairey's Andre the Giant imagery and even features interactive bar codes that actually work when scanned.
How was this piece distributed?
According to the source, ten Trusto x Obey boxes were placed in ten random Los Angeles supermarkets using TrustoCorp's "reverse shoplifting" method. Locations were revealed only via the TrustoCorp and Arrested Motion Instagram accounts, on a first-come, first-served basis.
What medium is this work?
The record lists the medium as Sculpture. Rather than a framed print, it is a three-dimensional cereal-box object that parodies a real consumer product while carrying OBEY branding.
Was this part of a larger series?
Yes. The source notes that TrustoCorp planned to drop ten cereal boxes a week for the rest of the month, with additional collaborations featuring artists such as The London Police, David Flores and Cyrcle. The Fairey collaboration was the first flavor released.
Related Works
About the Artist
Shepard Fairey (b. 1970, Charleston, South Carolina) is an American street artist, graphic designer, and activist, and a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. His 1989 “André the Giant Has a Posse” sticker grew into the global OBEY GIANT campaign — an ongoing experiment in propaganda, obedience, and visual culture. He reached worldwide recognition with the 2008 “Hope” portrait of Barack Obama, now held by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. Across screen prints, stencils, murals, and collage, Fairey channels propaganda aesthetics toward themes of peace, justice, environmentalism, and civil rights. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and LACMA.