RIVER RIDGE – Step into your local grocery store and you might see a dragon. Or perhaps you’ll be greeted by Christmas elves, Saints players or even News with a Twist anchors LBJ and Tamica Lee.

Using Excel spreadsheets, hundreds of empty coke boxes and immeasurable amounts of imagination, Cory Ruiz and the creative forces at Crescent City Coca-Cola are creating over-the-top store displays that will wow you when you show up to purchase some milk and eggs (and, they hope, some Coke products!)

“A lot of it is in the detail and a lot of the time the details we can’t do with our square boxes,” says Ruiz, but that’s when his creativity goes into overdrive.

For an incredible Dr. Pepper dragon at Winn-Dixie in River Ridge, they made eyes out of painted light bulbs.  That creation is Cory’s masterpiece so far, with wings, teeth and horns, all made from Coke boxes.

In honor of our crew coming to interview them, the Coca-Cola artists made a display dedicated to News with a Twist, complete with LBJ and Tamica, hanging out at the Breaux Mart in River Ridge. Tamica is sporting a fleur-de-lis necklace and LBJ is wearing a black fedora with a Saints emblem.

In the blueprints for the display, LBJ’s hat is blue. “I wanted it to be colorful, like your show,” says Ruiz, “but we decided to keep the Saints theme going on.”

In any case, it’s a phenomenal creation! Plus if you wander a bit farther in the store, you’ll see a spooky tree, with a smile that matches the one we see on Wild Bill Woods’ face. The tree is made of dozens of Barq’s root beer cases, and each one was crushed first and unrolled, so that it would look more like actual tree bark.  (Get it? They used  Barq’s to make bark for a Halloween tree!).

Twist reporter Stephanie Oswald asked Ruiz what came to mind when they were planning for the NWAT display.

“Color, liveliness, different!” he exclaimed. We couldn’t agree more.