Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto franchise has featured a large number of collectibles over the years, but the hidden packages shaped like green tiki statues in GTA: Vice City are especially memorable. Not only does collecting them provide new weapon spawns outside of Tommy Vercetti's home, but finding all 100 hidden packages in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City will also net players an exclusive ironic T-shirt and consistent access to dangerous airpower.
In Grand Theft Auto 3 hidden packages looked a lot like a flat slab wrapped in paper and tape - an image often associated with the shipping of illegal substances like cocaine. Grand Theft Auto 3 never outright says these hidden packages ARE cocaine, however, and given the game's focus on the new, fictional drunk hitting the streets of Liberty City called SPANK, it can be assumed these are indeed SPANK packages Claude is collecting. GTA: Vice City, however, is a little less subtle.
Instead of centering around a fictional drug, cocaine itself is heavily referenced throughout Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's story. A cocaine deal gone bad is the impetus for the game's entire plot, and players assist Tommy Vercetti in building a (partially) cocaine-funded empire through various takeovers, heists, and drug dealing side missions. Vice City is littered with cocaine - both figuratively and, when it comes to the game's hidden packages, quite literally.
What's Inside Vice City's Green Tiki Statues
The green Māori-like tiki statues that serve as GTA: Vice City's hidden packages are filled with cocaine. This is shown in Tommy Vercetti's own room at the Ocean View Hotel on the strip after players have completed the mission "Rub Out" and killed Ricardo Diaz, Vice City's original cocaine kingpin. Although quite bare in the opening moments of the game, Vercetti's hotel room slowly begins to fill with outfits, weapons, and items as players move the story forward, all of which help to illustrate his progression up Vice City's criminal underworld ladder. A broken tiki statue which looks identical to Vice City's hidden packages is one of these items, and it appears on Vercetti's desk in a large pile of cocaine.
The broken statue filled with drugs is a reference to Miami Vice - one of many scattered throughout Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. In the episode "Milk Run" in Miami Vice's first season, Crockett and Tubbs investigate a drug smuggling operation which is transporting cocaine - about $25,000 worth per statue - in a very similar fashion to what can be found in Vice City.
Not every Grand Theft Auto game uses drugs as a collectible item. GTA: San Andreas went all-out with collectibles, with everything from oysters to horseshoes spread across its map, but the dangers of abusing drugs like cocaine, heroin, and marijuana were focused on far more than the benefits - although Vice City's tiki statue did make an appearance outside a theater in San Andreas. Grand Theft Auto 5 allows players to actually get drunk or high themselves, but "collecting" drugs isn't something they are asked to do in their off time like finding nuclear waste or submarine parts - unless Peyote Plants count.
Hidden packages as they appeared in Grand Theft Auto 3 and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City haven't really been seen in the series since Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, and that's a shame. While it's not necessary to ask players to obtain drugs in any title, so many Grand Theft Auto games are filled with ancillary activities that aren't really related to the plot, and asking Tommy Vercetti to collect statues filled with cocaine makes complete sense both from a player's perspective (something fun to do) and from a character and plot perspective. Vercetti was constantly funding and building his empire, so of course he needed those statues. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's hidden packages made sense - unlike Niko Bellic's murderous hated of pigeons.
Image Source: GTA Wiki