A Mexican company specializing in the production of Halloween masks has found a gold mine by manufacturing masks depicting three of the four candidates running in Mexico's presidential election.

Grupo REV, a producer of high-quality masks made with latex and painted by hand, put aside zombie, vampire, werewolf and alien masks to imitate the faces of left-leaning Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who is leading the polls, conservative politician Ricardo Anaya, who is polling second, and ruling-party candidate Jose Antonio Meade, polling third.

"The masks are neutral, set between the comical and the real, and can be used either to support or to make fun of the candidates," Rosario Juarez, the company's director of innovation and design, told EFE at Grupo REV headquarters in Cuernavaca.

"We can observe each candidate's popularity according to how well their masks are selling," she said.

The company produced more than 1,000 masks per candidate and they are expected to carry a price tag of around 300 pesos ($16).

Juarez said that the company, established in 1948, has a long tradition of creating themed masks usually focusing on humor and carnival, although this year, marked by the July 1 election, they decided to create a collection of masks depicting well-known politicians.

"Our production process is extremely artisanal. Almost everything is made by hand, including the sketch, the mold, the sculpture, the character's design ... which has allowed us to create high-quality products," she explained.

Sculptor and designer Jorge Arturo Esparza explained part of the production process.

"First, we selected the most well-known photos of the character, in this case, Lopez Obrador. We studied the images and started to create the sculpture," he said, showing Lopez Obrador's depiction.

"We wanted to make the masks look somewhat real. We know these are satirical masks to play around with, but we wanted to make them look real and not so caricature-like to portray the candidates' characteristics," Esparza said.