packaging as content

April 29, 2011

Anthropomorphic Aerosol Can

If you’re searching for something relatively obscure on Google, you sometimes run up against this smug, algorithmic presumption that you must have misspelled it.

Last week, while researching “Muffets” (the round shredded wheat), Google kept insisting that it was surely Muppets that I was looking for. To the point where I was forced to type: muffets -muppets (Muffets, not Muppets, damnit!)

But along the way Google showed me something that I was grateful to see: a 1967 commercial for Linit Fabric Finish spray, featuring an anthropomorphic aerosol can with the familiar Jim Henson/Kermit-the-Frog voice.

Predating Sesame Street’s debut by several years, the spray-can puppet was made by Don Sahlin and the “fair damsel” at the ironing board was played by Jenny O'Hara.

(Sir Linit photo & Henson’s “Linit Man” character sketch, after the fold…)

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April 28, 2011

Nesting and Shredded Wheat

Two ways of nesting with shredded wheat:

1. A nest-shaped shredded wheat biscuit…

“A cup-shaped biscuit having its walls made up of interlaced cereal filaments forming a nest-like structure with a rounded edge, the general course of which is approximately followed by the filaments visable at that edge.”

William Erastus Williams, in 1909

2. Shredded wheat biscuits that will nest for more efficient packing…

“… in packing the biscuits in cartons or boxes as illustrated in Figure 2, usually with the convex bottoms up, the biscuits will nest into each other. The biscuits can thus be much more expeditiously and securely packed, and a larger amount of food can be contained in a smaller carton.”

John Leonard Kellogg, in 1916

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

April 27, 2011

Rauschenberg’s Nabisco Shredded Wheat (Cardboard)

Robert Rauschenberg, Nabisco Shredded Wheat (Cardboard), 1971. Cardboard, 70 x 95 x 11 inches.

And since we’ve been focusing so much on Shredded Wheat for the past week or so—(Shredded Week?)—here’s another thing: Robert Rauschenberg’s cardboard wall sculpture, above.

Rauschenberg made quite a few artworks from shipping cartons. This one was made from Nabisco Shredded Wheat shipping cartons. Like Warhol, he’s also used Kellogg’s Cornflakes shipping cartons.

Robert Rauschenberg, Cardbird I, 1971, Offset lithograph, screenprint, tape, and polyethylene collage on corrugated cardboard, 45 x 30 in. / 115.3 x 76.2 cm., Edition of 75

Cardboard 1, however, is not an actual cardboard box at all, but a trompe’l'oeil reproduction of one…

The Cardbird series is a tongue-in-cheek visual joke. It is in fact a printed mimic of cardboard constructions. The labour intensive process remains invisible to the viewer – the artist created a prototype cardboard construction which was then photographed and the image transferred to a lithographic press and printed before a final lamination onto cardboard backing.

from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra 2010

A similar concept was later used by Peter Blake in his 2005 “Fag Packets” print series.

(Another of Rauschenberg’s trompe’l'oeil cardboard concepts, after the fold…)

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April 26, 2011

Scott H. Perky’s Symmetrical Typeface Patent

In addition to inventing round shredded wheat, Scott H. Perky also patented an audacious font concept in 1909. Citing the inefficiencies of reading only from left to right, Perky proposed a symmetrical font that would allow books to be typeset in lines of alternating direction…

The invention consists in certain means of printing alternate lines, whereby the reading can be done from left to right and from right to left in a continuous manner, and the skipping from end of one line to the opposite end of the next is avoided.

It is hardly necessary to allude to the strain upon the eyes and brain, which results from much reading. To students, researchers and others whose lives are cast among books, any device which promises to … lessen fatigue of the optical tract, and consequent headache and brain fag, will appear of unusual importance. In ordinary reading … the brain is exerted through the eyes in movements from left to right with alternate senseless skippings from right to left …

In carrying out this invention it is designed to use a font of type, whereof each… letter, number or other character… is of symmetrical form… and is thus adapted to present the same appearance whether read backward or forward…

In reading print of this character… difficulty will at first be found owing to the unaccustomed appearance of the symmetrical characters, but in a limited amount of time, the mind becomes familiar with them and this trouble will disappear. And in the continuous hold of the eye and mind on the text, as the reading proceeds, without skipping or losing place or connection, will be found much compensation.

from the text of Patent No. 921,156

Note: the highlighted phrase “brain fag” is no typo:

The term “brain fag” was used in the US as far back as 1852, describing an overworked brain, in 1877 to describe mental exhaustion in professionals similar to neurasthenia, and later in 1919 to describe mental fatigue in the elderly. The term ‘fag’ is believed to have been derived from ‘fatigue’. This American usage declined by the 1950s.

from Wikipedia entry on Brain Fag

The other phrase “senseless skippings” is highlighted because I thought it was kind of poetic for a patent.

(The first 3 lines of Perky’s patent, set in his patented font, after the fold…)

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April 25, 2011

Muffets: Son of Shredded Wheat

In addition to the cereal cup shown at the end of last Thursday’s post, another food that Scott H. Perky (son of Shredded Wheat inventor, Henry D. Perky) invented was “Muffets: The Round Shredded Wheat.” (AKA: “The All-Year-Round Cereal”)

I was twelve when shredded wheat was born, and worked and played in father’s laboratory. I grew up under the influence of his enthusiasms, worked in every department of his factory, made some inventions of my own, and in 1920 invented Muffets. Now I am, myself, conservatively but with great hopes, introducing what I consider the first new departure since my father’s in the line of popular “cereals.”

Scott H. Perky
from a letter to the editor,
Time Magazine, Jan. 21, 1929

Just as Henry Perky’s Shredded Wheat Company was eventually bought out by Nabisco, so too was son, Scott Perky’s Muffets Brand bought out by Quaker Oats.

This 1930s hexagonal box (via Worthpoint) must be one of the earliest versions of the Quaker Oats Muffets box. A package design with a number interesting features:

a. It’s a close-packing hexagonal prism.

b. It has a faux die-cut window revealing a trompe l’oeil illustration of the product contained within.

c. The biscuits illustration also serves as an orthographic diagram of the package contents (albeit from just one angle).

d. At one end of the box there is a seal-of-approval type graphic burst, guaranteeing that “if you do not agree that these are the best whole wheat biscuits you have ever used we shall gladly remit the cost of this package.”

e. On the bottom panel (not pictured here) the ingredients are listed: “Whole Wheat, Irradiated Dry Yeast. Each Biscuit provides 50% of the Minimum Daily Requirement of Vitamin D”

In 1923, Harry Steenbock and James Cockwell discovered exposure to ultraviolet light increased the Vitamin D concentration in food. After discovering that irradiated rat food cured the rats of rickets, Steenbock sought a patent. Steenbock then assigned the patent to the newly established Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. WARF then licensed the technology to Quaker Oats for use in their breakfast cereals.

from Wikipedia’s entry on the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation

According to Wikipedia, “Irradiated food does not become radioactive, but in some cases there may be subtle chemical changes…”

At the other end of the box is a serving tip about how you can cut out the centers to use the biscuits as “patty shells.” Nowhere on the package do the words “breakfast” or “cereal” appear.

(Some later versions of Quaker Oats Muffets packaging, after the fold…)

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April 22, 2011

Easter Egg Carton Brooch Buyer’s Guide

We provide this information as a public service for anyone who is in the market for package-related holiday jewelry.

Photos above, of the 1981 Hallmark Easter egg-carton brooch, are from Ruby Lane. What’s that got to do with the price of eggs? Nothing, in this case, since their listing is no longer online… but keep hunting below and our oddly specific buyer’s guide may prove helpful to your search.

On eBay… Buy it Now Price = US $9.95

On eBay… Sold for US $10.50

On eBay… Sold for US $5.86

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

April 22, 2011

Egg-Shaped Earth Day

Since today is simultaneously Earth Day and Good Friday, I was looking for a way to somehow connect the earth and (Easter) eggs.

If you search online for “egg-shaped earth,” you’ll find lots of stock photos, mostly of cracked egg-shaped earths meant, I suppose, to symbolize the fragility of life on our planet. (Some even have their yokes spilling out.)

Not wanting to add anything to this already polluted metaphor (planet earth with botchulism?) it was more interesting to me to learn that there is a whole “egg-shaped earth controversy” surrounding a particular translation of the Qur'an. Hence, the video above.

Not everyone is buying it, however. Scientists insist:

The Earth is not quite spherical, due to what is know as “rotational flattening.” It’s not egg-shaped, either, it’s shaped more like a pumpkin.

Earth: Round or Egg-Shaped, Newton Ask a Scientist

Clearly, we’ll have to revisit this topic on Halloween.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

April 21, 2011

Cereal Cups: Then & Now

Shredded Wheat cereal cups. Two kinds…

Then:
Henry D. Perky, the inventor of Shredded Wheat, also designed an edible “cereal cup.” His 1895 patent is vague about what it was meant to actually contain, but I’m guessing something other-than-cereal.

Now:
Now when we say “cereal cup” we mean plastic cups containing a single serving of cereal. Although these packages are too small to hold Perky’s original, full-size shredded wheat biscuits, they can and do accommodate Mini-Wheats. (See: KFoodService EU Pack, Cereal to Go and I Am Breakfast)

(Another “cereal cup” patent, after the fold…)

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April 20, 2011

Anthropomorphic Shredded Wheat Box

And speaking of Shedded Wheat… naturally there’s an anthro-pack. An anthropomorphic elfin baker/box from a 1924 magazine ad. ($6.50 at ioffer.com)

Elfin packaging mascots do not seem to be as poplular these days as they once were. Keebler elves notwithstanding.

(See also: The Grape Nuts Anthro-Pack)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

April 19, 2011

Shredded Wheat Documents:
Cereal as Intellectual Property

Patented in 1895 by Henry Perky, Shredded Wheat was initially denounced as tasteless by John Kellogg: like “eating a whisk broom.”

As Perky found success in manufacturing the cereal, however, Kellogg did offer to buy him out, but for too low a price.

Perky died in 1908 and the “Shredded Wheat Company” continued as exclusive manufacturers of the biscuits until Perky’s utility patents expired in 1912…

At this point Kellogg’s began to manufacture their own version of Shredded Wheat and a series of litigations began, culminating in the landmark “Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co.”

The Shredded Wheat Company was acquired by the National Biscuit Company in 1930, and two years later Nabisco brought yet another suit, which six years later would reach the Supreme Court …

The Court’s analysis.. compared the size, form and color of the cereal cartons in which each company sold its biscuits, and noted the use (and size and prominence) of a house mark by Kellogg to differentiate its product. Indeed, the Court went so far as to assess the post-sale market such as restaurants, in which (because the carton was not present) the size and appearance of the competing biscuits themselves were crucial. Kellogg’s biscuit was only two thirds of the size of Nabisco’s biscuit, and slightly different in appearance…

…the Kellogg Court found both the term SHREDDED WHEAT and the pillow shape of the biscuits to be generic…

The Story of Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co.: Breakfast with Brandeis

(For more about John Kellogg, see: Bobby Grossman’s Corn Flakes, Die Originalen)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

April 18, 2011

2 Anthropomorphic Bottles

Two anthropomorphic bottles—each one is 7 inches tall.

1. On left:

7" tall figural bottle depicting Al Capp’s Shmoo character with screw-on lid. Bottle by Baldwin Laboratories of Saegertown, PA. Front of bottle neck has Shmoo facial features in red paint, back has expanded “SHMOOoo” name and U.F. Syn. copyright text. c. late 1940s. (Price = $75) via Hakes

2. On right:

A Pre Columbian Peru Classic Huari Wari culture ca. 600-900 AD polychromed pottery anthropomorphic bottle having a tapered bulbous body and tapered head spout with painted and relief facial features. Wearing a wide multistrand necklace and hands held to his stomach. A restored break on the left side of the body and two restored rim chips, otherwise intact. Measures 7 X 5. (“Buy It Now” price = $1,450) via eBay

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

April 15, 2011

Coney Island Brand Exotic Canned Foods

Last week, while researching the Coney Island Steeplechase Jack-Glasgow Grin thing, I happened to discover “Coney Island Brand exotic canned foods” — artist/“rogue-taxidermist,” Takeshi Yamada’s rogue consumer packaged goods…

The original factory Coney Island Fine Foods was located in the heart of the Dreamland Amusement Park in the Coney Island area of Brooklyn, New York. The owner Henry J. Feltman… opened a seafood restaurant, Palace of Mermaids, in Coney Island and served varieties of exotic dishes from all over the world. His financial success led him to open a new factory to package and market his popular foods in the Northeast. The company became famous and very popular by originating Coney Island style Clam chowder and Coney Island style canned clams in Coney Island in 1862. At one point, Feltman’s clam chowder was as famous as two other famous foods which originated in Coney Island; hot dog (1867) and frozen custard (1919). Unfortunately this famed company was destroyed by the Dreamland Fire of 1911.

Takeshi Yamada’s Museum of Wonders

Some of his label designs, below…

(See also: Flux Mystery Food)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

April 14, 2011

George Washington Carver and Pickaninny Brand Peanuts

Another example of Pickaninny branding. This one happens to have a “Droste effect” trademark, in that the girl’s caricature also appears on the tiny version of the can that she is holding.

Below is a letter from George Washington Carver to F.M Hoyt & Company gently objecting to this trademark:

November 29, 1929

Dear Sir:

I beg to acknowledge receipt of your interesting favor of recent date. . .

I believe your idea is a good one and with the advertisement you have in mind, I do not see why the venture should not become popular. I trust that you will, however, understand me and pardon me for making these suggestions.

It is solely in the interest of the peanut industry. I notice your trademark is “Pickaninny” peanuts, and that you are going to have a particularly appealing “Pickaninny” face.

I take it for granted that you are putting up these peanuts with the hope that everyone will buy them and that your trademark will become very popular. Now, my people object seriously to their children being called “Pickaninnies” as the usual Negro child. “Pickaninnies” as they are called by some, are merely caricatures…. I presume that you are acquainted with the unpopularity of the “Pickaninny” pie which was made after the manner of the Eskimo pie, but the caricature of its trade-mark made it very unpopular, so much so, that I understand that the originator had to give up the business. Of course, the “Gold Dust Twins” washing powder, and the “Cream of Wheat”, both colored advertisements, are very popular.

Now, as I stated before, I trust that you will understand me in what I mean and in using these trade-marks, do not have it an ugly cartoon…

I shall be glad to co-operate with you in any way I can, with sincerely good wishes, I am

Very truly yours,
G.W. Carver

George Washington Carver: In His Own Words
edited by Gary R. Kremer

Unlike Cream of Wheat, of course, “Pickaninny Brand” peanuts and peanut butter did not survive. F.M. Hoyt’s company is among the “forgotten industries” of Amesbury, Massachusetts.

(See also: Jim Crow Museum)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

April 13, 2011

Whitman’s Pickaninny Peppermints Package

I remember once, when driving with my grandmother on Long Island, my brothers and I were aghast when she unexpectedly used the word “pickaninny”—as in, “Oh, look at the cute little pickaninnies!” She seemed to be genuinely unaware that it was an offensive word.

She was clueless, but seeing the packaging above for Whitman’s “Pickaninny Peppermints” one is reminded just how common this sort of cluelessness once was. (See also: Time Magazine’s 1940 headline: “Smart Pickaninnies”)

Stephen F. Whitman & Sons appear to have been similarly clueless. Below is a 1939 letter to the company from Thurgood Marshall, as an attorney for the NAACP, attempting to clue them in:

April 5, 1939

Dear Gentlemen:

A member of our Association has sent to us a package which had contained peppermint candy prepared by your company. The trade name on this package is “Whitman’s Pickaninny Peppermints—Chocolate Covered.”

On behalf of the members of this Association, we protest the use of the term “pickaninny” as applied to young Negro children whose pictures appear on your package. This term is extremely distasteful to Negroes.

We are calling this matter to your attention in the hope that you will discontinue the use of this term on packages of candy manufactured and distributed by you. We have not taken this matter up with our branches as yet, pending a reply from you. We will therefore appreciate an early reply.

Very truly yours,

Thurgood Marshall

Interesting to note that it’s only the term “pickaninny” that Marshall is asking them to remove. The illustrations here are not the out-and-out racist caricatures used elsewhere in those days. If it weren’t for the name (and maybe the watermelon) it could almost pass for a contemporary package design.

(The company’s response, after the fold…)

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April 12, 2011

Chalky White’s House

Staten Isand Savings Bank on Beach Street (via); Boardwalk Empire “No Parking” sign (via: the telephone pole outside of our house)

In our previous post about the Bechtel beer bottle collection, we promised there was more to say about a house in our neighborhood that brewery-owner, George Bechtel gave to his daughter, Anna on her wedding day in 1887. (NY Times wedding announcement, on right)

Available as a movie location via Cynthia von Buhler’s CVB Spaces—(see also: Von Buhler’s Prize Capsules)—this house has recently been the site of filming by HBO’s Boardwalk Empire—a show whose credits and theme song, we’ve already covered here. (See: Opening Bottle Credits)

Celebrity Sighting
Last week I was walking down to the bank, when who should I see on my street? Apparently heading to the wardrobe trailer, but already wearing a brown, turn-of-the-century gangster suit? The Atlantic City bootlegger, Chalky White! (played by Michael Kenneth Williams who also played Omar Little from The Wire)

I was delighted to later learn that, in the Boardwalk Empire story line, the big historic house built by George Bechtel is to be Chalky’s house!

“Chalky’s operation takes the whiskey that Nucky has smuggled across the Canadian border, distills it and repackages it, allowing Nucky to get 3000 bottles out of the initial 500.”

BoardwalkEmpire.wikia.com

We had initially guessed that the big house around the corner was being cast as a new residence for Nucky Thompson and Margaret Schroeder (played by Steve Buscemi and Kelly Macdonald). That would have been cool too, but for Chalky White to be our new neighbor, in residence at the Bechtel house is historically more interesting…

The HBO series is based on Nelson Johnson’s book, Boardwalk Empire. His follow up book, “The Northside: African Americans and the Creation of Atlantic City” focuses on the history of Atlantic City’s black community…

“The city’s very existence was dependent on money spent by out-of-towners (and) Atlantic City’s solution was unique for its time. The hotel industry reached out to the Upper South and recruited people… former slaves and their dependents, coaxed to the North during the three generations following the Civil War.” According to Johnson, “African Americans built Atlantic City. Remove them from its history and the town we know today never comes to be.” –LTS Wire

In Boardwalk Empire, Chalky White, himself a recent descendant of former slaves, is the head of Atlantic City’s black community— “the de facto mayor of Chickenbone Beach.”

Staten Island had slavery up until 1827 when it was abolished in NY State. Bechtel, Stapleton’s leading citizen (and largest taxpayer on Staten Island) during the NY City draft riots in 1863, appears to have played an Oskar Schindler type role in helping to hide and protect black people:

Mr. Bechtel has been foremost in all public and benevolent matters. During the negro riots in 1861 he sheltered large numbers of these homeless people in the woods and sent them nourishment daily till the trouble had subsided, a circumstance which the colored people on Staten Island have never forgotten and for which they have been ever grateful.

History of Richmond County
by Richard M. Bayles, 1889

He also appears to have had a hand in founding Staten Island Savings Bank…

During the Civil War, Staten Island was home to abolitionists and pro-Union residents as well as those who bemoaned the loss of trade with the South… It was in the midst of the crisis that Francis Gould Shaw, the abolitionist, Louis H. Meyer, a financier, John Bechtel, the brewer and eighteen other Staten Island business men petitioned the state legislature for incorporation of an institution to be know as the Staten Island Savings Bank.

excerpt from the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s
proposal to landmark the Staten Island Savings Bank building

The very same bank that Chalky White’s dressing room was parked right across the street from. Or course Bechtel’s fingerprints are all over our little neighborhood. His brewery was also within easy walking distance.

Prohibition is what ultimately put Bechtel’s brewery out of business, and it’s also what made Chalky White so prosperous.

Bechtel’s NY Time Obituary, July 18, 1889, appears on right.

(A couple more things, after the fold…)

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April 11, 2011

Bechtel Beer Bottle Collection

On left: Bechtel beer bottle from Rick’s Bottle Room; on right: photo of the Bechtel Brewery in 1890 from the Staten Island Advance

If you are a collector of historic bottles, it is vitally important that your collection be housed and displayed in way that signifies its historic significance.

This became abundantly clear to me a while back when I attended a festive community meeting at a historic house in our neighborhood—a house that was built by the Staten Island brewer, George Bechtel and given to his daughter, Annie as a wedding present in 1888.

The current owner now collects rare Bechtel Beer bottles and, knowing that I was interested in vintage packaging, he led me to the table where he had set up his collection for display. When we reached the table, however, it was empty and there were no bottles to be found. It turned out that his collection was not adequately signified in that particular location.

To the folks, serving and clearing food that day, these were just more bottles that need clearing. His entire collection of historic bottles had been efficiently swept up and put into the recycling bin along with the contemporary beer bottles!

Fortunately none of the historic bottles were broken that day and he was able to rescue them.

Above, left: George Bechtel’s daughter’s house as it looks today (via: The Forgotten Borough); on right: a trio of Bechtel “blob-top” bottles (Note: these bottles are actually from Bruce Mobley’s Beer Bottle library) and were not the bottles mentioned above that were almost recycled.)

Workers of the Bechtel Brewery

The Bechtel Brewery was the earliest business to convert to electricity on the Island, with owner George Bechtel installing electricity in 1885. It also was one of the first businesses to employ refrigeration, using compression pumps and ammonia to cool the beer.

The offshoot of the brewing industry during its prime was social activity. Bechtel’s in Stapleton provided picnic grounds and dancing during the summer..

S.I. Advance

More about George Bechtel and his daughter’s house, tomorrow…

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

April 8, 2011

Big Tooth Bubble Gum: Tooth as Container

1979 POP display carton from Dan Goodsell’s Flickr Photostream

We’ll conclude “Teeth Week” with one more ironic candy package: Topps Big Tooth Bubble Gum.

In the 1970s Big Tooth Bubble Gum came packed in the cavities of tooth-shaped plastic containers. Originally these tooth containers were all white. An earlier display carton (below) shows how they could be conveniently worn on a consumer’s neck. (Photo on right from Traci*s Retro’s Flickr Photostream)

Later versions of the container were in an assortment of other colors…

“…this time they upped the ante by producing a rainbow of colors for the plastic tooth-shaped candy containers. Also, they included a lanyard to wear the tooth container around your neck. Cool!”

Jason Liebig

1971 POP display carton from Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

(Big Tooth Bubble Gum “Rainbow” display, after the fold…)

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