packaging as content

July 29, 2011

Kooky Kans

From the “Mixo” dual oil & vinegar bottle of the previous post, we now turn to a different Mixo whose “Kooky Kans” are the latest enterprise of serial entrepreneur, Mike Becker (who previously founded Funko and Flapjack Toys.)

Mixo’s first product line, Kooky Kans combine the look and nostalgia of tin lunch boxes along with the fun of your favorite action figures. I’m filling my Kooky Kans with two things, delicious candy or our super amazing instant playsets we call Kookycraft. Kookycraft is kind of like Japanese Origami meets cereal box cut-outs… of the 60 & 70s.

Mike Becker, Chairman of Fun

An example of Kookycraft is shown below…

Note the can-shaped man in the apron. This is Mr. Mixo, the presumptive company mascot. I was struck by his uncanny resemblance to another anthropomorphic packaging mascot: the Big Shot soda jerk…

(A couple more photos, after the fold…)

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July 28, 2011

Mated Container Pump Cruet

I don’t know too much about this “Mixo” oil & vinegar package. The designer of the bottle apparently won an award at SIAL, Paris in 2009, but I can’t tell you who that designer is. (via: BlogPack)

What I can tell you is that the bottle(s) falls into that category of “mated container units” that we were looking at a few weeks ago.

Randu Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

July 27, 2011

6-Pack Lunch Boxes

Promotional lunch boxes designed to resemble soda can 6-packs and bottle carriers. (via eBay & eBay)

(A few more, after the fold…)

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July 26, 2011

Plain Cigarette Packaging

Expanding on Australia’s “plain cigarette packaging” initiative (under which all cigarette packaging would be made generic), Jennifer Noon & Sarah Shaw have envision anti-ergonomic, trapezoidal packs:

“Our primary aim was to change the structure of the pack making it less ergonomic. The pack was developed to be difficult to use and carry, it is hard to fit into pockets due to its triangular shape and the angled inner means the cigarettes are hard to get out. The lid is designed so that it closes efficiently but after a few uses it becomes weak, meaning the cigarettes can fall out if being stored in a ladies handbag.

We decided to use an off putting colour on the outer of the pack choosing a yellow green which was identified to have negative connotations. We then added a mould texture to really emphasise the disgusting feel of the pack and reduce the glamour appeal for young people.”

The idea of deliberately engineering a “weak” lid is interesting… like planned obsolescence, but for a good cause.

Note: the alternating right-side-up / up-side-down close-packing arrangement…

…and a rare example of “open mouth” packs that feature human mouths, rather than cute animal mouths.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

July 25, 2011

Bassett’s Horehound Troches

On left: photo from Sheaff-Ephemera; on right: a photo from eBay

Bassett’s Horehound Troches: another product from the same company that sold Bassett’s Egg Shampoo Cream.

“Troches” is a word we don’t hear much these days. If this product were around now, the word would be “lozenges” or “cough Drops.”

Would have been nice to find a photo of their 25¢ “elegant glass bottle” (a torpedo bottle), but this bottle-shaped trade card is all I could find online.

Before starting the Basset Supply Company, Albert G. Bassett was in the drug store business. Judging by the last line on the back of the trade card, Horehound Troches were also sold on trains.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

July 22, 2011

Bassett’s Egg Shampoo Cream

Egg-shaped tins from 1909 that once contained “Bassett’s Egg Shampoo Cream”

Unusual packaging for a shampoo, but the Bassett Supply Company of Rochester, NY may not have been the only company to use it.

There was also a “Marvelette” brand Egg Shampoo Cream using “a unique package in the form of an egg” on the market in 1910. Also based in Rochester. For all I know, Marvellette Laboratories may have just been a division of Bassett Supply Company.

July 21, 2011

2 Oranges: Geometry, Packaging & Ultaviolence

Violent, polyhedral orange chocolate packaging—two kinds:

1. Jessica Comin’s “laranja mecánica” chocolate package (based on Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange) starts out as a rhombic-dodecahedron which can be turned inside out to form a cube. Although the book and the movie made “ultraviolence” a household word, Comin’s packaging concept is violent only to the extent that one empathizes with a box being turned inside out. (via)

One remarkable thing about her transformable pack, is that both shapes—a cube and a rhombic-dodecahedron—will “close pack.” In fact, the rhombic-dodecahedron was the one close-packing shape that I was still on the lookout for. (The other four close-packing polyedrons with regular faces were already accounted for.)

Like our own interactive Gumball cube-pack, “laranja mecánica” is a novel candy package holding a minimal amount of candy. I figure, only 6 chocolate eyeballs, assuming that one goes into each of the 6 pyramid shaped compartments below.

A similar polyhedral model was constructed by W. W. Ross in the late 1800s. His “Exploded Cube” (below) is part of The University of Arizona’s collection of his dissected wooden polyhedrons.

And there’s an animated illustration from Apollonius Math showing how this transformation works…

2. Terry’s Chocolate Oranges (below) also involve polyhedral dissection, but, in Terry’s case, it’s a sphere of chocolate that gets dissected along longitudinal lines.

As for the violence, it’s implicit in the “whack & unwrap” instructions. Many of their television commercials have fun with exaggerating the violence required to open the package. Interesting to note that, in the photo above, the foil-wrapped chocolate orange, was, itself, packaged in a clamshell—the very thing that “wrap rage” was named for.

(The “violent” Whack & Unwrap campaign, after the fold…)

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July 20, 2011

Package-Related Music Packaging

Assuming that we can still call album “cover” artwork that accompanies a digital download “packaging” then the image above is surely part of a package-related music package. The cover of Edison’s free “Dehydrated Water” EP is obviously a roughly retouched version of the Bernard Dehydrated Water can that we were looking at yesterday.

Another Edison release—in collaboration with Evak—is also package-related and, in this case, there is an actual (albiet “Limited Edition”) release. Six Pack O’Death simulates the look, if not feel, of a Budweiser beer label. Artwork by Mildew.

(See also: S.A.P. and Immortal Water)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

July 19, 2011

Empty Cans of Dehydrated Water

Top row, left: from EraPhernalia Vintage . . . (playin' hooky ;o)’s Flickr Photostream; on right: from David Reeves’s Flickr Photostream; 2nd row, left: via BackpackingLight forums; on right: via No Budget Films; below: from Sweetheartville’s Flickr Photostream; bottom: from ohkayeor (Lovin' our cool weather)’s Flickr Photostream

Our friend Mr. Ronse recently brought a gag gift known as “Bernard Dehydrated Water” to my attention.

Packaged as if it were a canned food product, this item is clearly a part of that larger category of gag gifts: packages, containing ephemeral contents. (See: Rob Walker’s recent Design Observer post, “Rarified Air”)

The thing that’s unusual in this case is that “dehydrated water” seems to be the only novelty product of an otherwise legitimate food company: Bernard Food Industries.

Apparently on the market since 1962, their dehydrated water beverage is the only gag gift mentioned in a long list of trademarked applications for their standard label design. Also interesting, is how they’ve stipulated their trademark’s use for “novelty gift items, namely, empty cans.”

(Some trademark documents, after the fold…)

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July 18, 2011

Beverage Bubble Branding

Top left: Curious D’s Saint Tropez label (via); top, center: Andreu Zaragoza’ s “Coma” label (via); top, right: Nordic Water’s Foss Water; 2nd row, left: Hunt Adkin’s NutriSoda redesign (via); on right: an earlier version of Dry Soda’s labling; 3rd row: Hansen’s Natural Sparkling Water (via); bottom row: ELO Design’s “Vines Wine” (via)

For carbonated or “sparkling” beverages, it’s often the bubbles that are featured on the label. Usually these bubbles are represented by solid or outlined circles. Two exceptions:

1. Hanson’s sparkling water uses astroids rather than circles. This shape is more often associated with bling-type sparkles, but, here, seems to represent sparkling bubbles at the moment of popping. And by “popping” I mean: emerging from beverage and releasing its gas.

2. The Saint Tropez bottle in the upper left uses foil blocked square bubbles to create a dissipating typography.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

July 15, 2011

Atom Bomb Bottles: 2 Kinds

On left: vintage “Atom Bomb” perfume by Jergens (via: iOffer “wanted” ad); on right melted bottles on exhibit at the Hiroshima Peace Museum (photo from: alq666’s Flickr Photostream)

Yesterday’s post about bomb-shaped bottles leads us inexorably to “atom bomb bottles.”

1. “Atom Bomb” perfume, trademarked by Jergens in 1948, came in a rocket-shaped bottle. (Its bottle cap looks a bit like a Devo hat)

2. Bottles that have been melted by atom bombs, on permanent display at the Hiroshima Peace Museum.

On left: melted bottle on exhibit at the Hiroshima Peace Museum (photo from: Fidel Ramos’s Flickr Photostream); on right: “Atom Bomb” perfume bottle (for sale on eBay for $24.99)

(Jergens “Atom Bomb” trademark and more melted bottles, after the fold…)

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July 14, 2011

Bomb Bottles

“Bomb bottles” (one of the alternate names used to describe the shape of those turn of the century “torpedo bottles”) is made explicit in these two recent package designs.

Unlike a rocket bottle, with fins at the base and a bottle-cap nosecone—these bottles have their fins at the top end and it’s the base of the bottle which represents the detonating end.

With the rocket bottles, one imagines them taking off, upwards. A metaphor for energy drink as stimulant, in some cases. The thrust of the bomb bottle, however, is presumably downward. A more fitting metaphor, perhaps, for alcohol’s depressant qualities?

“Black Market Goods” packaging by Marco Manansala (at top) envisions this sort of gravity-based projectile packaging for beer. (via)

“Wine Bomb” (above, right) appears to be a Portuguese wine called “Partido Terrorista.” The photo is somewhat of a mystery. It appears on a number of sites, but I can find no mention of who designed this package, or whether it was an actual product or a one-off concept.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

July 13, 2011

Torpedo Bottle Stands

Left: silver plated torpedo bottle holder (sold on ebay for $75); middle: Carrington Sterling Silver torpedo bottle stand (on eBay, but not for sale); on right: 1880/90s Silver Plated Hamilton Torpedo Bottle Stand (via: Worthpoint)

And, since all forms of packaging (even archaic forms) beget package-related accessories, there had to be such a thing as a “torpedo bottle stand.” (Even if torpedo bottles were designed not to stand up.)

(More torpedo bottle stands, after the fold…)

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July 12, 2011

Torpedo Bottles

Torpedo bottle for sale on eBay ($60)

In addition to the rocket and bullet shaped bottles we’ve been looking at, another category of projectile shaped bottle is the “torpedo bottle.”

The Torpedo bottles have a round end to prevent them from being stood up. The idea was that the soda kept in contact with the cork and stopped the cork from shrinking; the corks would dry up and shrink on upright bottles, causing the bottle to loose pressure. A side advantage for the merchant was that the consumer had to finish the beverage before the bottle could be laid down.

AntiqueBottle.com

Seems counterintuitive, right? A container for liquids that cannot stand upright on its own?

The idea that, once opened, a beverage in this bottle had to be finished before putting the bottle down, makes pulling the cork on one of these bottles a little bit like pulling the pin on a hand grenade. (Or like drinking from one of those awful bottomless Champagne glasses.)

Schweppe’s water once came in this type of bottle… (via: ebay)

There seem to be a lot of other names (round-enders, ovate bottles, egg bottles, bomb bottles) but mostly these are called either “torpedo bottles” or “Hamilton bottles” after William Francis Hamilton, whose aerated water business required them:

I generally use a glass or earthen bottle or jar of a long ovate form for several reasons, viz: — not having a square bottom to stand upon it can lie on its side, of course, no leakage of air can take place the liquid matter being always in contact with the stopper. It permits its contents to be poured out more easily and consequently with less loss of fixed air. It can be much stronger than a bottle or jar of equal weight made in the usual form and is therefore better adapted for packing carriage etc.

William Francis Hamilton
“A New Mode of Preparing Soda and other Mineral Waters, Spirituous, Acetous, Saccharine and Aromatic Liqueurs and Sundry Improvements Relative Thereto”

There is, however, some debate about the true purpose of the “Hamilton” bottle’s shape and whether it was really Hamilton’s invention to begin with…

Hamilton bottles are in fact a misnomer and this designation springs from errors made by bottle collectors in the 1960s. The error was due to misinterpreting the words patent and Hamilton that appeared on the side of some early mineral water bottles. Hamilton did not patent the torpedo bottle shape and indeed may not have been the inventor…

Torpedo shaped bottles appear… at the end of the 18th century. The glass bottles made at the time were often not strong enough to contain the pressure of the gas and could explode (the bottom blew off). Glass capable of holding fizzy liquids was only made in Britain at the time and was very expensive; as a result it was reserved for expensive liquids such as Champaign. Drinks such as ginger beer were normally contained in stoneware bottles. The torpedo shape allowed cheaper glass to maintain the necessary strength to hold carbonated drinks. The fact that it made it necessary to lay the bottle on its side and so keep the cork moist was an added benefit but not the original raison d’etre. (After all conventional wine bottles are stored on their side to keep the corks moist). Torpedo bottles were also made in stoneware at the beginning of the 19th century. By 1914 glass making had improved considerably and the torpedo bottle was unnecessary being largely replaced by Malmstrom’s 1901 patent design and even ‘normal’ shaped bottles.

–Centurion (from Great War Forum:
“Trench food and their containers”)

(The above mentioned Malmstrom’s 1901 patent and another bottle photo, after the fold…)

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July 11, 2011

3 Bullet Shaped Bottles

Last Friday, it was rocket-shaped bottles with fins. Without fins, a bottle with a nosecone begins to look more like a missile or a bullet…

1. Michelobe Celebrate 2007 cherry lager (also came in Chocolate): winner of a Glass Packaging Institute 2007 “Clear Choice Award” for its “elegant, 24 oz. custom glass bottles featuring refined pressure sensitive labeling” but reviewers never fail to mention the bottle’s shape. An Epinion: “ Some say bullet-shaped. I say Alberto VO5, or those food-coloring containers. Either way, it’s a shape unique to these holiday beers. Certainly it catches the eye, but beware fancy packaging; it often leads to disappointment with the contents therein.”

2. Debowa Military Vodka (because bullets are beautiful): “Consumers of liquors associate Oak Vodka of Poland with the vodka of the highest quality, refined taste, consistent with traditional recipe, and served in a beautiful packaging.”

3. Red Army Vodka, captitalizes on the Bolshevik Revolution: “In 1917, a small band of exiled Russian citizens changed the face of their nation and the course of world history. These were the young, proud men of the famous Red Army. They were workers, students, soldiers, bonded with a common goal. Led by only a few, they rose up against the oppression of a Czarist Russian government, fighting in horrific conditions. They were countrymen armed with only two weapons. The first was their undying commitment. The second was vodka.”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

July 8, 2011

3 Rocket Shaped Bottles

A subset of vehicular packaging: rocket shaped bottles with fins. (In each of these three recent examples, the brand includes the letter “Z” for some reason.)

1. Zimbi Juice Drinks (on left) are described as “Aerodynamic Nutrition in Earth’s first flying bottle.” Their rocket shaped bottles, are recyclable, but are aslo intended to be reused as toys:

Zimbi flying bottles really fly! The bottles are aerodynamically designed to fly when thrown empty; Once you have discovered the bottle’s secret, you can throw the bottle over 100 feet.

IMPORTANT: Only throw the bottles empty. Throwing any bottle that is full of liquid can be dangerous.

2. Zun Energy Drink’s rocket shaped bottle (center) was launched in 2009. Here, the rocket serves as a metaphor for the “brain-blasting Energy®” the consumer derives from drinking the beverage.

3. LazyTown Go Water (on right) is Nordic Water’s TV tie-in brand of children’s bottle water that comes in an “easy to hold, rocket-shaped bottle.”

(Additional photos of all three brands, after the fold…)

(more…)

July 7, 2011

Donald Deskey’s Odorono Jar

Celebrated industrial designer, Donald Deskey is well-known for package design of iconic brands below. Perhaps less well-known, is his structural design of the “Odo-Ro-No” Cream Deodorant jar for Northam Warren Corporation.

Deskey packaging from the exhibit, “Creative Conscious: The Unconstrained Mind of Donald Deskey” (Photo via: Gilmore Branding)

Based on advertising images, Deskey’s art deco jar was in use during the 1940s. Haven’t been able to find any photos online of an actual surviving jar of this type.

The embossed lid was apparently discontinued sometime in the 1950s in favor of a plain flat version. (as with the pink one above)

Don’t know whether Deskey had anything to do with Odorono’s graphic design.

(Odorono’s trademark papers, after the fold…)

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