Box Vox

packaging as content

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August 11, 2011

On the “Stree” Where I Live (Pornographic Branding)

StreeOverlord

In a way, this one’s a follow up to Karen Abel’s PBR flowers. Like her, I found some discarded packaging in an empty planter. Unlike her, I’m not thinking of making these into flowers.

Unusual to see such a sexually explicit illustration on a retail package. If this were a trend, what would we call it? Pornographic branding? Pornographic graphic design? (See also: Packaging Junk)

At first I thought it was a condom package—a common enough form of litter in our neighborhood.

Printed on a fancy holographic foil stock… Muti-national flag icons lined up in a row, but all the text was in Japanese so I couldn’t read what it said. I searched for the UPC number in Google and learned that it’s a Japanese patent-medicine sex-pill called “Stree Overlord” (sometimes misspelled as “Street Overload”) Not a condom package, after all.

Chun-Li_RyuIt turns out that this product is one of many mysterious “herbal” products sold at the deli on our corner, even though there’s evidence online of the FDA intercepting imports of Stree Overlord because “Required label or labeling appears to not be in English” and because “The article appears to be a new drug without an approved new drug application.”

But those aren’t the only regulations that Mayo Kaisha Pharmacy Export Ltd. is flouting. They are also trampling trademark law. The two characters on the box are Chun-Li and Ryu from the Capcom video game known as “Street Fighter.”

Interestingly, Stree Overlord’s own trademark is also being infringed upon. Their web site has one page complaining:

“It has come to our attention that Stree Overlord has become so popular that many have decided to duplicated and copy from us to try and take away what we have worked so hard for.”

(There are now counterfeit versions of the product being manufactured in China.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design
 

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