Box Vox

packaging as content

September 27, 2011

Shapeshifting Diet Pepsi Can

Pepsi has fattened up its diet “skinny” can with a redesign that aims, perhaps, to distance itself from a controversy that bubbled up earlier this year.

The Independent, September 14, 2011

But if Diet Pepsi’s “skinny” can embodied a negative “body image” message, then how are consumers to interpret such an abrupt change from tall, skinny cans to short, fat cans?

Now that soda cans are understood to be proxies for our own body shapes, this drastic change of shape surely carries with it a subliminal message about Yo-yo dieting and weight cycling. (Or, perhaps, height-cycling since both 250 ml cans above would actually weigh about the same.)

See also: Beverage Brand & Body Image

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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