Box Vox

packaging as content

December 5, 2011

Coca Cola’s Dripping Negative Space

DrippingNegativeSpaceOn left: “liquidated” Coca Cola logo by Zevs; center: a recently discontinued Coke can; on right: Zoo’s package design for Rubén Álvarez yogurt.

The first time I saw the seasonal Coca Cola can above was from a distance of about 3 yards (2.75 m). I was in the back of the supermarket by the meat cases when I noticed some cans with what appeared to be dripping white frosting (or melting glacial ice?) on display in a Coca Cola end cap.

I left my shopping cart where it was and crossed over for a closer look. Not drips at all, but just the negative space behind some polar bears on a silver ridge.

Maybe I’m predisposed to seeing dripping graphics everywhere, but, even if this optical illusion is unintentional, a dripping white package does seem in keeping with Coca Cola’s frosty, cold gestalt. And, to my eyes, the white ink comes to the foreground and the silver metal of the can is the more natural background.

None of this matters much in the face of another negative controversy. The package design was intended to be part of Coke’s “cause marketing” effort to protect the polar bear, but this message is being overshadowed by the problem of diabetic consumer confusion.

“I purchased three six-packs because I thought they were diet,” Gail O’Donnell of Danvers, Massachusetts, told ABC News.

“I drank one and wondered why it tasted so good. I didn’t look at the can. … I am a diabetic and can only drink diet sodas. They need to make it so it is not confused.”

Coke and Diet Coke Cans Should Be Polar Opposites, Buyers Say

Red-White-Polar-DripsCoca Cola has therefore discontinued production of the white can, switching back to last year’s red version. So diabetics (like me) won’t get confused and drink regular, caloric Coke by mistake, screwing up their blood sugar.

Come to think of it, the red can looks a little like dripping blood.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

December 2, 2011

Entenmann’s Boxcar

EntenmannsBoxcarPhotos above and below by Rich Melvin

Licenced Entenmann’s/Lionel O gauge operating boxcar comes in an  Entenmann’s-style see-through pastry box:

BoxCarBox“It is not often that a railroad club car1 gives you a craving for sweets, but that is what happened when I saw the 2010 Lionel operating car from the Railroad Museum of Long Island (RMLI) in its authentic-looking white and blue Entenmann’s baked goods box…

This innovative box design was the brainchild of Bob Mintz, chief design engineer of the RMLI.”

Ed Boyle, How Sweet It Is
O Gauge Railroading, June-July 2011

(Another photo and a footnoted digression, after the fold…)

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December 1, 2011

The Entenmann’s Box as Metaphor

Antenmanns-PlayingCards

The Entenmann’s box with the see-through window is sometimes used as a metaphor. Usually this has to do with ideas about tranparency. The Wacky Pack “Antenmann’s” parody sticker (on the left) compared the Entenmann’s see-through window to a window on an ant farm. The shrink-wrapped Entenmann’s box on the right is an advertising promotion: a deck of Entenmann’s box-shaped playing cards. Strange for playing cards to have a see-through window. If you’re playing cards, you generally want the hand you’re dealt to be for your eyes only. (See also: Wacky Packages and Playing Card Packs.)

1. Consumer
A 1996 remembrance by Wendy Wasserstein, about Martha Entenmann’s life is entitled, “She Saw Through Us.” By “us” she means Entenmann’s consumers so the metaphor is about Martha Entenmann’s early insight into our consumer behavior—that we customers were as transparent to her as the “see-through convertible bakery box top” that she invented.

2. Coffin
A character in F. Paul Wilson’s, The Tomb, while eating crumb cake, talks about wanting to be interred in an Entenmann’s box:

I’ve decided that after I’m cremated I want my ashes buried in an Entenmann’s box. Or if I’m not cremated, it should be a white, glass-topped coffin with blue lettering on the side.” He held up the cake box. “Just like this. Either way, I want to be interred on a grassy slope overlooking the Entenmann’s plant in Bay Shore.”

Another example of Entenmann’s box as coffin was found in these comments on a blog post about burying a pet parakeet:

I buried my budgie, Petey, in an empty Entenmann’s box . . . the cellophane window allowed for excellent viewing at the wake that we held for the neighborhood kids.

… Naturally, one would use the Entenmann’s box after consoling oneself with some tasty brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and/or cinnamon rolls.

3. “Believers” (and non-believers)
A sermon by Harold C. Warlick, Jr. entitled “People See Through Us” uses the same basic metaphor a Wendy Wasserstein—the “transparency” of people. Here, however, it is not about what Martha Entenmann sees in us, but how we look in God’s eyes…

Martha Entenmann invented the see-through cake box. Suddenly all manner of baked goods from pies to doughnuts began to arrive in see-through boxes with a proud blue Entenmann banner stamped on them. This caused those Entenmann baked goods to fill the shelves from New York to Miami.

As soon as the Christian church was organized as an institution, the letters and epistles of Paul and the epistle of James began to hammer home a message people did not want to hear. All believers and congregations are see-through to the world.  People see through us. They really do! There is a see-through box top that covers every congregation and every believer.

from Sermons on the Second Readings

Interestingly, the Entenmann’s box also plays a role in Foreskin’s Lament, Shalom Auslander’s novel of Orthodox Jewish life…

(The Entenmann’s box as “literature-of-last-resort” after the fold…)

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