packaging as content

January 4, 2012

Roly Poly Tindeco Tobacco Tins

In last month’s post about roly poly Santa and clown containers, there was one photo of a Santa-shaped tobacco tin. “Tindeco” was the company that originally came out with this type of anthropomorphic package design:

Around 1912 the Tin Decorating Company, aka Tindeco, produced round colorful tins to hold tobacco for the American Tobacco Company. American Tobacco controlled Tindeco, as well as the four brands of tobacco sold in these tins. Each container held about 1 lb of tobacco with the brand names Dixie Queen, Mayo, Red Indian and U.S. Marine. Apparently the company suggested that the tins be used as brownie containers after the tobacco was used and designed them accordingly.

The six original tins were Satisfied Customer (reproduction called Businessman), Storekeeper, Singing Waiter (reproduction called Singer), Mammy, Dutchman (reproduction called Cowboy), and Scotland Yard. According to "The Tin Can Book", the Satisfied Customer, Dutchman and Scotland Yard are the hardest to find. But for those collectors that want complete sets, six tins would not do it! A complete set would be eighteen tins. Mayo and Dixie Queen tobacco was packaged in all six designs and while Red Indian and U.S. Marine were only packaged in three different tins. One way these tins were identified was by little packages of tobacco shown on some of the packages. E.g., Mammy had a tiny tin in her front pocket.

Barbara Crews, Roly Poly Tobacco Tins, 2002

Not exactly the Droste-effect, but when anthropomorphic packages are shown handling packages that contain the same product that they, themselves, contain, the effect is similar. Even when these characters are not shown with packaging in their pockets, they all have tobacco packages behind their backs. (back packs)

On left: a close up of cross-promotional behind-the-back package illustration; on left a vintage Mayo’s Tobacco pack of the type depicted

Below the “Scotland Yard” character with “Dixie Queen” tobacco behind his back. (Lower right corner shows the vintage tobacco pack depicted.)

The “Singing Waiter” character also promoted “Dixie Queen” in an alternate package.

On left: drawing from Washington I. Tuttle’s package design patent; on right: Charles Weise’s patented “shopkeeper” design (both patents assigned to American Tobacco Company)

(The “Mammy” character and the roly poly tobacco tin design patents after the fold…)

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December 23, 2011

Schweppes Anthro-Pack Christmas

I’ve been cataloging appearances of anthropomorphic packages in advertising for some time now. I have little evidence that anyone else cares about this, but I’m not shy or skittish about beating a dead horse… These examples are part of the 1950s—60s Schweppes campaign called “Schweppshire.”

Meant as a humorous reference to Christmas shopping days, the headline for these ads is “How many Schwepping Days To Christmas?” To my ears, “Schwepping” sounds a lot closer to “schlepping” than “shopping.” But “schlepping” is also a pretty apt description of what the shopping experience can be like at this time of year.

Most of these ads were illustrated by George Him, except for the one with Santa conducting the singing bottles, which was drawn by E.R. Bartelt.

(The ads, in the entirety, after the fold…)

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December 21, 2011

Roly Poly Clown Containers and the Santa-Clown Hybrid

1: “vintage Russian celluloid roly-poly ding clown doll 60s” (via: eBay); 2: a toy from The Canadian Design Resource site; 3: a Weeble clown from Abraracourcix’s Flickr Photostream; 4: roly poly clown from Live Auctioneers

Following up on Monday’s “Mr. Sprinkles” bottles, another point of reference for their weeble-like bottle shape was probably vintage “roly poly” toys of this type. Sometimes used as containers, as with the “Roly Poly Clown Bubble Bath” bottle on right and the antique “Clown Roly Poly Candy Container” below.

But my real agenda, in bringing this up, is that I needed a way to segue from clowns to Christmas, and the roly poly thing seems to provide that. The grouping of roly poly Santas below is from Sushipot.

Left: 1930s tin roly poly Santa (via: Antique Trader); center: reproduction of a 1900s roly poly Santa tobacco tin container (via: Ruby Lane); on right: Celluloid Sata Claus roly poly toy (also via: Ruby Lane)

But Santa Claus and clowns have more in common than just roly poly toys and containers. They both wear unusual outfits, often with similar hats. It was inevitable that the characters would someday be merged:

Depending on who you ask, Santa Clown is either a hilarious or thoroughly terrifying combination of two well known figures: Santa Claus and a Circus Clown.

What is Santa Clown? (via: Info Barrel)

(Santa Clown imagery, after the fold…)

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December 20, 2011

Clown Jars

Clown time continues with some clown-related jars from Etsy: a handmade clown cookie jar (yours, for $64.00) and “12 Vintage Clown Cupcake Toppers in Vintage Jar” (sold).

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

December 19, 2011

Mr. Sprinkles Package Design Makeover

An exception to the general waning of CPG clown packaging:

“Mr. Sprinkles,” (whose weeble-like bottle won the 2009 “Gold” award from the National Association of Container Distributors) has recently been redesigned.

Originally the bottle was more closely akin to inflatable punching bag clowns (see inset right) but, while the overall effect of the new package design is less of a fully-embodied, anthropomorphic pack, the new clown illustration is now more identifiable and less threatening. The product still shows through the window into the clown’s sprinkle-filled belly.

The illustration style looks familiar. (Maybe someone knows whose work this is?)

Photo above left comes from the orginal “Mr. Spinkles” trademark filing. The photo above right is from Bakerella.

(See also: Gömböc Bottle)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

December 13, 2011

Bottles with Embroidered Shirt Labels

Another example of cross-category, clothing-related package design: Eau de Lacoste “Poloshirt in a Fragrance” bottles with their alligator shirt embem. Note the fabric texture on the sides of the bottle. (See also: Package as Clothing)

My earliest memory of an embroidered alligator emblem was when my mother in the late 1950s or early 1960s created some counterfeit Lacoste shirts for my grandfather, my father, me & my little brother. This was motivated more by the alligator than the brand status, I think, since we lived in south Florida, not so far from the Everglades. (See also: Crocodile Boxes—Alligator Bags)

Still, my mother must have been aware that the Lacaoste alligator emblem was a self-proclaimed “status symbol.”

René Lacoste founded La Chemise Lacoste in 1933 with André Gillier, the owner and president of the largest French knitwear manufacturing firm at the time. They began to produce the revolutionary tennis shirt Lacoste had designed and worn on the tennis courts with the crocodile logo embroidered on the chest. Although the company claims this as the first example of a brand name appearing on the outside of an article of clothing, the “Jantzen girl” logo appeared on the outside of Jantzen Knitting Mills’ swimsuits as early as 1921. In addition to tennis shirts, Lacoste produced shirts for golf and sailing. In 1951, the company began to expand as it branched from “tennis white” and introduced color shirts. In 1952, the shirts were exported to the United States and advertised as “the status symbol of the competent sportsman,” influencing the clothing choices of the upper-class. Lacoste was sold at Brooks Brothers until the late 1960’s. It is still one of the most popular brands in the United States, sporting the “preppy wardrobe”.

from Wikipedia’s entry on history of Lacoste

Invariably, when packaging serves as a metaphor for clothing, a consumer naturally tends to anthopomorphize and even identify with the product contained.

(The advertising, after the fold…)

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November 2, 2011

Anthropomorphic Light Beer

Another anthropomorphized package: the Bud Light Beer bottle costume from the 2009 “Bud Light Golden Wheat” campaign. This spot is entitled “Persistence.” (via: Anonymous Content)

October 19, 2011

Ballantine Miscellany

1. A print proof of a Ballantine 40 oz. Ale label, circa 1987 (via)

2. Not a Jasper Johns sculpture. (Just two views of a collectable vintage can.)

3. Above: Three large sizes of the ale with the three-ring logo and three Xs.

4. An animated gif of a rotating carton of Ballantine XXX Ale. (on left, via)

5. An embossed tin sign with Ballantine
Ale bottle “faux” bursting through background on right. (See also: History of the Graphic Burst)

6. We recently made rueful mention of “American exceptionalism.” Below: the beer version of that idea—a vintage ad that takes a patriotic pride in the endless hunt for “something better.”

…this hunt by energetic America for something better doesn’t stop with the big things… Among the many “better things,” and one not to be overlooked, is a moderate beverage, an ale in fact, that has been discovered and approved by many. So many that, in the land where the question “Is it better?” is on so many tongues, it has become America’s largest selling ale.

(via)

(One more thing after the fold…)

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October 18, 2011

Bottles and Body Types

Last year, Medical Marketing and Media’s “Best Over-The-Counter Product Advertisement/Campaign Gold Award went to AbelsonTaylor and Abbott Nutrition for their Ensure “Nutrition in Charge” commercials. (CG animation by Bent Image Lab)

In these commercials, an anthropomorphic bottle of Ensure hectors the other anthropomorphic occupants of the fridge (some of whom are fruits & vegetables —others are other packaged foods) about healthy nutrition. It’s unclear whether the Ensure bottle is playing the role of coach or drill-sergeant. Either way, this anthro-pack is clearly a mesomorphic dominant male.

“Ensure has a unique blend of prebiotic fiber to help promote digestive tract health, and antioxidants (vitamins C and E and selenium) to support the immune system.”

In contrast to Ensure’s muscular bottle, consider the pencil-armed, ectomorphic Aktifit bottle. (3D art direction by Champignon Images ; production by Frame Eleven; modeling, UV’s & texturing by Fabio Quaggiotto; compositing by Mike Frei. Agency: TBWA Switzerland)

Aktifit also makes immunological health claims and employs an anthropomorphic bottle, but its contents are probiotic rather than prebiotic.

“Emmi Aktifit is a probiotic drink made from pasteurized skimmed milk, providing the body with lasting strength from the inside. Clinically tested LGG culture stabilizes intestinal flora, promotes digestion and strengthens the body’s immune defences.”

As a character, the European Aktifit bottle shows less aggression — more passive resistance. Apparently immune to cold season, it happily reclines in a beach chair as it snows. (Is this the cold weather of the fridge?)

(More Ensure commericals and some Aktifit “out takes” after the fold…)

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October 12, 2011

Eric Barclay’s Painted Packages

Texas-based llustrator, Eric Barclay, has an knack for finding a latent anthropomorphic character, hidden in the shape of most any package. Hence, two sizes of Coffee-mate become “Mr. Shackleton” and “Mr. Hudson” (above). Barclay confirms that his companionable characters are based on two famous explorers:

Mr. Shackleton is named after Earnest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. Mr. Hudson, the walrus, is named after Henry Hudson who encountered walruses on his explorations of Canada…

As far as the characters go, Shackleton is a herring magnate and Mr. Hudson is his driver and “heavy.” Mr. Hudson knows a lot of people at the horse track.

Other painted packages by Barclay include a plastic squeeze bottle of French’s Mustard, whose shape embodied a circus lion…

(Another container’s inner feline character revealed, after the fold…)

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October 4, 2011

Packaging as Product Mask

There have been a number of recent Lucha Libre influenced beverage packs —(soda, beer, wine, spirits)— all featuring masked wrestling characters.

But when I saw José Guízar’s mask-shaped labels for his conceptual craft beer, it struck me differently. What a good idea to let the product wear the mask. Such a good idea, in fact, that I figured someone else must have thought of this too.

Sure enough, José Barrientos’s “Unmasked Luchadores + Poster Book” comes in a box featuring a die cut Luchador mask, strategically designed to let the contents peek though.

Another packaging metaphor? “Packaging as Product Mask”

On the one hand it might seem like a deceptive thing for the package to conceal or disguise the product. On the other hand, if your product is like a super hero then consumers will perhaps understand that the “hero” must sometimes remain incógnito.

(See also: McSweeney’s Head Box and Die Cut Windows)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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.)

September 23, 2011

Vademecum

Four more things about the Swedish toothpaste brand, Vademecum, whose “toothpaste key” commercial we featured on Wednesday…

1. Photo above shows their use of an actor in an anthropomorphic packaging costume in a 1930 advertising campaign. via (See also: Hy-Jen Toothpaste)

2. In 1938 Mickey Mouse also promoted Vademecum. Here he is holding a tube of Vademecum toothpaste, saying something in Swedish about the product to Minnie Mouse. Note: logo is up-side-down. (Swedish comic strip panel via: The Daily War Drum)

(Two more things, after the fold…)

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August 23, 2011

New Package Design for Warm Whiskers Eye Pillow

Another booth that we visited at Gift Fair last week was DreamTime, Inc. The new packaging for their line of Warm Whiskers eye pillows caught my eye, because of the way the product conceals the eyes of its face-shaped die cut cards.

I’m always on the lookout for packaging that functions as an anthropomorphic proxy—either for the seller or, in this case, for the consumer. It’s a wonderfully direct way of showing the product’s purpose—showing the eye pillow in use on a person’s face—but oddly attention-getting precisely because the person’s eyes are hidden.

Personally, I felt compelled to lift the mask up and peak underneath—just to confirm that there were actually eyes printed there! That kind of interaction with the product and its packaging can’t be a bad thing. (And I have, in the past, ruminated about why a retail package should never stare the consumer down.)

Previously this product was packaged in a fancy, but generic organdy bag.

The new cards come with an easel back for counter display and a hang hole to make them peggable. I’m not too crazy about the wishy-washy brand logo, but (to my eye) the packaging concept, the girly illustrations and the cute products more than make up for it.

I don’t have photos of them, but I also recall seeing anthropomorphic die cut displays for stuffed animal “neck wraps” at their booth…

(More about the “neck wraps” after the fold…)

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August 5, 2011

Hair Styles & Package Design

When I first saw the “Black Melon Bread” snack bag (on Packaging Uqam) I liked its afro-shaped window, but I wondered (as did Karen Halliburton) whether there wasn’t something mockingly racist about it. Looking into it further, I learned that it’s actually a tie-in product to the manga character known as “Afro Tanaka” (film coming soon) and that there’s another similarly packaged “Afro Tanaka Onigiri Bomb” (on right).

The next thing I wondered about was whether there were other non sequitur “hair products” out there—products that had nothing to do with hair or hair care, but whose package design makes the product look like hair (or a hairstyle). Ogilvy & Mather’s “Rellana Hair” yarn packaging from 2009 (below, left) is a good example.

Lucas “Crazy Hair” candy is another example. (The illustration above, right is by Leonello Calvetti) A hat-shaped cap makes this extruding candy package vaguely anthropomorphic. With or without a hat, this really looks more like a jar growing out of a planter, than a person growing hair, but the package does extrude candy hair.

I was thinking that spaghetti was another likely metaphor for hair. (Or is hair the metaphor for spaghetti?) Looking for an example of that, I found Jaeyoung Ha’s “La Pasta Famiglia”—also anthropomorphic. (and with mouth-shaped die-cut windows) Here, different pasta shapes dictate the hairstyles for each of the family members. (See also: Our Family of Products)

(One more example of non-sequitur hair-style package-design, after the fold…)

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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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June 23, 2011

Containing a Product / Supporting the Troops

We recently needed a can of WD-40 and the one we bought turned out to be one of their limited edition series of collectible cans to honor American military forces. It made me wonder about this kind of “Support Our Troops” packaging.

There were lots of companies during World War II that made “supporting the war effort” a key element of their advertising. (See: Life Savers at War) Today, I expect, few of our transnational, global corporations would want to be closely associated with any one side of a conflict. Not when there’s so little political consensus and even terrorists are potential customers.

As a marketing strategy, “Supporting the Troops” is similar to other ethical marketing causes. A portion of the proceeds of each purchase are supposed to benefit the troops.

Necco’s “Red White & You” Sweethearts candy, the benefit is delivered via the USO:

As part of the program, New England Confectionery Company donated Sweethearts for every Operation USO Care Package sent from June through August. Candies were printed with heartfelt sayings like “Miss You,” “Brave One” and “Home Safe.”

Schneider Associates

Srixon Golf Balls also “teamed up” with the USO:

Srixon, a world leader in golf club and golf ball technology, is proud to announce that in support of our troops overseas and the sacrifices they and their families have made in service to our country, Srixon has teamed up with the United Service Organization (USO) to give back to our troops. From July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2011, we will be donating 5% of net proceeds from the sale of Srixon camouflaged packaged golf products and accessories or those featuring the USO logo, to the USO.

Srixon Blog

WD-40’s troop support proceeds go to three different charities:

Crown Aerosol Packaging North America, a business unit of Crown Holdings Inc. and WD-40 Company are launching a limited edition series of collectible cans to honor American military forces. The series consists of four different designs: three depicting air, sea, and land themes and one combined graphic showcasing all five military branches, including the Coast Guard.

WD-40 Company will donate 10 cents per can purchased to three military charities: Armed Services YMCA, Wounded Warrior Project and Veterans Medical Research Foundation. Crown will also make a donation to each of the charities.

Package Design Magazine

Sometimes, even with the most charitable intentions, a package design can be disturbing.

(Packaging that attempts to honor “the fallen”, after the fold…)

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