packaging as content

January 6, 2012

Washington I. Tuttle’s Collapsible Box

In addition to the “roly poly” Tindeco tobacco tins, another of Washington I. Tuttle’s patented package designs, was his 1908 “Collapsible Box.”

Similar to the idea that the “roly poly” tobacco tins could be used to store brownies, this package was meant to be reused as a lunch box:

“…this box is primarily intended, although not restricted, for use as an original package in which tobacco is sold, the box, after the contents originally placed therein have been used, having been found very serviceable as an extension lunch box or kit”

(More of Tuttle’s patent drawings, after the fold…)

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January 4, 2012

Roly Poly Tindeco Tobacco Tins

Photos via: Dan Morphy Auctions

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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November 30, 2011

The Entenmann’s Box and Its Discontents

Some websites credit Martha Entenmann with having invented the “see-through” cake box. Other sites (including Entenmann’s) say it was a collaborative effort with her three sons.

Believing that people were more inclined to buy what they can see, the Entenmann’s brothers, William, Robert and Charles, and mother, Martha, invented the familiar “see-through” cake box for baked goods in 1959.

Entenmann’s Direct

This insight transformed Entenmann’s business:

Quality baked goods used to be sold in white paperboard boxes tied with string, and only someone with X-ray vision knew what the treats within actually looked like. Then in 1959 Martha Entenmann, wife of the son of the Entenmann’s bakery founder, had a brainstorm — people were more apt to buy something if they could actually see it. Working with her sons (who’d joined their mom in the family business after serving in the Korean War), she developed the first cake box with a plastic “window.” The new box allowed the company to display its product on standard supermarket shelves, rather than relying on the limited “under glass” space available in independent bakeries. Instead of taking a number and waiting for a busy salesperson, consumers could browse among all the various “see-through” boxes of Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies, powdered doughnuts, and crumb cakes…

Metal Floss

Recent changes to their packaging, however, have now irritated some loyal customers…

(The backlash of the discontents, after the fold…)

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November 10, 2011

Oleomargarine Coloring Packs

Above are the patent drawings showing William E. Denison’s “coloring berry” which seem to match the Delrich Margarine EZ Color Pak.

Denison’s was one of many efforts to solve the margarine manufacturer’s problem of being legally required to sell their “artificial butter” in an uncolored form. Aside from the dye-containing “berry” there were many other designs for margarine coloring packs, designed to let the consumer take the final step of mixing in the coloring. To make the margarine look less like lard.

A couple of packages shown below even use dye-filled syringes, although I think those appear as more of a manufacturing note and were not meant to be included in the package.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

November 9, 2011

The Margarine Squeeze-Mix EZ Color Pak

The EZ Color Pak (for Cudahy’s Delrich margarine) and the Pliofilm “Squeeze-Mix” margarine package: two versions of a package that would never have existed except for the strength of the Dairy lobby in getting laws passed that prohibited margarine from being pre-colored to resemble butter. (The loophole being, that consumers could color it themselves.)

Never mind that butter itself was often artificially colored yellow—to make it look more like what it actually was.

Unsalted butter and whipped butter are almost as white as margarine. Should we then make the butter industry pay a tax on white butter, which looks like margarine, in order to be sure that the housewife who wants margarine does not get fooled Into buying butter? …

During its many years of trying to exist despite artificially created handicaps, the margarine industry has demonstrated the type of creative and inventive ability that few other food industries have displayed. Its latest effort to overcome the discrimination against it is truly remarkable. … The margarine industry has introduced a color pellet into the margarine container and by merely kneading the bag in which the margarine is sold, the housewife can color the margarine.

Oleomargarine: Hearings Before the Committee on Agriculture
House of Representatives, Eighty-first Congress, 1949

Albert Lowenfels (whose work for Hotel Bar Butter we were just looking at on Monday) while clearly a “butter man” has also defended margarine’s right to be yellow. In 1952 he came out publicly in support of repealing the laws regulating margarine’s color.

(More about Lowenfel’s defense of butter’s chief competitor, after the fold…)

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November 8, 2011

Poetry, Hotel Bar Butter & The Communist Party

Albert Lowenfels (who invented the triangular prism-shaped butter package that we looked at yesterday) had a brother: Walter Lowenfels, a poet who was imprisoned under the Smith Act during the McCarthy era.

“Well, Walter,” I said, “I’m here to find out about you.”

“Then you should ask me about butter,” he obliged. “When I was young, I was in my family’s butter business. In my autobiography I wrote:

For me, butter was a huge, independent world, as self-contained as a spiral nebula. It was the galaxy of business.

…I decided that… I’d rather die as a poet than a butter man. so I told my father I was going to quit his business. He just couldn’t believe it, and he said: I want you to get checked up physically. I said okay; so he told me to go to a doctor, who asked me to bring my book of poems and a urine specimen. When I got to his office, this doctor told me to lie down. (It turned out that he was a psychiatrist!) I told him: ‘Look, I’m going to Europe. My father is the man who’s sick, try to take care of him.’ So my father sent me to another psychiatrist who told my father that I should see Dr. Freud. My father said he’d pay for it, but I never went. I took a slow boat to Spain and never got to Vienna.”

Village Voice, Jan. 16, 1978

But he did get to Paris where he continued writing poetry and became part of the Paris avant-garde. There, with Michael Fraenkel, he established Carrefour Press, which printed anonymous works.

Fraenkel and Lowenfels became excited by the idea of total anonymity in art, deciding to found their own press and publish unsigned books. They believed that gaining recognition in art was like competition in business … To get their “anonymous” movement going, Lowenfels and Fraenkel each contributed work… A number of writers, including Kay Boyle, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Michael Arlen, expressed interest in the venture, but no manuscripts were forthcoming.

Walter Lowenfels Biography, Bookrags

With WWII Walter Lowenfels’s creative energies were once again drawn into the competive galaxy of the butter business.

Lowenfels and his family returned to the United States in 1934, moving to Mays Landing, New Jersey. Lowenfels returned to his father’s butter business and worked alongside his brother, Albert. During that time, Lowenfels introduced new ideas to the business; he invented a new waxed paper packaging for butter and he applied date stamping to improve the butter’s freshness. At night and on the weekends, he continued to write poetry.

Yale Library

I’m guessing that it was Albert who submitted the patent for Walter’s waxed paper packaging and that this is it…

Although his work at Hotel Bar Butter sounds creative in some ways, Lowenfels was not happy about returning to work as a “butter man.”

He wrote to Henry Miller about the transition from poet to businessperson: “I butter from nine to five and then I change into a butterfly and go ahead with poems.”

from Wikipedia’s entry on Walter Lowenfels

(Walter Lowenfel’s arrest, after the fold…)

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November 7, 2011

Polyhedral Butter Pack Patent

Albert Lowenfel, president of the Hotel Bar Butter Company until retiring in 1955, is credited with having invented the butter carton. (Prior to that, it was sold by the pound from large tubs.)

He began to sell butter in 1931 under a brand name and in quarter pound sticks. It took 10 years for the packaged butter to catch on.

from Albert Lowenfels’ obituary in the Norwalk Hour, June 5, 1969

One of Lowenfels’ inventions that did not catch on was the triangular, prism-shaped carton above. (See also: Close Packing)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

October 25, 2011

Spray Paint Can Concepts

Part of the Canceptual V.4 show at Crewest was devoted to Man One’s collaboration with Berlin Packaging’s Studio One Eleven, “Paint the Future” envisioning alternate spray paint cans:

“One of our strengths lies in understanding and implementing experiential design — that is, how people actually use and interact with a package. Man One Design asked us to apply that expertise to provide a vision for paint delivery systems that suit the needs of street artists,” said Scott Jost, Berlin Packaging Vice President of Innovation and Design. “These ideas open a dialogue that can help pave the way for equipping graffiti artists with better tools.”

“Street art is becoming an increasingly popular vehicle for brands to connect with younger consumers, but artists are limited by the capabilities of the conventional spray can. We asked Studio One Eleven to take an exploratory journey with us to think differently about the spray can and suggest ways to improve can performance,” said Scott Power, Managing Principal, Man One Design. “Our goal with the ‘Paint the Future’ showcase is to inspire and facilitate packaging innovation by asking a professional artist and heavy utilizer of spray paint like Man One what he wants and needs from a spray can to create his artwork. This is a path to discover new and meaningful value that translates into strategic opportunities for paint manufacturers.”

Berlin Packaging

Graffiti as “strategic opportunity” despite hardware stores keeping cans of spray paint in locked cabinets to discourage tagging.

Note concepts above for: accordion cartridge feature, a rocket shaped can and duplex spray can.

(More photos, after the fold…)

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October 17, 2011

3 More Accordion Packs

In August we looked at some accordion-like packages that featured “bellows” mechanisms that allowed them to expand and contract. More examples have been popping up recently…

1. Nick Seville’s “Shaker Straws” duplicate the effect of a bendable straw. His solution to an assignment about packaging-as-added-value:

“…the brief was to repackage a pound shop item to make it worth double the price. This was achieved by creating a product that stood out on the shelves and made it more interactive for the customer to get a feel for the product.”

Consumers might regard it as a cynical ploy —a package designed to double the price of an item— but it does serve as an important reminder that an elaborate package will surely increase the retail price of a product.

2. Éva Valicsek’s “egg box” uses an accordion-like structure for egg packaging. Here the structure mainly serves to provide stabililty for the eggs, but the flexibility of the bellows structure allows the eggs to be easily inserted or removed from the carton.

Her labeling scheme also includes the barcode as a graphic design element —(similar to a CD package we looked at in 2009).

3. Directions Marketing’s “Tritainer” dog food concept (Grand Prize Winner in “Project 2020: The Consumer Experience”) makes compression a key feature:

“Accordion-type compression reduces container height as product is dispensed, and when empty, the container eventually folds flat for easy recyclability.”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

October 14, 2011

Chained Tetrahedral Portion Packs

I saw Serge Rhéaume’s 3-pack powdered drink concept (above left) on Packaging|UQAM and my first thought was that it was another example of packaging in which individual portions are contained in connected polyhedral shapes. (See: Chained Polyhedral Portion Packs)

But as a chain of tetrahedron-shaped packages it also reminded me of something else… The most successful and well-known tetrahedron-shaped packages are Ruben Rausing’s Tetra-Pak (classic), which are similarly connected in a chain during manufacture, but then cut apart. (See inset)

The inspiration for Tetra-Pak’s manufacturing process, reportedly came to Rausing while watching his wife making sausages. (Note: sausages are also available as manufactured — in a chain of connected individual portions.)

The idea of selling multipacks of connected tetrahedrons is a very good one, and Rhéaume is not the first to think of it.

The illustration above, right is from Wolfgang Jobmann’s 1999 European patent for a “Chain of Individual Packages”…

Packaging arrangement for soft drinks
A packaging arrangement consists of a series of five individual tetrahedral packs (A, B, C, D, E) each of which is linked to the neighboring pack by a flat strip (10, 11, 12, 13). The strip has a line of perforations by which individual packs may be removed from the group of five.

(Jobmann’s 1999 patent and others, after the fold…)

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October 11, 2011

Wrench Shaped Tin Box

WrenchMints come in a “Wrench Shaped Tin Box” designed and patented by company founder, Eddy Rubin.

It first struck me as an oddly oblique concept for a mints package to be wrench shaped, but once I saw their tag-line —“When your breath is broken … fix it!” — I could appreciate the craftsmanship of its inner logic.

(Rubin’s design patent and one more thing, after the fold…)

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September 21, 2011

4 Toothpaste Keys

And speaking of toothpaste tubes and human endeavor …

This Vademecum Toothpaste commerical (#1) about Svend Vademecum III, his research and subsequent discovery is rather relevant. (Note: You have to follow the link to YouTube to actually watch this video. It’s not the embeddable kind.)

The take away from seeing this vintage commercial is that there have been earlier attempts to address the shortcomings of the toothpaste tube. The Vademecum commercial looks to me like it’s from the 1960’s, but a similar “compression key” also appears in this 1909 ad (#2) for Dr Sheffield’s Crême Dentifrice (via)…

There was also a sterling silver Tiffany’s toothpaste tube key (#3)…

Which raises the question: How many dollars should one pay for a tool that saves pennies? Although, as suggested by Daniel’s comment from the previous post — (about fugality “…to the point of pathology”) — consumer purchases are sometimes compulsive — more subject to psychoanalysis than to cost/benefit analysis. (See also: Dooby Brain)

(Our 4th and final toothpaste key, after the fold…)

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September 20, 2011

Toothpaste Tube Squeezers & Human Endeavor

At Eastpack this Summer we met Ray Liberatore who showed us the “EZ Squeeze Tube.” Having recently broached the subject of consumers actually cutting open their toothpaste tubes (in order to get what they paid for) now seems like a good a time to take a look at Liberatore’s package-improving product.

Tube squeezers are one of those inventions that point up the inadequacy of a certain kind package. Up until the invention of the can opener, cans were being opened with knives and rocks. (See: Early Can Opener Patents)

The toothpaste tube has provided a similar inspiration for human endeavor. Consider the range of patented ideas shown above, invented between 1919 and 2010.

Although they make a reusable consumer product (inset above right) Liberatore’s real innovation is in proposing that such a device should not just be a packaging accessory, but an integral part of the package. Not such an outlandish proposal considering how adverse many consumers are to wasting even a small amount of something they’ve purchased. What’s more frustrating than a package with inaccessible contents?

(More patent illustrations of toothpaste tube squeezers, after the fold…)

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September 19, 2011

Polyhedral Light Bulb Packaging
(Structural Package Design Patent from 1970)

Bryon L. Lessar’s octahedral “Package for Light Bulbs” was patented in 1972.

(First page of Lessar’s patent appears, after the fold…)

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September 15, 2011

Don Poynter’s Cocktail in a Toothpaste Tube

Scotch whiskey flavored toothpaste tube and carton via Whiskey Wednesday

A follow up to our 2009 post about cosmonauts with vodka in toothpaste tubes… I figured it was high time we brushed up on the subject of six proof toothpaste.

I like the argyle-patterned branding of these 1950s alcoholic-beverage flavored toothpastes from Poynter Products. I also like the cross-category referencing of sideways bottles on the box and the tube. (Note how the bottle silhouettes are pointing in the opposite direction from the business end of the toothpaste tube.)

Invented by founder Don Poynter, these novelty toothpastes really did contain a small amount of their corresponding flavors. (Scotch, Bourbon, Rye…)

Examples of Poynter’s advertising for these products appear on the right. (Top right photo from Michael Dietsch’s Flickr Photostream; lower right photo from DigitalObjectsArchivist)

Photo of 1954 Rye whiskey flavored toothpaste tube and carton (via: Etsy)

These products enjoyed a brief but heady run for their novelty and amusement value. Poynter appeared on “What’s My Line?” in 1956.

Photo by Wallace Kirkland from Life Magazine, 1955

Soon there there were jokes about the product appearing in print…

An extensive test of a new whiskey-flavored toothpaste was made, comparing it with a control group using a similar formula, but without the whiskey-flavored ingredient. Researchers found that those using the whiskey-flavored toothpaste brushed their teeth after each meal, including lunch at work, — and — as many as fourteen other times during the day. The results showed that these people — using the special whiskey-flavored toothpaste — had twenty-one percent more cavities but they couldn’t care less!

Pit & Quarry, Volume 57, 1965

But as outlandish as the product concept was, Poynter was really not the first to think of it. Joan Blondell’s 1935 film “Traveling Saleslady” had posited exactly this sort of product line.

Still from “Traveling Saleslady” — (I’m guessing that’s a tube of “Cocktail Toothpaste” in her hand)

The latest in the Warner Brothers series of commercial comedies tells how Joan Blondell combines her charm with Hugh Herbert’s inventive genius and wrecks the toothpaste market. Being no admirer of the orthodox dentifrice flavors, this reporter considered that both Mr. Herbert and Miss Blondell deserved to succeed with their Cocktail Toothpaste. A whisky flavor for a morning pick-me-up, a Martini flavor for the hour before dinner, and a champagne flavor at bedtime ought to help the disposition as well as the teeth. Miss Blondell thought so too, and so did her clientele. The big out-of-town buyers were, in fact, so delighted with the new product that they bought it on its own merits, and did not lose their tempers when Miss Blondell declined their invitations to dinner.

Andre Sennwald, 1935 NY Times Movie Review

Again, publicity about this movie mostly played the product concept for laughs, little suspecting that in two decades the market would (for a time) embrace the concept.

Cocktail Toothpaste: For years and years, starting way back around 1929, we have advocated the use of various cocktail, cordial and wine flavors in tooth paste. It remained for First National Pictures to recognize the value of this contribution to the marvels of merchandising and to make use of it in a movie, “Traveling Salesladies.” Many of those who have seen this picture and who are no admirers of the orthodox tooth paste flavors have commented very favorably upon the Cocktail Tooth paste which the entrepreneurs of this cinema market throughout the country.

Drug and Cosmetic Industry, Volume 36, 1935

(Some competing cocktail-flavored toothpastes, after the fold)

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September 1, 2011

2 Lemon Spray Cans

Two lemon-scented air freshener spray cans:

1. Conceptual package design for “True” air fresheners (by Berik Yergaliyev at Good!) relies on a soft rubber spray can cap enabling the user to spray the product as if by squeezing the fruit. (See: Packaging & Plastic Fruit)

Lemon is just one of three proposed scents. (Somehow the ice cream cone seems like the outlier in this envisioned product line… See: One of These Things Is Not Like the Others.)

2. Kuumba’s “Clot” brand lemon tea air freshener spray comes in a spray-paint-style can whose graphics reference Krylon spray paint’s overlapping colored circles/balls. (Although real lemons mainly come in yellow.) Here, the colored circle/balls are given fruit skin texture highlights and lemon leaves.

The “Clot” brand, I suppose, alludes to clogging of spray paint nozzles, but it also reminds me of “lemon curd” for some reason.

(via: Ape to Man)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 29, 2011

Evoque Candle’s Patented Box

Stopping by Trapp Candle’s booth at Gift Fair, I spoke briefly with Catherine A. O’Kane, a co-inventor of Evoque Candle’s patented box — a container whose lid is, itself, a container with its own lid.

A candle box for storing individual candles and candle accessories. The box includes a housing with a top opening, a tray for storing candle accessories that fits within the top opening of the housing, and a slidable lid for covering the tray. The housing has a bottom and four side walls that define the top opening. The tray has a bottom integral with four tray side walls that, when placed within the opening of the housing, engage the interior surface of housing side walls to create an airtight enclosure. The lid has a top cover and three side walls, two of which are adapted to slidably engage any two opposing side walls of the tray. The top cover includes a snap-lock for engaging one of tray walls when the lid is in the closed position.

Inventors: Joseph M. Rowley, Jr., Catherine A. O'Kane
Assignee: Faultless Starch-Bon Ami Company

I like the phrase “slidably engage” and I like the idea of a container serving as a lid for another container. (See also: Corks as Containers)

(The patent follows, after the fold…)

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