packaging as content

January 31, 2012

Liberty Bell Jars

Nash’s Prepared Mustard was sold in a number of different figural glass jars —(that could often be reused as children’s coin banks)— and in the late 1940s or early 1950s one of these jars was “Liberty Bell” shaped. (Jar on left from eBay $39.99; jar on right from eBid $19.99)

It’s customary for sellers of antique glassware to stipulate to any chips or cracks, but, with Liberty Bell jars, it’s interesting to see whether the seller will notice the paradox of a glass reproduction of the famously cracked Liberty Bell. Some don’t seem to notice it:

“Shape of liberty bell jar is in very good condition. No chips, no cracks.”

Others do:

“imitation” crack that you would find on the real Liberty Bell

_______________________________________________________________

“The jar has no chips or cracks except the crack that is suppose to be on the liberty bell.”

“Liberty Bell Bottle Bank” from Anderson Militia, $25

Kraft also came out with a mustard in this type of jar and later, in 1976, Liberty Bell jars enjoyed a brief Bicentennial renaissance as containers for maraschino cherries, Spanish olives and probably other patriotic foods, as well.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 26, 2012

Package Design & Wolverine Toy Refrigerator Doors

Left: photo from The T-Cozy’s Flickr Photostream; on right photo from The House of Oliver’s Etsy store ($29)

We’ve shown similar toys with trompe l’oeil name brand packages printed on them —(toy shopping carts, miniature dollhouse packages, etc.)— but I recently got a glimpse inside a Wolverine brand toy fridge.

Originally, toys like the pink refrigerator on the right (with “a full larder reproduced on door insides”) retailed for only $2.98, but as a collectible the price is now higher. (Wolverine advertising photo via: The People History)

I’ve lost track of some of these photo sources, but 2nd row, left: from Live Auctioneers; on right: from MarkandBlyth’s Flickr Photostream; 3rd row, left: from The T-Cozy; on right: from RainbowMermaid’s Flickr Photostream; 4th row, left from Schaufensterbabe; on right: from eBay Auction ($19) bottom row, right: pink fridge from TwirlswithPearls’ Etsy Store

With the doors of the refrigerators permanently stocked with food packaging, we wondered what sort of packaging the toys, themselves came in.

(Asked and answered after the fold…)

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January 25, 2012

Ceci n’est pas une Skippers pipe

Jonna Perdersen (whose sculptures we looked at yesterday) entitled the painting above “This Is a Pipe.” Making clever use of a brand of licorice pipes that I was not aware of —“Skippers Pipes”—and making reference to that popular paradox of representational art: The Treachery of Images by René Magritte. In Magritte’s painting a pipe appears above a caption that declares in French, “This is not a pipe”…

The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe,” I’d have been lying!

In Pedersen’s painting, Magritte’s paradox is given an additional twist, since the product portrayed is, itself, a faux pipe. [Full disclosure: when I was in art school, I combined a 6 inch lenngth of galvanized heating pipe with an elbow joint (forming a pipe-like shape) and gave it the old “Ceci n’est pas une pipe inscription.]

Originally trademarked in 1966 by Chicago based Leaf Brands, Inc., the product has recently come under fire as a simulated tobacco candy product.(like candy cigarettes) and appears to be somewhat discontinued. That is to say, I can find no mention of it on Leaf’s web site.

Matching Skippers Pipes wrapper photo from mulch.thief’s Flickr Photostream

Upper left: photo from Christiane Torden; on right: counter top display box from Fine Little Day; lower photo from After The Denim

Note how the lower box has additional faux features. This is not a wooden gift box tied up with red string.

(My own non-pipe work, after the fold…)

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January 16, 2012

Super PAC Packaging

As we enjoy a new, hyperbolic political season, generously funded by large amounts of Super Political Action Committee money, I thought it might be a good time to take a look at some earlier types of Super Pac.

Not surprisingly, the name was previously associated with packaging.

SuperPac, Inc., whose logo appears at top, offers “A Tradition of Excellence in Flexographic Printing.”

SuperPAC™ (logo: above center) is a trademark of Thomasville Furniture:

Thomasville’s promise to provide our customers with the best overall kitchen, bath, and other room solutions initiated our development of SuperPAC, our patent pending packaging technique.

And SuperPac is also the name of a British company that makes a car stereo accessory. (Logo by Frankman Design)

Superpac is the new way to hold your detachable car stereo front. Designed to replace the dull black plastic case supplied with most car stereos, the Superpac offers you a stylish way to protect your cherished face-off style car stereo.

Mastey de Paris carries a SuperPac “Intensive Reconstructor Conditioner for Stressed, Damaged Hair” (above, right)

Superpac reconstructs damaged hair, rebuilding and reinforcing the hair’s protein chains. Superpac enables hair to retain its elasticity and structural integrity with newfound bounce and resilience.

Mastey de Paris

There was also a Timberland Super Pac boot. (via: Gwar Izm)

Nowadays, a candidate whose political campaign benefits from Super PAC money is not supposed to “coordinate directly” with his or her Super PAC benefactor. In practice, however, a candidate’s Super PAC is often run by a close ally—a Super PAC man. (e.g., Jon Stewart is Steven Colbert’s “Super PAC man”)

Not to be confused with an earlier “Super Pac-Man.”

Top & center: Commodore 64 “Super Pac-Man” packaging from Moby Games; bottom photo: a General Mills Pac-Man cereal with “Super Pac-Man Marshmallows” from Jason Liebig’s flickr Photostream

Now, if we were willing to be more liberal about the spelling of the term—accepting say “PAK” as a reasonable variant (as in Political Action Kommittee?)—then there’s even more to think about.

(More, after the fold…)

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January 12, 2012

Purple Cow Packaging

Vintage Holloway’s Purple Cow candy wrapper from Jason LieBig’s Flickr Photostream; William’s Purple Cow Lager can from The Beer Can Guide; Milka Chocolate’s purple cow shaped folding carton (via: Packaging of the World); a vintage “purple cow” fruit label for Washington apples for sale on eBay ($250)

Based on an 1895 poem by Gelett Burgess, a “purple cow” generally meant something “out of the ordinary” or something you don’t see every day. As depicted in these vintage packages, each with its whimsical cow illustration, the concept was fine.

I’m not so accepting of the new over-arching definition of “purple cow” as something remarkably innovative, as set forth in Seth Godin’s book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. Because of this book, some people are now calling any ground-breaking, category disrupting product a “purple cow.”

For some reason, I find this new meaning a loathsome thing. To me, the name “purple cow” diminishes the hard work of innovation, making it sound like something merely capricous.

I doubt Steve Jobs would ever have given one of Apple’s products as insipid a name as “purple cow” and yet all over the place there are people now saying that the iPad and the iPhone are “purple cows.”

You need look no further than the scapbooking craft company The Purple Cows to understand the uncool connotations that this name carries.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 9, 2012

Delsym Package as Remote Control Unit

CPG as RCU. Delsym’s current advertising campaign imagines their product packaging as a television remote control for muting distracting family cough symptoms. (Detail of a print ad by Roy Tuck, on left)

(The print ad in its entirety, after the fold…)

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December 22, 2011

A “Penny Machine” for Christmas

Photo via: The National Museum of Play

Above: something I once wanted and didn’t get. Anyone who grew up celebrating a consumer Christmas has one of these. Not necessarily this toy in particular, but something they wanted for Christmas—something they asked Santa Claus for—and did not receive. The “Penny Machine” is the one that I remember.

I had forgotten that it was called a Coney Island Penny Machine, I’m pretty sure it was just a “Penny Machine” that I told my mother was my number 1 Christmas wish. Clearly, the Remco television commercial below was what sold me on this product.

I must have been a pretty avaristic child to want a toy that endlessly dispensed other toys. Sort of like the trick of using your wish to ask for more wishes.

I hadn’t remembered the commercial being so olde-timey. I don’t think I would have identified much with the boy in the commercial, although I totally identify with the boy on the box—(who looks just me at that age). Perhaps it was the fantasy of impressing a girl with my skill in winning prizes that explains this commercial’s effect on me. Never mind that the carnival attraction, in this case, would have been located in my toy box.

Whatever desires it unleashed in me, my mother didn’t seem as impressed with this product or its commerical. Had it been a birthday request, I might have worked harder to persuade her. With Christmas, however, I figured it didn’t much matter what she thought about it. As long as I was right with Santa, it needn’t concern her. My record of good behavior stood for itself and made me confident that the Remco prize-dispensing machine would soon be my prized possession.

I know this sounds a lot like Ralphie and the Red Ryder BB gun in “A Christmas Story” which is embarrassing, but remember: in that movie [spoiler alert] he ultimately got what he asked for. The significance of not getting what you ask for is different.

Not that I’m whining about it now or that I had gotten everything I ever wanted up until that Christmas. But it’s the first thing that I can remember specifically asking Santa for, that I later noticed I didn’t get. Which raised certain existential questions…

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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 16, 2011

Clown Cereal

Clown cereal boxes (Kellogg’s, General Mills & Post) were, I think, all from Dan Goodsell’s Flickr Photostream

My early childhood was spent in Sarasota, Florida, home of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College.

While clowns have been culturally waning for some time now, in those days, there was a show called “Circus Boy” on television (starring a young Micky Dolenz who grew up to become the Monkee‘s drummer) and there were lots of circus-themed packages at the grocery store. Not yet scary, clowns were still considered a good way to market children’s cereals.

Why the sudden interest in clowns, you ask?

(Asked and answered, after the fold…)

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December 14, 2011

Ron English: Popaganda Shopdropping

Ron English is the artist who created the zipper/banana album cover mash-up that we wrote about last January.

More recently he’s been doing some cereal box package design (i.e.: art) which he’s been shopdropping into supermarkets. These “popaganda” food repacks are subversive in the same dumb sort of way that Wacky Packages were: creating momentary consumer confusion and adding a satiric, negative spin to trademarked food brands.

Some commentators have taken the cereal series as nutritional agitprop in opposition of childhood obesity. I’m not sure that English’s agenda is so politically correct, but I could be wrong.

The fun part of shopdropping, however, is when consumers puzzle over the aberrant branding messages and, in some cases, blithely purchase them.

Part of the reason I prefer not think that English’s messaging is sincerely literal is the “Sugar Diabetic Bear” below, which in my (diabetic) view is amusing, but not entirly accurate. Yes, Type 2 diabetes can be brought on by obesity, but what about Type 1 diabetes? Eating sugar certainly didn’t cause my diabetes. (See: Diabetes Myths)

(One more thing about Ron English and diabetes, after the fold…)

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December 1, 2011

The Entenmann’s Box as Metaphor

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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November 18, 2011

Baby Shoemaker

Yesterday we looked at four makers of (adult-sized) cardboard shoes. Today we consider another ephemeral shoemaker, Catherine McEver (a.k.a. Rubblearium), whose handmade baby shoes were made from a variety of improbable materials.

Pictured above are shoes made out of emory cloth, cigarette pack foil, a sewing pattern, metal screen, sand paper and carbon paper.

… creations I made for a little art book called “All My Little Shoes,” an experiment in materials from gold mesh to meat.

Stuff You Can’t Have

In addition to her cigarette foil shoe above, another package-related shoe was made from a Campbell’s soup label. (Also awfully nice: her Astroturf shoe)

McEver recommends viewing these photos whilst listening to the Everley Brothers singing “Put My Little Shoes Away” which I am enabling you to do here…

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October 31, 2011

Hexagonal Halloween Candy Package Design

(A vintage, hexagonal, head-shaped carton with a jack-o’-lantern style die-cut face.) According to the Candy Professor:

“This hexagonal carton is an award winning package distributed by the Sierra Candy Company in 1956.”

Not clear who designed the package or what entitity awarded the award. The same box appears to have also been used by the J.D. Fine Candy Company. (Color photos are from Bindlegrim’s Flickr Photostream; the black and white photo is from Confectioners’s Journal, April 1956)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

October 21, 2011

Luxury Brand Package Design for Kids’ Cereals

Tricia Clarke-Stone’s Cereal Couture:

“I wanted to take something we all crave and give it a luxury lift. This tasty, chic collection gives a high-end, glam aesthetic to our favorite breakfast treats.”

Sip, Chat, Chow | The Glam Foodie

via: MKTG

(For a different take on “top shelf” kids’s cereals, see: Stealing Box Tops)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 17, 2011

Accordion Packs

Although one of the packages above is literally an accordion-shaped package, by “accordion pack” I really mean it more generally, as packages, designed “with features resembling an accordion or its bellows.”

With a need to contain varying quantities of a product, the bellows-like ability to smoothly expand and contract is a useful feature that many packages aspire to. The folded gusset of the once ubiquitous brown paper bag is, perhaps, the simplest application of this mechanism.

Here are 5 (more recent) examples:

1. Auberge du Soleil’s “squeeze box” package (designed by Evelio Mattos of Design Packaging Inc.) uses an accordion-like structure, first to protect, and then to expose its contents…

Built completely out of folding board, the squeeze box concept developed for Auberge du Soleil Napa Valley is 100% recyclable. The hand-made truffles are well protected by the internal divider which moves with the box and allows for optimal product display.

Evelio Mattos, LuxCrux

2. Camille Bloch’s “Accordéon” is an assortment of 6 Swiss chocolate bars, contained in a “twin-pack” of tins, connected by a bellows. According to Global Packaging Gallery, this package includes a “music module which plays Swiss music.” I’m interpreting that to mean that the bellows are merely conceptual, that electronic accordian music is emitted and that this package is a simulacrum and not a fully functioning “wind instrument.” (Correct me if I’m wrong.)

3. Popular Noise’s record cover construction for their series of 3-issue “record releases” is also an accordion related package. (via: The Dieline) The bellows-like expansion, is particularly remarkable, considering it appears to be made from a single, unglued piece of rectangular paper:

“The packaging folds out to a beautiful letter-pressed poster containing information about the Journal, the musicians, and the compositional process.”

–The Journal of Popular Noise

(Examples 4 & 5, after the fold…)

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