packaging as content

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

November 15, 2011

Pensioners and Packaged Foods: Best Before …

“My wife’s 90-year-old grandmother — having lived through World War II — doesn’t believe in “best before” dates. It made eating at her house rather exciting. Sadly, she had to move to a home and clearing out her larder was as thrilling as being offered a snack. All the products here — going back decades — were, I believe, intended to be eaten.

James Kendall, “Best Before”

James Kendall’s photos of vintage (but still viable?) packaged foods, I can relate to on a personal level…

My late grandmother had a similar disinclination to discard foodstuffs. An elderly box of Nesselroad Pudding in her cupboard was an ongoing joke with my brothers and me.

Of course, in these days of reality television, all types of hoarding are undergoing a closer social scrutiny. Looking at my grandmother’s situation in retrospect, I now regret the smug superiority that we felt towards her housekeeping and her kitchen.

That certainty of ours — that my grandmother was crazy to think that anyone in their right mind would consider eating her box of Nesselroad pudding — was just a part of our being young and newly competent.

“Best before…” certainly does not constitute a drop dead expiration date. It’s more like a serving suggestion, really.

Best before or best by dates appear on a wide range of frozen, dried, tinned and other foods. These dates are only advisory and refer to the quality of the product, in contrast with use by dates, which indicate that the product is no longer safe to consume after the specified date. In spite of this, about a third of food bought is thrown away while still edible.

Wikipedia’s entry on Shelf Life

It’s easy to see why older people might want to push the envelope in this regard. It might even be an inescapable geriatric rule — that as we get older, the food from our kitchen will become increasingly less appetizing to our children. Whether this will be due to failing eyesight, financial hardship or simply our own declining standards of “freshness” is hard to say. Maybe all of the above.

Even if our children become freegans, their food will certainly be fresher than the food in these photos. But so what? Assuming the meal worms and pantry moths have not beaten you to that box of pudding mix: just dust off the top and you’re good to go.

If we can set aside our personal judgments about the “freshness” of packaged products, the importance of packaging in the lives of pensioners becomes more obvious…

(Why packaged food is preferable to home-cooked, after the fold…)

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October 28, 2011

Homophonic Consumer Confusion: Oxol Doll ≠ Oxydol

On left: a bottle of “Oxol” cleaner from a 1929 ad appearing in The Kingston Daily Freeman; on right: an Oxydol box for sale on eBay for $17.90

In the previous post we compared Oxydol’s early package design to Opal’s stunningly similar packaging. Same basic design, but different product categories — so no trademark infringement there.

Oxydol and Oxol, on the other hand, were both cleaning products. Their package design was not confusingly similar, but the manufacturers of these two products were nonetheless pitted against each other in the landmark trademark infringement case of PROCTER & GAMBLE CO. v. J. L. PRESCOTT CO.

In testimony about an ongoing Oxol radio promotion, Procter & Gamble set out to prove that Oxol had deliberately chosen a “doll” as a free product premium, in order for its “Oxol doll” to be mistaken for “Oxydol” and “sought to profit by the confusion that would result.”

“When you buy a bottle of Oxol, take the label off and send it to the Oxol trio in care of this Station, or address your letter to the J. L. Prescott Company, Passaic, New Jersey. … In return, they will send you the gaily colored "Oxol" rag doll that children love. … And don’t forget to send in an Oxol label for one of those little Oxol Rag Dolls.” The substance of this broadcast was repeated many times. Upon several occasions radio announcers referred directly to the “Oxol doll”. Instructions for completing the “Oxol doll” were sent to all who requested the doll from the Prescott Company.

It is obvious that when the tongue pronounces the words “Oxol doll”, or when the mind operates to put these two words together, a connection in thought between Procter & Gamble’s product and Prescott’s product is inescapable. Such a connection must have occurred to the Prescott Company. Why then was such advertising made use of? The answer is obvious. Ground for mistake in the public mind as to Oxydol and Oxol was well laid and the resulting confusion may not be described as a coincidence.

Confusion as to which company was offering the doll in return for the label immediately came to pass and this was admitted by one of Prescott’s officers. Many housewives sent Oxydol labels to Procter & Gamble and demanded the Oxol doll. An examination of the letters in evidence seems to indicate that the persons writing them were ordinary members of the purchasing public. One housewife wrote, “Am sending the clip off of the Oxydol box. Would you please send us one of your rag dolls…”. Another wrote, “Enclosed is a clipping from Oxydol. Kindly send me a rag doll, as promised over Radio.”

PROCTER & GAMBLE CO. v. J. L. PRESCOTT CO., 1931
via: Leagle.com

Assuming that the correct product label was sent, what the Oxol customer ultimately received via return mail was this:

Above: the “Oxol Doll” and the envelope that it came in (via: eBay)

Looks more like a paper doll than the “rag doll” they advertised, but “truth in advertising” is perhaps not so stringent when it comes to free promotional items.

(See also: Packaging and Consumer Confusion)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

September 22, 2011

Mixing Toothpaste Brands

Steve Vigneau’s 2008 experiment in which he combined expired sample tubes of competing toothpaste brands, Colgate & Crest…

Reminiscent of Ciprian Muresan’s video “Choose” (in which his son pours equal parts of Coke & Pepsi into one glass and then drinks it) — Vigneau’s project also combines competing products in an inseparable mixture.

“I stirred it all together, found that a spoon will almost stand up in it, then put some on my toothbrush and brushed my teeth with it.”

Here, however, the colorful bowl of toothpaste trumps any corporate rivalry between Colgate and Crest. It’s more like a lesson in subtractive color theory using admixtures of artificial coloring.

How does it all taste when they’re mixed together? [Colgate Total Advanced Fresh Gel and 10 different varieties of Crest]

“This multi-sample toothpaste concoction didn’t taste bad, but was overwhelmingly mint backed by a few other unidentifiable herbs.”

(A couple more photos, after the fold…)

(more…)

August 30, 2011

Real & Imaginary PANTONE Package Design

Seeing Room Copenhagen’s new “Pantone Universe” products at Gift Fair (like the multicolored, Mobius-strip shaped hangers above, left) set me to thinking about all the various and sundry packaged Pantone products—real and imagined. (Poster illustration on right is by Base Design)

Although many graphic designers seem to identify with this brand, it always seemed to me that the market for multicolored PANTONE accessories ought to be a pretty small niche. There would undoubtedly be brand loyalists who would happily eat, sleep & breath the PANTONE logo, but those consumers should be far fewer in numbers, than, say, consumers willing to wear a Coca Cola logo.

Pantone is ubiquitous in graphics departments around the world, the metric by which designers define just the right shade of blue for the Gap's logo (Pantone 655) and the perfect pink for Barbie's (Pantone 820). Pantone chips likewise help Kellogg's enhance a cereal box to stand out on the shelf by using "spot" colors more vibrant than the mixes that emerge from the standard four-color printing press.

Allison Fass, “The Color of Money”
Forbes, 2003

Still, despite a certain backlash tendency, there seems to be no shortage of licensing deals and creative energy expended in this direction.

Personally, I find the PANTONE color system a bit kludgy and cumbersome.

Their solid color matching system requires that printers have a set of 14 different PANTONE approved base color inks, in order to correctly mix all of the admixture hues and tones. To me, this is like some inelegant logarithmic table, compared to the simple and logical algebra of CMYK— with 4 process colors.

For certain colors, however, specially mixed solid color inks will be much brighter than CMYK combinations. Correctly specifying those “spot” colors has become increasingly important for retail consumer packaging and for that PANTONE has no competition.

Real and imaginary PANTONE products are generally much more effective when displayed in a multicolored group. (See: Rainbow Array Packaging) Although PANTONE cannot trademark the idea of a color assortment, in the minds of many designers, color = PANTONE.

Graphically, these package designs are usually minimal, based as they are on the layout of a tiny color chip swatch with PANTONE’s Helvetica logo and identifying code number.

(1,114 examples, after the fold…)

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August 24, 2011

Package Design on Your iPhone

Inexplicable drawn to Zero Gravity’s both at Gift Fair. When I saw some of their package-design iPhone cases, I figured that’s what must have been calling to me. Not all of their phone cases are designed to resemble consumer packaged goods, but enough so that it raises some questions. We’ve seen other cases of devices being made to look like packaging… cameras, radios and, yes, telephones.

But since Apple is unlikely to come out with cross-branded varieties of iPhone, if you are determined to possess a Velveeta iPhone, it falls to 3rd party venders of iPhone accessories to meet your needs.

Of course, there are also other package-related iPhone cases with different degrees of DIY.

Joanna Behar was experimenting with a candy-branded iPhone—(candy wrappers placed underneath a transparent iPhone case)…

In both of these examples—Zero Gravity’s faux-packaging and Johanna Behar’s DIY candy branding—the glossy plastic surface belies any sincere intention to fool the eye. These are still coveted hi-tech gadgets—with a glossy veneer of ironic low-brow branding.

Another DIY example: “Randomly Ross” has a Flickr Photostream about making iPhone cases from juice boxes and also offers them for sale on ArtBoxe.

Here’s a case in which the packaging cover serves a more truly undercover role:

“I was trying to find a material to make a case for electronic devices that would be durable, but not attract attention. Truth be told, the thing that first attracted me to juice-boxes is that they are ubiquitous and uninteresting. If someone looks into your purse and sees a book, some keys and a juice box, they aren't going to take the juice box. What if they see a brand new iPhone?”

In titling this post, it struck me how “Package Design on Your iPhone” could be interpreted two ways: as a covering to put on your iPhone and as an activity to do on your iPhone. Then I wondered, is there an app for that?

And I’m not the first pose the question. (See: Richard Shear’s Free iPhone package design app)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 22, 2011

Geografia’s Polyhedral Planet

We went to Gift Fair last week (NYIGF) and one of the booths where I lingered the longest belonged to Geografia, a company that makes polyhedral paper globe kits, among other things.

When I saw the cube-shaped globe, above left, I said, “I bet that‘s a magic cube.” Sure enough the “Earth & Sky Twistable Globe” was a fully-functioning, folding and unfolding “magic cube” made from 8 smaller cubes—(the same sort of cube as our own Gumball Cube Pack).

In one state, the “Twistable Globe” shows a map of the world. Turned inside-out, it shows a map of the stars. (Really like the inside-outside / introvert-extrovert idea of this.)

Another intriguing reversible globe was their “Lands & Nations Flippable Globe” which was very similar to Jessica Comin’s “laranja mecánica” that we looked at recently. In her case, the cube could be turned inside-out to form a rhombic dodecahedron. The “Flippable Globe” is a cube that can be turned inside-out to form a regular dodecahedron. And its parts are tabbed, rather than permanently hinged together.

The projection of maps onto polyhedral shapes is something that Buckminster Fuller and others have also explored, but Geografia’s products manage to provide fascinating new polyhedral perspectives and (geo)graphic insights.

Here’s a video showing one of their “Sectional Globes” being assembled…

(We’ll be featuring more stuff from Gift Fair over the next week or two.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 11, 2011

On the “Stree” Where I Live (Pornographic Branding)

In a way, this one’s a follow up to Karen Abel’s PBR flowers. Like her, I found some discarded packaging in an empty planter. Unlike her, I’m not thinking of making these into flowers.

Unusual to see such a sexually explicit illustration on a retail package. If this were a trend, what would we call it? Pornographic branding? Pornographic graphic design? (See also: Packaging Junk)

At first I thought it was a condom package—a common enough form of litter in our neighborhood.

Printed on a fancy holographic foil stock… Muti-national flag icons lined up in a row, but all the text was in Japanese so I couldn’t read what it said. I searched for the UPC number in Google and learned that it’s a Japanese patent-medicine sex-pill called “Stree Overlord” (sometimes misspelled as “Street Overload”) Not a condom package, after all.

It turns out that this product is one of many mysterious “herbal” products sold at the deli on our corner, even though there’s evidence online of the FDA intercepting imports of Stree Overlord because “Required label or labeling appears to not be in English” and because “The article appears to be a new drug without an approved new drug application.”

But those aren’t the only regulations that Mayo Kaisha Pharmacy Export Ltd. is flouting. They are also trampling trademark law. The two characters on the box are Chun-Li and Ryu from the Capcom video game known as “Street Fighter.”

Interestingly, Stree Overlord’s own trademark is also being infringed upon. Their web site has one page complaining:

“It has come to our attention that Stree Overlord has become so popular that many have decided to duplicated and copy from us to try and take away what we have worked so hard for.”

(There are now counterfeit versions of the product being manufactured in China.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 4, 2011

Jonna Pedersen:
Product Stories & the Inner Lives of Packaging

As branding experts tell it, “narrative marketing” is the best way to sell something. “Tell the product’s story,” they say, “and consumers will listen.” But whatever story the brand chooses to tell, there are other, more personal stories that consumers will also hear.

Danish painter, Jonna Pedersen, explaining her recent focus on packaging, says, “To me, the outside says something about the inside. It’s all about reading the barcode.”

A product logo can unleash half-forgotten memories and sensations. We have all had this experience. Expressing the zeitgeist, consumer products can become cultural icons. Product graphics and packaging obviously matter. Visual impact and narrativity characterize those products that are deemed “classic.”

…A consumer product’s iconography is always ambiguous… A product’s packaging inherently carries a visual or textual content signaling what’s inside. There is no controlling the meanings and values that the consumer subsequently attributes to the product. That is entirely dependent on an individual’s baggage and frames of reference. In principle, the product is open to uncontrollable added meanings.

… Jonna Pedersen’s stories about consumer goods are more than representations of actual objects. They are images of our time. Familiar objects from our cultural heritage are interpreted and painted: graphic imprints and sensual experiences with numerous cultural, social and geographical references. Images of uniquely Danish products alongside images of exotic products, Greek olives or American ketchup, tell a story about an upheaval in Danish (food) culture.

Excerpts from Bente Jensen’s essay, “Product Stories”
from the book Documentary, Jonna Pedersen: Painting

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 3, 2011

The Incomplete Package Revisted

This is a follow-up to an earlier article about packaging designed with photos, graphics or typography wrapping around the corners. Here’s another batch of cartons with that kind of wrap-around imagery.

Look at one of these boxes from one side and you see only part of the picture. Viewed from a corner angle, the picture is complete and cubistically 3-dimensional.

Boxes designed using this technique also open up interesting display possibilities, since they can be stacked in ways that will complete the incomplete side pictures.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

June 7, 2011

Bottles from Dead Horse Bay

For your uncapped-landfill viewing pleasure: here are the bottles, jars and one glass syringe that I selected from Sunday’s trip to the beach. Mud washed out but still with a patina of algae. And a few barnacles.

We’ll take a closer look at a few of these during the next few days. (It’s curated Dead Horse Bay bottle week on box vox!)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

June 3, 2011

Older Guys with Record Player Cars (3 Kinds)

While looking at engine-shaped recordings, I noticed that there were three kinds of record-player car:

A. cars with built-in record players…

The video does not show this car’s owner, but I consider bandleader, Lawrence Welk to be the spiritual father of the onboard car record-player. (Since he appears in 1956 ads as a spokeman for the new gadget)

B. toy cars that play records…

There’s lots of “vinyl killer” commentary about this device but I like the appreciative “Record Runner” video from Grand Illusions the best. The gent demonstrating is Tim Rowett.

C. cars that are made out of record players…

This would make a better story, visually, if the record player parts that Martin Gutierrez Sandoval had used to customize his VW were more signifying of record players—like say the turntables or the stylus arms—but whatever part that is that he had 2,470 of (by the time he had retired from the Gerrard record player factory) they do give his ultra-ventilated car, a delicately lacy look.

Interesting that 2 out of 3 of our record-player cars are VW. (See Also: Volkswagen Box)

About the older guys: the only question in my mind is “Which kind do I want to be?”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 17, 2011

Magic Folding Cans

Aside from yesterday’s example, most “magic folding cubes” are not packages, although some of them are designed to resemble packaging.

And among the various “magic folding cube” structures are topologically-similar cylindrical versions, sometimes called “magic cans” …

(More photos and video, after the fold…)

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May 16, 2011

Gumball Cube Pack

Seeing projects like Sophie Valentine’s “Capitalism vs. Socialism” and Regina Rebele’s 2008 “Type-Cube” made me wonder if there was a practicable way that this type of “magic folding cube” could be designed as a box to actually contain something.

Ideally, I would have liked it best if the whole thing—all 8 boxes with tucks & glue flaps—could have been folded from a single die-cut shape. That doesn’t appear to be possible, although it was easy enough to get it down to just 4 pieces which must then be hinged together.

But what sort of product should such a package contain? Gumballs, I decided. Stupid, I guess, to envision such an elaborate package for such an inexpensive product, but demographically appropriate as a candy pack for kids. Like something that Topps might have considered doing in the 1970s. And as our video clearly shows, these gumballs really needed to be contained.

Anyway, this is just Gumball Cube-Pack Mach 1. There are some further structural improvements I have in mind to try next. (If you’re listening, Topps, please give us call. We’d love to hook you up.)

(Some still photos, after the fold…)

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May 4, 2011

Product Placement at Bin Laden’s Compound

The television set that I mostly watched in 2001, was one with an antenna (rather than a cable) that we had in our kitchen. After September 11, the only network our kitchen TV could pick up was ABC. (Apparently the competing stations relied on transmitters atop one of the twin towers.)

It was during that time that I got into the habit of watching ABC news.

This week, when I first saw the helmet-cam video of Bin Laden’s bedroom, it struck me that there were shots of packaging and clutter that constituted a problematic sort of product placement for manufacturers. Would Vaseline really want its customers to know they were using the same brand of petroleum jelly as Osama Bin Laden?

Unfortunately, I seem to have been scooped by Diane Sawyer and Nick Schifrin. Last night ABC took us on a frame-by-frame packaging reconnaissance through the video, in a piece entitled, “Osama Bin Laden Dead: Osama’s Medicine Cabinet.”

This report even included 3D packages (identified by product type, rather than brand name) against a hi-tech grid with cross-hair sights. Similar to the graphics that Sarah Palin was criticized for, only here the targets are packages, rather than political opponents. In Bin Laden’s compound, of course, the shooting had already occurred and packages were not the target. (Although shooting at packaging is a traditional form of target practice.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 3, 2011

Laxakola

On left: Laxakola packaging from Harvest of History; on right: photo from Mr. History’s Flickr Photostream

I usually post something here regularly, Monday through Friday, but yesterday I couldn’t quite manage it… I knew that I wanted to feature the “Laxakola” bottle above, but I was stuck on the idea of comparing or contrasting it with Coca-Cola, and it just wasn’t happening.

Then I found this story by turn-of-the-century adman, Charles Austin Bates, and thought it was way more interesting…

Story of a Patent Medicine That Was Introduced by an Advertising Expert.

I am invited to tell the story of Laxakola.

It is a sad tale.

It was in 1899 that I listened to the siren song of Samuel M. Crombie, and was lured into an effort to establish a patent medicine business.

Before that I had known that Dr. Pierce had an assortment of steam yachts, house boats, and other things that seemed to me desirable, and that Dr. Shoop owned the finest dogs and guns in the State of Wisconsin, and had sufficient leisure to enjoy them.

I knew all about how Dr. J. C. Ayer had made his millions in sarsaparilla, and how the inventor of California Fig Syrup was living on Nob Hill in San Francisco.

The patent medicine business certainly does look beautiful—from the outside.

Mr. Crombie had invented Laxakola, and had induced quite a number of people in Ypsilanti to use it. I tested it out on various unsuspecting friends, and it seemed all right.

There didn’t seem to be any reason why I should insist on keeping the good thing all to myself, so a prospectus was sent out, inviting subscriptions to the stock of the company. The capitalization was modest—only three million dollars.

The circular was headed: “A Rare Chance for a Gamble,” and in it was set forth the stories I had accumulated, which told of the fabulous wealth of all the patent medicine men and the ease with which it had been acquired.

Incidentally, subscriptions to the stock of the Laxakola Company were invited from people who were prepared to lose without weeping and wailing, and it was distinctly stated that we did not want money from any one who, if he lost his money, would wear sackcloth and ashes the balance of his life.

Pretty quickly, we had subscriptions for sixty or seventy thousand dollars, and, in addition to this, the company had on hand quite a large amount of space in newspapers over the country, this space having been accumulated in the course of my business as an advertising agent and publisher. That looked like a pretty good start, especially as we had in Mr. Crombie a man who had had long experience in the drug business, both as a retailer and as a salesman on the road for jobbing and manufacturing druggists.

Nevertheless, it seemed to me that we needed all the wisdom we could get. and, on the recommendation of John Adams Thayer and William C. Freeman, of the Journal, diplomatic negotiations were entered into with Joseph Hamlin Phinney, Jr., the then manager of the Cuticura business.

Mr. Phinney came over and talked to us, and his conversation sounded so good and positive that we were sure we could not get along without him.

We showed Mr. Phinney our bank book, and he said that if our stuff was any good, he couldn’t see any use for all that money—that five thousand dollars ought to be plenty. Also, he told us the story of the start of the Cuticura business, when Mr. Geo. R. White put some large vigorous ads in the Boston Sunday Globe, and on Monday morning had to call out the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, of Boston, to quell the riot of those seeking Cuticura at the doors of the Weeks & Potter Co.

When it came to terms, Mr. Phinney said all he wanted was a nice square chunk of money at the end of each month, and a larger oblong bundle of stock at the end of the year if he sold either fifty thousand or one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Laxakola—I don’t remember which was the sum, but that is immaterial, because the entire sales from that time to this day have not equaled either of them.

With all of our immense advertising ability, combined with the medicine knowledge of Mr. Crombie and Mr. Phinney, and with about forty thousand dollars of real money in the Chemical Bank, it looked as if we were ready to go ahead. So we turned the crank a few times and started off at the third speed.

Crombie was sure that our only salvation lay in co-operating with the Proprietary Medicine Association, the Retail Druggists’ Association and the Jobbers’ Association.

Phinney, having gone through several fights with these aggregations, knew of a very definite and very warm locality to which he was not only willing, but anxious, to consign them.

The result was that we tried out Laxakola in the West on the Crombie plan, and in Boston and New England on the Phinney plan.

Phinney’s idea was to put the ads in the papers and let the druggists “go to blazes.” He knew that if we sent in enough calls for the stuff, the druggists would have to buy.

Crombie’s idea was to canvass the druggist, sell him as much Laxakola as he would consent to buy, and then advertise to help him get rid of it.

I believe they are both good systems, but neither one of them created any excitement at the Laxakola office.

We did manage to place a few gross, but after a few months we found that we were not getting any re-orders. Instead, we were getting some complaints intermixed among the testimonials.

Various experiments seemed to demonstrate that when Laxakola was fresh out of the barrel it was all right, but, after a few months of close communion in the bottle, some of the other ingredients so acted on the senna, as to render it wholly ineffectual and thus eliminated the “early-rising” feature so essential in such preparations.

By the time we had this trouble located and corrected, and had exchanged new Laxakola for old, we had managed to get rid of a very large part of our cash.

We had proven to our own dissatisfaction that, in our case at least, Mr. Phinney’s plan wouldn’t work, so we employed some salesmen to go into the smaller towns, sell Laxakola to the druggist, make an advertising contract with the newspaper, and arrange for a distribution of booklets.

There were some weeks in which tht salesmen’s gross sales amounted to almost as much as their salaries. That was encouraging, but not profitable. However, we seemed to gain a little ground all the while, so that by the end of the third or fourth year, it looked as if there might be a week sometimes in which we would pay expenses—if we regarded the advertising expenditure as an investment and not as an expense.

We never did quite reach that delectable time, and it was continuously necessary to get more money to go ahead with.

At this point there came to the front a gentleman with a true sporting spirit—Mr. Hamilton Carhartt, of Detroit, who, when he is not touring the Continent in his de Luxe devil-wagon, is engaged in manufacturing clothing which only Union men are permitted to wear.

Mr. Carhartt originally came into the gamble with five thousand dollars. Later on. he added five thousand dollars more, and still later agreed to pay in two hundred dollars a week up to ten thousand dollars additional.

After paying this for a number of weeks, a slight frost set in in the region of his pedal extremities, and he expressed unwillingness to go ahead with the proposition unless some of the other four or five hundred stockholders would also chip in. None of them exhibited any wild desire to do so.

(The rest of the story & a Laxakola testimonial ad, after the fold…)

(more…)

March 18, 2011

Keroggubokkusu Corn Flakes Lip Balm

We’ve covered the licensed lip balm thing once before in 2008. Here, the product line is specifically Kellogg’s cereal-flavored (or cereal-scented?) lip balms. Apparently manufactured in Taiwan by Lotta Luv, the pictures above were found on Nut2Deco.com.

Keroggubokkusu (Lip Cream) Corn Flakes [LVL-K2]

Kellogg's（ケロッグ）のレトロなシリアルボックスが、ちっちゃなミニチュアサイズのリップクリームになりました♪

Kellogg’s (Kellogg), serial box, retro, ♪ become little miniature lip balm

下のツマミをくるくる回すと、中のリップクリームが上にあがってきます。

Twirl the knob and the lower lip balm you will be nervous on the inside.

通常、コーンフレークは甘みのないシリアルなんですが、海外の人達はシュガー＆ミルクをかけてたべるのが一般的ならしく、そのイメージを表現した甘いフレーバーになっています。

Typically, a serial cereal is not just a non-sweet, Sugar & Narashiku foreign people typically eat over the milk, sweet flavor that has become a representation of that image.

(Google translation of product description)

As with the earlier lip balms we’ve looked at, some are package-shaped. Two are shaped like miniature variety pack boxes. The others are shaped like conventional ChapStick tubes. Although there was that one cylindrical Kellogg’s corn flakes package that we looked at this week… so maybe they are all package-shaped. (And each of these miniature packages is packaged, in turn, in a carded blister pack.)

(See also: Packaging Charms)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design