packaging as content

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

December 31, 2010

The Velvet Underground: Book & Banana

Only collectible because of the influential band that named themselves after a copy they found in the street: this 1963 paperback “The Velvet Underground” by Michael Leigh (on left) was given to me as a birthday present around 1983–84. (from someone in another rather influential band)

Can’t say I’ve ever read it cover to cover, but I like the whippy “T” typography and have kept it in its protective plastic for 28 years. (Also: am I crazy or is the S&M boot illustration by Paul Bacon Studio on the cover kind of related to Warhol’s early shoe illustration work?)

The book on the right was a 1968 follow up sequel. (Nice that it features a photo of the earlier book.)

Also collectible: the first Velvet Underground album (below left)—the one with the peel-able yellow banana skin sticker. (We have one of those too, but only because Debby was cool enough to buy one and her records are mixed in with mine.) It always struck me funny how Andy Warhol’s signature was so prominent with no mention at all of the Velvet Underground or Nico on the front cover. Similar to Robert Brownjohn’s humorously arrogant stationery design for Michael Cooper. (Of course there might have been more information on a label affixed to the disposable shrink-wrap…)

The album with the green banana (on right) is the 2007 “Unripened” bootleg LP, made from an acetate pressing of an earlier version of the official 1967 release. (different mixes, different takes, etc.)

On the original cover the small printed instructions read, “PEEL SLOWLY AND SEE”; the instructions next to the green banana read, “UNRIPENED LISTEN SLOWLY AND HEAR.”

There are lots of other versions of (and allusions to) this album cover, and Warhol’s silkscreened banana design has been pretty influential in its own right.

(A bootleg book/record cover and some related Warhol/Velvets banana merchandise, after the fold…)

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December 15, 2010

Lego Packaging

Lego packaging, three kinds:

1. CPG sculptures made out of Legos. (e.g.: David Hoffmann’s Krylon can above & T-Reichling’s Coke can below)

2. Self-similar Lego containers with lids designed to make them resemble Lego bricks. (Another example below)

3. The miniature doll-house-style packages that are included in certain Lego “Scala” kits. (Photos below via: ebay)

(More CPG sculptures, after the fold…)

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December 10, 2010

Can-Gun

Following the Krylon-spray-paint-can & guns thread, I discovered the existence of a package-related product I hadn’t known about: the original “can-gun.” A ergonomic trigger attachment designed to make spray painting less taxing for the index finger.

Originally invented by Paul Hutchinson & Alan Serginson and assigned to Can-Gun Limited. Licensed to various companies, including Krylon. Generally comes packaged on a hook-rack card. Also comes in black.

(See 1st page of patent, after the fold…)

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November 16, 2010

Jack Daniel’s Mustard

I bought and photographed the jar above in 2008, but I’m only now getting around to posting it.

Jack Daniel’s Mustard: another surprising —(but not completely counter-intuitive)— brand extension.

Managers often introduce brand extensions that differ significantly from their current product lines (e.g., Jack Daniels Mustard). Even though they do not introduce these extensions with the expectation that they will be negatively received or perform badly, such problems may indeed happen (e.g., Bic Perfume, Harley Davidson Wine Coolers).

Managing Negative Feedback Effects Associated With Brand Extensions: The Impact of Alternative Branding Strategies
(1997) by Milberg, Park & McCarthy

Unlike the ephemeral Marlboro Beer, Jack Daniel’s Mustard (manufactured by Marzetti and on the market for at least 13 years) appears to be enjoying some longevity. (And may just be the tip of the iceberg for Jack Daniel’s brand extensions.)

(More mustard varieties, after the fold…)

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November 5, 2010

Robert Loughlin’s Brutish Re-Branding

Some package-related artworks by Robert Loughlin. Prolific and single-minded, Loughlin has been painting “the brute” —(his signature squared-jawed smoking man)— on innumerable objects and surfaces since the early 1980s.¹ That some of these objects would be packages, only stands to reason. In tagging them with his own de facto logo, Loughlin² has, in effect re-branded them:

The vintage Mobil Oil can, the Brillo Box³, the perfume bottle picture—(I’m guessing that’s a magazine ad, rather than an actual bottle?)— Kodak Carousel Slide Tray boxes, a record label, a Sears Blanket insert card…

In recent years, Loughlin’s cartoonish, hyper-masculine, smoking “brute” has been featured in The New York Times, Apartment Therapy, Design Boom, etc. While most cite partner, Gary Carlson and his muse and inspiration for “the brute” motif, another important influence may be Leo Burnett’s “Marlboro Man” as the magazine clipping below (from Loughlin’s photo web site) seems to suggest.

Filters at the time were described by Leo Burnett as “sissy”. Real men didn’t smoke filter tipped cigarettes. … Marlboro sold masculinity in 1954 by being the first brand to use “real men” versus the prior models. And what men! They showed football players, cowboys, airplane pilots, and sailors. These were tough, real men… The ads were not just masculine, but were single-mindedly masculine They portrayed manly, rugged men doing manly, rugged jobs.

From Tobacco Documents Online: page 1 of “The Marlboro Success Story,”
a 1985 marketing report made available online as a result of the Master Settlement Agreement

(What is the deal with the guns and the Marlboro pack above? Are the guns little? Or is it an oversized cigarette pack? I don’t know.) The machine gun on the left, is a vintage Tru-matic brand toy machine gun, painted and signed by the artist.

There is also Luke Joerger's film Pickers and Grinners which documents Loughlin’s prowess as a preeminent NY antique picker…

(See a clip of this movie—that features celebrity gossip & packaging—after the fold…)

(more…)

November 3, 2010

Single Serve Stemware Packs

More upscale and socially-acceptable than mini-liquor bottles:

“Wine Innovations deleveloped this ingenious concept of a single serving wine glasses called The Tulip. Just like a container of yogurt it has a peal-off foil lid. The wine is sealed using patented technology to maintain wine quality and to give a shelf life of over 1 year. The wine glass are filled with red, white or rose wine and is made from plastic so there are no worries of broken glass.”

GilbertMusings.com

(Photo of store display, after the fold…)

(more…)

November 1, 2010

Blood Bag Packaging

Oh yeah. Halloween. I guess that was yesterday. Oh well: a penny late and a pint short.

Among the packaging meant to resemble blood bags, Halloween candy figures most prominently—but other products (that are not specifically Halloween-related) will also occasionally embrace this gimmick…

…like heat packs and ice packs (blood bags that come in boxes)…

…or “Blood Bath” brand shower gel.

(More photos and examples, after the fold…)

(more…)

September 8, 2010

Rat-Nip Rebranded?

Following yesterday’s thread about rodenticide manufacturers alluding to pets, I thought “Rat-Nip” an insidiously playful name.

“RAT-NIP is a genuine rat confection, rats love it just the way cats love CAT-NIP. Not a rat can resist it.”

–from an ad in the Journal of The Jamaica Agricultural Society, 1911

In 1908 The Futon Chemical Company registered the trademark for RATNIP on the left.
In 1923 NIP-CO Manufacturing, Inc. registered the trademark for RAT NIP on the right. Both are trademarks for a rat poison, but I can’t tell for sure whether they are the same product rebranded or confusingly similar trademarked product names.

The hand-lettered Ratnip trademark on left (described as a “drawing with words in stylized form”) to my 20th Century eyes, skews to psychedelic. It reminds me now of certain House Industries fonts. (Not surprising, given that a lot of psychedelic typography was indeed based on early, turn-of-the-Century sources.)

I haven’t been able to find any packaging or advertising with this hand-lettered version of the logo, but, given that the back-slanting, sans-serif logo (on right) wasn’t even registered until 1923, I’m guessing there may be some bottles or jars out there with the hand-lettered logo. All of the packaging that I’ve found so far—(like the box on right from ChangoBlanco’s Flickr Photostream)—uses the 1923 trademark.

When I first saw the back-slanting Rat-Nip logo I figured it was from the 1940s or 50s and that the wacky backward leaning type was meant to imply knocking rats over backwards—corresponding to the upside down victim in the illustration with the lighting bolt.

But another name that appears on the back of some Rat-Nip packages is The Liquid Veneer Company. “Liquid Veneer” was a furniture polish and their trademark, registered in 1906, is strikingly similar to the back-slanting Rat-Nip logo.

In fact, if you take a look at early “Liquid Veneer” packaging—also red, yellow & black; also with a back-slanting logo—it starts to look as if Rat-Nip’s packaging was designed in the “house style” of Liquid Veneer.

(More Rat-Nip packaging, after the fold…)

(more…)

September 6, 2010

Poisoning & Product Placement

Photo of Ocean Spray Cran-Apple™ bottle from Amazon.com; photo of Cowley’s Cowley’s Rat and Mouse Poison label from AgitpropDevices’ Flickr Photostream

The bottle on the right is the same embossed rat bottle we featured last Thursday—only with its label still attached. Why have I paired it with a bottle of Ocean Spray’s Cran-Apple?

Both products figured into a notorious Texas murder case. Below is an excerpt from Texas Ranger, Bill Gerth’s reminiscences about the investigation of Jerry Sternadel’s murder:

A secretary poisoned her boss over a period of time. And her and the wife were doing it…. It was an arsenic poisoning case… Sheriff Bogard called me one time and …he said I’ve got something here I really don’t know what I have. I said what do you have? And he said the hospital called me and said there was a man died up here of arsenic poisoning and he’s from Clay County.

…And we went out and talked to the secretary and talked to the wife. … he had made about three visits to the hospital here and nobody in the world ever snapped on that arsenic poisoning. But we went through the records and they knew about it two or three weeks before he died, you know? And they kept visiting up here and every time they’d visit, he’d have a relapse. He’d get sicker and sicker. I think they were giving it to him in the hospital. So he finally died. He died of acute arsenic poisoning.

Well, we went out one day, this was kind of funny. We went out and talked to the grieving widow and we’re talking… said do you mind if we search out here and see if we can find any arsenic or anything? She said no, you just search to you little heart’s content. We got a consent to search so we went out.

Most of the people living in the country throw all their garbage in a pit. Well, Bogard… [says] since I’m the sheriff of this county and you’re assisting, you need to get in that pit and dig around (laughter). I said yeah, I kind of figured that’s why you brought me along you know. So I jumped in the pit… being like I was. And I found an Ocean Spray Cranapple jug… had the cap on it. And it had about oh… a quarter inch of water in it. I said you know all the cranapple juice I ever saw was kind of a different color. Somebody washed this out. So we just seized that and we sent to forensic. The Institute of Forensic Science in Dallas did the autopsy… And that water in that bottle contained enough arsenic to kill half the people in Jolly. And I said my god, Bogard, do you know what we’ve found? We have found the smoking cranapple jug (laughter). And of course we had a little humor there. And I said by god, this is a bad deal. They, they poisoned him and killed him. He was worth several million dollars…..

And we worked on this case and uh we never could come up with the arsenic and that was one of the key things… we didn’t have enough evidence to indict either one of them.

So it rocked along… we waited two years. And uh Jake got a call one day from a storage locker out there on the Seymour highway. He said I just got a locker out here that hadn’t paid their rent. And uh I opened the door and there’s a bunch of articles in here from a lady in Holiday. And the, the secretary’s name was Debbie Baker. And the lady that rented the locker used a fictitious name but she used her righteous address in Holiday, the real Debbie Baker’s address. That was a clue. I said oh, I smell a rat here, Bogard.

So we got a search warrant. We went back in there and we inventoried everything in that storage locker. And we found a little bottle of Cowley’s Rat and Mouse Poison which contains arsenic. And it had about three quarters of it gone. And I kind of laughed… this will help us. This is a smoking Cowley’s arsenic bottle. And that’s what got her indicted.

Excerpt from 2008 Oral History Interview with Texas Ranger Bill Gerth
©2009 Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum

September 2, 2010

Rat Bottles

Cowley’s embossed rat poison bottle from Ruby Lane

Couldn’t do an entire “animal bottle” week without finding at least one rat bottle: Cowley’s Original Rat & Mouse Poison came in bottles with an embossed rat. (Not super-old, just 1940s old.)

I might have preferred to find some rat-shaped “bitters” bottles similar to yesterday’s pig bottles. But if being partial to rats, means I have to write about rat poison, then so be it…

The active ingredient in Cowley’s rat poison (it should be noted) was arsenic…

Among our cases, liquid rodenticide was the most common source of arsenic for both intentional and unintentional poisonings in Mississippi. Fifteen of the 27 unintentional poisonings… were by ingestion of a liquid rodenticide… One recent Mississippi case of an accidental arsenic poisoning involveding three children occurred when a mother poured arsenic-based rodenticide over crackers and left them on the floor overnight. Three of her children ate the poisoned crackers the next morning. Specifically, Cowley’s Rat and Mouse Poison was named as the brand of arsenic-containing rodenticide in each of the 16 cases where a brand name was recorded. This product is no longer being manufactured, and thus its registration with the Mississippi Department of Agriculture, Division of Plant Industries, has not been renewed since 1988. Previously stocked bottles of this rodenticide, however, remain on Mississippi store shelves, available for open public purchase.

Arsenic Exposures in Mississippi: A Review of Cases
Mary Jane Park, BS, and Mary Currier, MD, MPH, Jackson, Miss
Southern Medical Journal, April 1991

I did find one non-poisonous rat bottle similar to one of Tuesday’s squirrel bottles.

(One last photo, after the fold…)

(more…)

August 31, 2010

Squirrel Bottles

Above, three kinds of squirrel bottle.

1. Above, left: An 1800s Squirrel Bottle from the Moravian potters of Old Salem, North Carolina. (another style with mold on right)

“Of all the bottles produced at Salem, the squirrel form was the most popular, resonant of the general popularity of gray squirrels and flying squirrels as pets. The squirrel bottle, based on the Eastern gray squirrel, was in production as early as 1803. An 1806 pottery inventory lists 96 squirrel bottles. Two types of squirrel-form bottles survive: one that stands erect clasping a nut in its paws, sometimes with a spout in the tail, and the other leans forward and looks upward as if startled or begging.”

Frances McQueeney-Jones Mascolo
Art In Clay: Masterworks Of North Carolina Earthenware

2. Above, right: a 1960s Rocky—(the flying squirrel)—Colgate Soaky Shampoo bottle—shown with partner, Bullwinkle, the moose, in photo on right. (Soaky bottle photos from: Vintage Toy & Diecast Collectibles)

In a bottle related lead-in to commercials on the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon show, Rocky finds a bottle washed up on the beach:

Rocky: Look, Bullwinkle, a message in a bottle.

Bullwinkle: Fan mail from some flounder?

Rocky: No, this is what I really call a message.

At the end of this conversation, Rocky holds up the message for the viewers at home to see. I couldn’t find an image of that, but what I recollect seeing there was a spiral-shaped scrawl.

3. Above, center photo: this Summer, Scottish microbrewery, Brewdog used taxidermied squirrel bottles (and other taxidermied rodents as well) for their limited edition “The End of History” beer.

(More taxidermied packaging, after the fold…)

(more…)

July 26, 2010

Brandnomer

Photo Illustration by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin for Cooking with Dexter

Just learned a new word: brandnomer. (brand name + misnomer = brandnomer)

The concept isn’t new to me. I’ve just been calling it by its generic name: “genericized trademark.”

It’s a dilemma for manufacturers. Good to have your product be so successful that its trade name is the first word that comes to mind. Bad when the court decides that your product’s name has become a colloquial term and can now be used to describe all products in your category—including your competitors!

When this bad thing happens they have a word for that, as well: genericide. In his column on Sunday, about homemade gelatin desserts, Pete Wells seemed to be bending over backwards to avoid committing genericide. (Hence: the crossed out Jello-O logos in the beautiful photo-illustration, above.)

We do keep at least one kind of powder in the cabinets: Knox brand gelatin. This permits us to make what I would call Jell-O, if Kraft Foods would let me get away with it… If I were English, I could call the wiggly desserts I make with this powder “jelly,” but in my country, jelly goes on toast. I am stuck with calling them “gelatin,” which sounds as appetizing as a Band-Aid.

Pete Wells, Cooking With Dexter: Wiggle Room
NY Times Magazine, Sunday, July 25, 2010

Which is a funny thing to say, since Band-Aid is, apparently, an appealing enough sounding name that—(like Jell-O)—it has had to shore up its defenses to avoid becoming a colloquial term. Cited on Wikipedia as an example of how to avoid genericide, Band-Aid revised their jingle to emphasize the brand specificity of their name. (Changing the lyrics from “I am stuck on Band-Aids, ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me” to “I am stuck on Band-Aid brand, ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me.”)

Meanwhile, I would agree with Wells, that “gelatin” sounds as appealing as an adhesive bandage.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

July 20, 2010

Die-Cut, Package-Shaped Recipe Booklets

Front & back of the “White House Cereals” booklet (via eBay)

Sometimes food manufacturers put out promotional booklets of recipes.
Sometimes these booklets are shaped like packages.

During the late 1800s and early 1900s the printing industry developed a new technique for producing attractive books. First marking an outline of a product or an illustration on wooden rollers, printers then inserted thin blades on the outline, which cut out shapes on paper. The end result was a recipe booklet that caught the consumer’s attention, helped with product identification, and promoted sales.

Vintage Cookbooks and Advertising Leaflets
by Sandra A. Norman and Karrie K. Andes
(via: Months of Edible Celebrations)

(Many more examples, after the fold…)

(more…)

July 8, 2010

The Candwich Controversy

Cross-category packaging in the news this morning:

A lawsuit by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission says that [money manager, Travis L. Wright] promised returns of up to 24 percent on real estate investments, but that he put the money instead into Candwich development and other equally untried ideas.

Along with sales of canned sandwiches — Pepperoni Pizza Pocket and French Toast in a can were planned…

Mr. Wright, who is 47 and lives in Draper, Utah, according to the suit, did not return telephone calls. Several listings for Waterford Funding were disconnected or not in service.

Money in the Bank? No, Sandwich in a Can
By Kirk Johnson, NY Times, July 7, 2010

It’s important to emphasize that it is Mr. Wright, the money manager who is in trouble here—and not the Candwich or its inventor. As the NY Times article goes on to say:

Meanwhile, the Candwich concept perseveres. The president of Mark One Foods, Mark Kirkland, who said he patented the idea of putting solid food in a beverage container with the slogan, “Quick & Tasty, Ready to Eat,” said Mr. Wright promised full financial backing for Candwich production that never really materialized even as investors did. He said he believed that canned sandwiches would ultimately sell, and hoped to go into production later this year.

The shelf life of a Candwich is excellent, Mr. Kirkland said.

I took a look at Kirkland’s patents, and one claim, in particular, made a lot of sense to me: that this type of packaging would enable sandwiches to be sold in beverage-vending machines.

(See the Candwich patent(s), after the fold…)

(more…)

June 3, 2010

Trapezoidal Boxes

Top row, left: Taveners Liquorice Allsorts; on right: the Miller High Life 12-pack carton; 2nd row, left: Crest White Strips; on right: patented trapezoidal box for Good Earth muesili; bottom row, left: Williams-Sonoma cake mix designed by Nancy André; on right: a patent drawing from MGA Entertainment’s unsuccessful attempt to patent their trapezoidal Bratz packaging

Nearly rectangular—but not quite. Trapezoidal boxes might seem like a pointlessly inefficient variation. They can be close-packed, but only if they are stacked in an alternating, right-side-up / up-side-down pattern. Which is maybe OK for shipping in some cases, but unless the packages are designed for right-side-up / up-side-down display—(See: Coffeine)—maybe not so useful for saving space on a store shelf.

Still, they make a remarkably dynamic impression. To the extent that we’re accustomed to rectangular boxes, these packages create a near optical illusion. Heroically photogenic, as if you’re looking up (or down) at a tall building in perspective.

(Can you patent a polyhedral shape? After the fold…)

(more…)

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