packaging as content

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 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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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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November 25, 2011

Nike & Newport (Swoosh and Spinnaker)

The similarity of Nike’s and Newport’s logo has been well noted. Not a problem between the two companies when shoes and cigarettes are clearly separate industries. But when they get mashed up together, as with Ari Foreman’s 2008 “Ari Menthol” shoes, and are packaged in an oversized flip-top cigarette shoe box…

The Newport symbol, first used in 1969, is called their “spinnaker” logo. Think: sailboats, wind, respiration. (See also: square-rigged sail logo of Banks Beer)

The Nike symbol (their “swoosh” logo) was designed in 1971 by Carolyn Davidson. Think: curvy checkmark, fluid motion, sports.

Another example of a Nike/Newport mash up are a 2009 series of “Nike Newports” by Danny J. Gibson:

I was wondering: has anyone ever mashed it up the other way round—as Nike Cigarettes?

(Asked and answered, 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 20, 2011

6 Chairs Made from Packages

1. The “Mad-700-Chair”— by MadC is an M-shaped double sling chair made from empty spray paint cans.

2. The “294 Liter Sitzen” —(Liter Sitzen is German for “I sit”) [see comments below]— is an armchair made from 294 Tetra-Pak cartons by Fabian Jochen Kanzler & Steve Michaelis.

3. The “Lucky Chair” is Roeland Otten’s armchair made from 400 empty packs of Lucky Stripe cigarettes.

4. The “Jar Chair” is made from 96 baby food jars by Johnny Swing.

5. A chair made from glass bottles, but I can’t tell you who made it.

6. The “SIE43 Chair” is made by Pawel Grunert from PET bottles.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

September 8, 2011

Cigarettes & Cat Food

“Some people with NSRED [nocturnal sleep-related eating disorder] have even been known to eat cigarettes and cat food.”

TheStressOfLife.com

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The Broward Sheriff’s Office said Thursday it was looking for two men suspected of burglarizing more than a dozen vehicles in Parkland.

Deputies said the men are suspected of breaking into a man’s Cadillac in Parkland on July 1 and stealing a wrist watch and a credit card. The suspects then went on a shopping spree at a CVS pharmacy in Boca Raton, buying cat food and cigarettes, authorities said.

Sun Sentinel, 2007

______________________________________________________

“He draped a black sheet over the picture window in his bedroom and did not answer the phone. He went out only to buy cigarettes and cat food, wearing a black sweatshirt, the hood pulled down over his eyes.”

Mental Health: The Profession Tests Its Limits
By Erica Goode and Emily Eakin
NY Times, September 11, 2002

For people in a certain demographic group we’ll call “cat-loving smokers,” these two items —cigarettes & cat food— form their most pared down, irreducible shopping list of basic necessities.

The cigarette packs and cat food cans pictured above, however, are shown together, not because my shopping list has come to that, but because they are each examples of “incomplete package design” — packages that may look a little incomplete by themselves, but are designed to form a larger whole when combined.

1. Cigarettes

These, of course, are the same Winston cigarette packages that we were wondering about yesterday. We now know that these were designed in 1997 by Kevin Flatt as a Senior Designer for Duffy.

The packaging was featured at length in the July 1997 issue of “Caravan” the in-house magazine of R.J.Renolds.

“The new packaging style carries the traditional Winston family fonts and red-white-red color scheme, but takes on a contemporary feel with a wraparound pack.”

via: Tobacco Documents Online

2. Cat Food

Milton Glaser’s extensive redesign for Grand Union (1970s though 1980s) included the cat food box (above, left) in which cropped cat photos on the front of the boxes, combined to form whole cats when displayed in a group. (See inset photo on right from: The Graphic Designer’s Guide to Clients)

“…some fun with partial images that relies upon store workers to line up the boxes correctly.”

A Grand Union, Beth Kleber
October 6, 2010
Container List, Glaser Archives

Grand Union’s canned cat food, also included some fun with partial images. The pet food packaging on right is from the portfolio of Blake Waldman (Paperkut Design) who was a Junior Designer at Milton Glaser, Inc. from 1989-1990.

Waldman also designed a 2002 version of the Winston wrap-around pack called the “Evo flask.” See: Winston debuts ‘flask’ pack

(And apropo of nothing: Yogi Berra on Camel Cigarettes and Puss ’n Boots Cat Food, after the fold…)

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September 7, 2011

Winnowing Down the Winston Logo

Not sure what year these cigarette packs are from. The truncated typography struck me as a similar package design idea to the recent Turner Duckworth soda can with cropped Diet Coke logo that we were discussing a couple of weeks ago.

Probably not accidental that the portion of the Winston logo that shows here, also happens to spell the word “win.” All of these cigarette packs seem to also come in an italicized version. I have no idea what, if anything, the italic version of this logo might indicate about the product. Other than suggesting Winston’s “winning” forward momentum.

Photos above are from Cigarettepedia. Photo on right is from Roswell62’s Flickr Photostream.

(Some earlier Winston typography, after the fold…)

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September 6, 2011

Banks Beer Cigarette Pack Radio

One of these Things is Not Like the Others

This collection of cigarette pack radios includes a changling. Although the all of the radios above appears to be flip-top crush-proof cigarette boxes, “Banks” is actually a beer brand. (via: AntiqueRadios.com forums)

(Banks Beer bottles, etc., after the fold..)

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September 2, 2011

Winston Cigarette Pack Radio

In 2009 we did a round up of package shaped transistor radios, which incuded a Marlboro Cigarettes radio. Here now is another vintage, cigaratte-pack-shaped, transistor radio. This time the brand is Winton. (via: Hakes.)

Cigarette radios, generally came packaged in a slightly larger “crush proof box” … a fake pack of cigarettes containing a fake pack of cigarettes.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

July 26, 2011

Plain Cigarette Packaging

Expanding on Australia’s “plain cigarette packaging” initiative (under which all cigarette packaging would be made generic), Jennifer Noon & Sarah Shaw have envision anti-ergonomic, trapezoidal packs:

“Our primary aim was to change the structure of the pack making it less ergonomic. The pack was developed to be difficult to use and carry, it is hard to fit into pockets due to its triangular shape and the angled inner means the cigarettes are hard to get out. The lid is designed so that it closes efficiently but after a few uses it becomes weak, meaning the cigarettes can fall out if being stored in a ladies handbag.

We decided to use an off putting colour on the outer of the pack choosing a yellow green which was identified to have negative connotations. We then added a mould texture to really emphasise the disgusting feel of the pack and reduce the glamour appeal for young people.”

The idea of deliberately engineering a “weak” lid is interesting… like planned obsolescence, but for a good cause.

Note: the alternating right-side-up / up-side-down close-packing arrangement…

…and a rare example of “open mouth” packs that feature human mouths, rather than cute animal mouths.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

April 1, 2011

The Tareyton Cigarettes Anthro-Pack Mascot

Earlier this week we looked at Grape-Nuts ads with anthropomorphic boxes, and a later ad in which they compared their cereal’s new box to “a good old friend in a gay, new dress.”

It now appears that Tareyton Cigarettes covered some of the same ground with their anthro-pack named, “Wagner” sponsoring the 1950s children’s puppet show, “The Gay Cavalcade.” (above)

Wagner, however, was a badly-drawn and ill-conceived mascot that wound up causing the company considerable grief…

People might remember Tareyton Cigarettes as the brand that went bankrupt due to an urban legend back in the 60’s. A rumor convinced people that the Tareyton company was a front for Adolph Hitler, who was living in Argentina and running a tobacco empire to finance an army to re-take Europe. The only evidence for this was the unfortunate design of their company mascot, “Wagner” seen on the cigarette packs themselves, but it was enough to destroy sales when the gossip got around.

Hoverboy and Hitler Cigarettes!
by Ty Templeton, January 20, 2011

Further evidence of Tareyton’s mascot debacle can be found on TobaccoDocuments.org:

I managed to locate one of these brass “mascot lighters” on eBay…

(From brass cigarette lighters to brass knuckles, after the fold…)

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January 19, 2011

1 Shot Beer & Cigarettes

Following our “1 Shot” paint thread, brings us to Lance Freitag’s “1 Shot Paint / Limited Edition Package”

“This project was for my typography 4 class… I decided to do a special package for the pinstriping culture. I used 1 Shot paint as my company, they play a very large roll in the culture. I rebranded 1 shot, I didn’t want to use their existing logo.”

Lance Freitag on Behance

Debated with myself whether it would be just too obnoxious to put a “[sic]” after “culture” since it’s gernerally kulture with a “K” in this context…

Interesting, that Freitag’s package contains beer & cigarettes, rather than paint. Another attempt to combine smoking & drinking under the banner a single popular brand? Seems like a long shot to envision a paint company getting into alcohol & tobacco, but no crazier than Marlboro Beer, I suppose.

(See also: our earlier posts during Smoking & Drinking Week)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 13, 2011

Packaging & What Lies Beneath

While looking into the orthographically-projecting “Dish Doctor” box, I happened to see the Marc Newson designed “Black Box” for Dom Pérignon (via: PopSop) which reminded me that, in addition to the narrowly defined orthographic projection, there are other, less geometrically exacting ways that the surface of a package can reveal its contents.

Newson’s “Black Box” is essentially a black polycarbonate “clamshell” package with a green strap, but since the package itself has a label, it’s hard to distinguish it from an actual bottle at first glance.

The H&M shirt box design by Linn Gustafsson uses whimsical illustration of a striped shirt—but without the extra front & side views of the “Dish Doctor” box. Here, the box in its entirety is meant to represent the shirt contained. (i.e.: no background.)

The photo below (from today’s NY Times) show some of Rick Genest’s skeletal tattoos, which achieve a similar reveal-what-lies-beneath effect. Seeing that he’s a smoker set me to thinking about his cigarette brand…

Upper photo by Nicola Formichetti; lower photos of Robert Brownjohn’s Bachelor Cigarettes packaging

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

December 29, 2010

Crush Proof Ad

Wrinkled magazine page with miraculously uncrushed cigarette box. This 2001 trompe l’oeil ad is by Hemisphere Leo Burnett, the advertising agency for Marlboro in the Philippines. (via: Coloribus)

(See aslo: Hinge-Lid, Hard-Pack, Flip-Top Box)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

December 27, 2010

Walkin’ Cigarette Pack

Looking at cigarette pack Christmas trees, I happened to see this 1960s Lark Walkin’ Cigarette Pack. (via: RubyLane.com)

I think there was also a Lucky Strike version of this wind up toy. The footprint motif on the carton is very reminiscent of the 1964 Hang Ten surfing brand logo…

Which led me in turn to this trademark page showing that in 1977 Philip Morris filed a trademark for “Hang Ten” cigarettes. (Which make me wonder: “Did they ever make any of those?”)

(More photos of the Walkin’ Cigarette Pack, after the fold…)

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