box vox

Bottle-Shaped Corkscrew

Bottle-shaped corkscrew by R.W. Jorres, patented in 1900.
(See more bottle-shaped bottle openers: here)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Mine Enemy’s Candy

Mussolini, Hitler & Hirohito candy boxes, each with an open die-cut mouth (via: Hakes)

I don’t know what it is about candy and war. We’ve had a couple of other posts touching on it... the German Chocolate Hand Grenade... the Candy Bomber...

These candy boxes above, from WWII, feature Axis leaders with die cut mouths, ostensibly a game for children to throw balls into—(the French text on the boxes offers encouragements like “Hitler’s Speech Is Finished” and “A Sharp Movement, It Should Shut Him Up.”)—but I wonder if children didn’t also dispense candy from those mouths.

Which brings us to the War on Terror and Osama bin Laden. While bin Laden has certainly been featured in a number of insulting products here in the United States, children’s candy does not seem to be among them.

Which is not to say that our recently deceased enemy combatant has never appeared on a box of kid’s candy. Consider: Super Osama bin Laden Kulfa Balls.

Photo from: Fullsteam’s Flickr Photostream

Not anti bin Laden candy since it was most popular in Afghanistan and Pakistan and uses that brush script adjective “Super” on the packaging.

In the war on terrorism, this was clearly the enemy’s candy—not meant for consumption in the United States, although, for some reason, available in China.

Manufactured in Pakistan, this product apparently dates back to 2002:

Many vestiges of the Taliban era remain untouched in the beat-up, dusty center of Kandahar, where the ruins of buildings that collapsed during the recent American bombing campaign lie among the ruins of older battles. Venders with carts sell “Super Osama bin Laden Kulfa Balls”—coconut candy manufactured in Pakistan and packaged in pink-and-purple boxes covered with images of bin Laden surrounded by tanks, cruise missiles, and jet fighters.

After the Revolution, by Jon Lee Anderson
The New Yorker, January 28, 2002

Aside from Super Osama bin Laden Kulfa Balls, I know of one other bin Laden candy: Peta’s “Bin Laden Bites” vegan chocolate bars, released in April of last year.

(Photos of Bin Laden Bites packaging, after the fold...)

More Orthographic Head Boxes

The Grain’s T2 Tea boxes: more orthographic head boxes, similar to the McSweeney’s Head Box we featured in February. (Via: Lovely Package)

These are promotional gifts rather than actual retail boxes:

“Using a selection of tea from T2 we created four individual tea boxes and personified them to reflect the names of the following popular flavours of tea: Gorgeous Geisha, English Breakfast, Chai and French Earl Grey. Each box holds a few tea bags and a small scroll showing images of recently completed work with an invitation to ‘sit down for 5 minutes with a cup of tea and learn more about us.”

The Grain

(See also: last Tuesday’s Cat Head Packaging)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Bottle in a Pitcher

Further historic evidence that packaging at the table was once considered bad manners:

“...a fluid container or pitcher within which may be placed and securely held a milk or cream bottle of standard shape and size, so as to permit... the fluid poured therefrom, without such bottle being exposed to view.

It will be understood that such milk bottles are crude and would not present an attractive appearance upon the table, whereas such a bottle... might readily be placed within the container I provide with ease and convenience and with an approach to a more agreeable appearance.”

Aurthur J. Herschmann
Fluid-Container
Patented in 1920

(See also: Branding in your home)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Cat Head Packaging

Yesterday, Paul Heidenreich from Australian firm, The Grain Creative Consultants, emailed me their design refresh for Whiskas cat food, on right. Whiskas is a brand that I wasn’t familiar with, but the iconic cat-head shape of their logo reminded me of another cat food carton that I’ve been saving a picture of: Elmwood’s “Purely” cat food box for Pets at Home, with the cat-head shaped die cut window.

Which led me to notice other cat head shaped cat food packs...

These Whiskas pet treat containers were (I think) designed by Nick Brown.

Meow Mix and Purina Friskies, each employ cat head shapes in their cat treat containers. (Note the cat-head “M” in the pictorial Meow Mix logo. Anyone know who designed this feline logotype?)

Eric Hart’s canned cat food project, “Snookums” also features cat heads, although in his case they are sans-ears.

(A couple more things, after the fold...)

Orthographic Beverage Cartons

Two recent 4-pack cartons, each featuring the same orthographic view of the bottles contained inside:

Vidago mineral water, designed by CB’a Design in Spain (via: Lovely Package) and Copenhagen beer designed by e-Types in Denmark (via: Packaging of the World)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Impossible Bottles

The puzzle-like interlocking bottles of the previous post leads me to the topic of “impossible bottles”—those bottles containing things that should not have been able to fit though their necks.

A ship in a bottle is the most familiar example, but enthusiasts have come up with plenty of other stuff—(even packaged stuff like cigarette packs and decks of playing cards)—to put into their “impossible” bottles.

(One more thing, after the fold...)

Mated Container Units

Yesterday’s post about the similar interlocking bottles, raised a number of questions. The patent drawings above date from 1963 to 2008, each showing a different patented method of connecting separate bottles. There are plenty of products that can be sold in pairs — shampoo & conditioner; 2-part epoxy; oil & vinegar — but what are consumers to make of it when these products are sold in interlocking bottles?

Are they anthropomorphic couples? Are they happily married? Are they promiscuous? Or are they more like puzzle pieces fitting together?

Or body parts fitting together?

The 69-ish innuendo of yesterday’s bottle structure (and the single quote marks ‘’ in Joy Lin’s Hustler Lubricant concept) is even more explicit in Franck Legoupil’ 2001 patent for a “Container Assemble of Two Nested Containers,” pictured above.

This same symmetrical gender-geometry is also at work in the “Mated Container Units” patented by Juris M. Mednis in 1986:

“A multi-purpose container unit whose hollow body, neck and shoulder sections are proportioned and constructed in a manner that allows interfacing and mating with an identical or mirror image unit of like size... The container has a neck and a recessed portion along its vertical axis which accepts and provides safe harbor and protection to the neck and closure portion of the mated unit whose corresponding body recess, in turn, accepts the neck and closure portion of a second container of the mated unit...”

(See what the “Mated Container Units” look like, after the fold...)

Interlocking Bottles

Two similar designs for interlocking bottles:

On left: Karim Rashid’s 2003 “Pour Hommes 2 in 1” for Issey Miyake (Men).

On right: Joy Lin’s 2011 envisioned redesign for a Hustler lubricant set.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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...)

Gumball Cube Pack

©2011 Randy Ludacer, Beach Packaging Design

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...)

Capitalist Box vs. Socialist Box

I saw this a while back on Packaging UQAM:

Sophie Valentine’s project for Louis Gagnon’s “Design Graphique Introduction” course at Canada’s UQAM. The project is “3D Typographic Expression” and her solution is shown above.

Socialism and capitalism are two realities that clearly oppose. However, Winston Churchill did not consider one better than the other. He said: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” To demonstrate this paradox, socialism is represented by eight small cubes attached to each other. While capitalism is represented by a cube equal to the size of eight.

Design Intro Blog

This interests me for a number of reasons.

A. The white “socialist” cube appears to be one of those hinged folding cube puzzles — sometimes called “magic cubes” — often used as an advertising promotion. I might be wrong. It may be hinged a little differently, but it would be ironic for “socialism” to be represented by an promotional object.

B. The Winston Churchill quote above seems to parallel the contrast that Chevron CEO, John Watson attempted (in his testimony to congress yesterday about oil company tax breaks) when he tried to suggest that the American people would rather share in Chevron’s prosperity than to have Chevron share in their sacrifice. (See also: Joe, The Plumber)

(More reasons, after the fold...)

Stealing Box Tops

(Photo via: Trash Society)

Back in the heyday of “box tops” promotions, kids were encouraged by cereal companies to pressure their moms into regularly purchasing a particular brand — not because a cereal was necessarily their favorite, but in order to collect enough redeemable box-top-coupons to exchange for some wonderful prize.

I have no doubt that there were desperate and unscrupulous children in those days who occasionally resorted to theft of box tops in order to get those prizes.

Today, “box tops” promotions offer a very different incentive for collecting, but a recent TV News item reveals that theft of box tops is still very much a possibility.

As one of the many institutions currently threatened with drastic budget cuts, public schools are being forced to rely more and more on “the private sector” to try and make up the shortfall.

General Mills characterizes their program as a way to help “fill gaps in school budgets.” Although, it’s also clearly part of the whole “cause marketing” trend, in which your consumer purchase is meant to serve as proxy for a good deed. (The good deed in this case: a contribution to your local school budget.)

But is this type of alternative school funding an example of pragmatic American ingenuity? Or is it evidence of how we unwittingly capitulate in the broader effort to privatize public education?

Are we robbing Peter (school budgets) to pay Paul (General Mills)?

PRO:

Box Toppers are a community of passionate people, joined together to help create change in our schools. Join us, and you’ll get exclusive benefits that include ways to stay connected with other parents on topics that matter to you as well as tools and promotions to recruit others to the cause.

BoxTop4Education.com

CON:

Incentive programs like General Mills’ Box Tops for Education, Pizza Hut’s Book It!, and Campbell’s Soups’ Labels for Education encourage school fund raisers to influence family purchases of specific brands or to frequent certain businesses. In-school fundraisers using items like magazines or candy turn kids into salespeople. Company sponsors gain an unpaid sales force and can inflate prices since the enterprise appears charitable. Increasingly, schools are engaging in the absurd practice of encouraging purchases from certain websites like schoolpop.com, robbing their community businesses and their own sales tax base—a key part of school funding in many districts!

ReclaimDemocracy.org

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Coke Bottle Prototype

The bottle design patent we showed a while back from 1937 was not the earliest version of the famous contoured Coke bottle. This one is.

If the prototype bottle on the right from 1915 had just been stable enough for conveyor belts, there might have been very different implications in saying that someone had “a Coke bottle figure.”

In 1915, Harold Hirsch, a lawyer for the Coca-Cola Company, came up with a plan to launch a national competition in which bottle manufactures across the country would be asked to design a distinctive bottle — a bottle which a person could recognize even if they felt it in the dark, and so shaped that, even if broken, a person could tell at a glance what it was.

The bottle manufacturer that won this competition was the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana. Inspired by a picture of a cocoa pod which was found in an encyclopedia at the Emeline Fairbanks Memorial Library, Earl R. Dean made a pencil sketch of the pod. From this sketch, Dean designed the contour bottle prototype. The prototype never made it to production since its middle diameter was larger than its base. According to Dean, this would make it unstable on the conveyor belts. Dean then equalized the middle and bottom diameters and the Contour Coca-Cola Bottle was born.

Wikipedia entry on Earl R. Dean

The bottle’s design was patented, but with plant superintendent, Alexander Samuelson listed as the inventor/designer, rather than Earl R. Dean, the bottle molding room supervisor who actually designed it. (Such is the fate of those who do work-for-hire.)

As a reward for his efforts, Dean was offered a choice between a $500 bonus or a lifetime job at Root Glass. He chose the lifetime job and kept it until the Owens-Illinois Glass Company bought out the Root Glass Company in the mid 1930s. Dean went on to work in other Midwestern glass factories.

Earl Dean died in January, 1972.

Vigo County Public Library Archives

(The patent appears, after the fold...)

Gif Peanut Butter

Designer, Tymn Armstrong’s “Gif Peanut Butter” above makes a nice homophonic joke about Jif Peanut Butter and GIF, the Graphics Interchange Format. (via Murketing)

The weird thing is, the file itself seems to have been saved as a jpg, which is funny since the illustration’s limited palette of solid colors makes it a perfect candidate for saving as a GIF. Which is what I’ve done to it here.

(See also: Packaging Icons)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Rauschenberg’s Record Cover

Limited edition Talking Heads' album Speaking in Tongues (Photos from: Your Money Is No Good Here)

In addition to sometimes using packaging to make art, Robert Rauschenberg was also occasionally asked to design a package.

From David Byrne’s 2008 NY Times Op-Ed remembrance of Rauschenberg:

I approached Bob Rauschenberg in the mid-’80s to design a cover for the Talking Heads record “Speaking in Tongues.”

...It was not unusual for a pop musician to approach a fine artist in those days; other contemporary artists had collaborated with pop bands in the late ’60s and early ’70s. I was pleasantly surprised, though, when Bob, who died this week, eschewed simply reproducing a work on the album jacket in favor of re-envisioning what the whole LP package could be.

His package consisted of a conceptual collage piece in which the color separation layers — the cyan, magenta and yellow images that combined to make one full-color image — were, well, deconstructed. Only by rotating the LP and the separate plastic disc could one see — and then only intermittently — the three-color images included in the collage. It was a transparent explication of how the three-color process works, yet in this case, one could never see all the full-color images at the same time, as Bob had perversely scrambled the separations.

Needless to say, the design posed some production problems for Warner Bros. Records, so it ended up a limited, but very large, 50,000-copy edition, released in addition to the regular, mass-produced version. Luckily, everyone shared in the crazy idea of making radical art that could also be popular. Nowadays there might be concerns about the return on investment, but at that time the label let these matters slide.

I later became friends with Bob and his collaborators, and it was an incredible world to enter. I sensed immediately that Bob had never become cynical about his work. Even after he found success, he continued to see the world as a work of art that simply hadn’t been framed yet.

... Bob drank heavily. In the ’80s, I discovered him once at his studio on Lafayette Street, in mid-afternoon, with a glass of Jack in his hand. I, rock ’n’ roll guy, was amazed to see an established artist living one aspect of the rock ’n’ roll life much more intensely than I ever dared. I did wonder if some of the beautiful jumps and leaps in his conversation were partly alcohol-related, but his output remained transcendent, so I figured he was managing it.

Being around Bob was often like being on some kind of ecstatic drug — he inspired those around him to not only think outside of the box, but to question the box’s very existence.

Bob the Builder, By David Byrne
NY Times, May 16, 2008

Rauschenberg also won a Grammy Award for the Speaking in Tongues album cover art. Regarding the “production problems” Byrne alluded to, Frieze Magazine notes:

It took the Talking Heads half a year to find a company that could make Robert Rauschenberg’s Speaking in Tongues cover for them. Keyboard player Jerry Harrison finally turned to a firm that made Oscar Meyer hot dog packaging. Apparently it’s not that easy to find a company to vacu-form a clear vinyl record.

New Feeling, by Jennifer Kabat
Frieze Magazine, March 3, 2008

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Lipton’s Anthropomorphic Canned Soup

Usually associated with instant soup in packets, this ad from a 1946 issue of the Utica NY Observer shows that Lipton’s also once made a canned Tomato Vegetable Soup or as they put it in the ad “...a fresh-cooked soup masterpiece in modern soup mix form!” (The photo on right from Collectologist2’s Flickr Photostream.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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.)

(See also: Product Placement at Gitmo and Packaging and Moral Turpitude)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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...)