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Camouflage Package Design Continued

Lest anyone imagine that camouflage patterns were confined only to beverage packaging, here are some recent examples of camouflage package design, in general.

Because of its star logo, Amour Star seems ready-made for a patriotic camouflage treatment, although it’s debatable how American a “Vienna Sausage” can ever be. (Designed by Bob Oliva)

Jiffy Pop, too, has undergone camouflage treatment. (Via: Lester Of Puppets’s Flickr Photostream)

“Powderflage” powder concealer comes in a camouflage canister. (Note how its camo pattern is made of butterflies.)

Srixon’s camouflaged USO golf balls pack, we’ve mentioned before.

Yoder’s canned bacon comes in a camouflage patterned can.

“A Bathing Ape” (aka: BAPE) has for a while featured camouflage patterns in its branding.

And Huggie’s diapers have also supported our troops through camouflage patterning.

Also: camouflage candy...

and camouflage peanuts, for some reason.

(and one more example, after the fold...)

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...)

Shoe Bottles

Two shoe-shaped bottles from Ideal Industrial Limited: the “Sports Shoe Shape Glass Bottle With Cork (SHB001)” and the “Glass Bottle in Female Shoe Shape (ISB018).”

These two bottles remind me of Glenn O’Brien’s observations about men dressing too casually on dates with dressed-up women. (See: How to be a Man.)  Most shoe-shaped bottles are either men’s sneakers or women’s high heel shoes. What sort of products would come in figural bottles like these?

High-heel shoe-shaped bottles have sometimes been used to contain liqueurs and perfumes and liquid soap might give us cause to look at “women’s pumps” from a whole new angle...

Marks and Spencer used the exact same ISB018 “female shoe shaped” bottle for their 2008 chocolate dairy milk liqueur, below.  Although, in their case, they used a stopper rather than a twist off cap and there’s the added hangtag and ribbon. (via: Cool Buzz)

I was thinking that liquid shoe polish would be a good product to package in a shoe-shaped bottle. For some reason, most vintage, shoe-shaped bottles contained ink, although I did find one shoe-shaped bottle that supposedly contained shoe polish. (the “Rockingham” bottle shown below)

 

(For more about shoe-shaped glass bottles see: Collectors Weekly.)

Above left: the vintage “Rockingham” shoe polish bottle (via: LiveAuctioneers); middle: an Anna Dello Russo shoe-shaped purfume bottle (via: PoisePolish); on right: a shoe bottle hookah via: SuperPiece (see also: Coke Bottle Water Pipe)

As for the sneaker-shaped bottle, Avon seems to be the only company that got into those in big way. Not surprising, since graceless, figural bottles seem to be their specialty.

(Avon sneaker-shaped bottles, after the fold...)

Eric Barclay’s Painted Packages

Texas-based llustrator, Eric Barclay, has an knack for finding a latent anthropomorphic character, hidden in the shape of most any package. Hence, two sizes of Coffee-mate become “Mr. Shackleton” and “Mr. Hudson” (above). Barclay confirms that his companionable characters are based on two famous explorers:

Mr. Shackleton is named after Earnest Shackleton, the Antarctic  explorer. Mr. Hudson, the walrus, is named after Henry Hudson who encountered walruses on his explorations of Canada...

As far as the characters go, Shackleton is a herring magnate and Mr. Hudson is his driver and “heavy.” Mr. Hudson knows a lot of people at the horse track.

Other painted packages by Barclay include a plastic squeeze bottle of French’s Mustard, whose shape embodied a circus lion...

(Another container’s inner feline character revealed, after the fold...)

Vademecum

Four more things about the Swedish toothpaste brand, Vademecum, whose “toothpaste key” commercial we featured on Wednesday...

1. Photo above shows their use of an actor in an anthropomorphic packaging costume in a 1930 advertising campaign. via (See also: Hy-Jen Toothpaste)

2. In 1938 Mickey Mouse also promoted Vademecum. Here he is holding a tube of Vademecum toothpaste, saying something in Swedish about the product to Minnie Mouse. Note: logo is up-side-down. (Swedish comic strip panel via: The Daily War Drum)

(Two more things, after the fold...)

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...)

4 Toothpaste Keys

And speaking of toothpaste tubes and human endeavor ...

This Vademecum Toothpaste commerical (#1) about Svend Vademecum III, his research and subsequent discovery is rather relevant. (Note: You have to follow the link to YouTube to actually watch this video. It’s not the embeddable kind.)

The take away from seeing this vintage commercial is that there have been earlier attempts to address the shortcomings of the toothpaste tube. The Vademecum commercial looks to me like it’s from the 1960’s, but a similar “compression key” also appears in this 1909 ad (#2) for Dr Sheffield’s Crême Dentifrice (via)...

There was also a sterling silver Tiffany’s toothpaste tube key (#3)...

Which raises the question: How many dollars should one pay for a tool that saves pennies? Although, as suggested by Daniel’s comment from the previous post — (about fugality “...to the point of pathology”) — consumer purchases are sometimes compulsive — more subject to psychoanalysis than to cost/benefit analysis. (See also: Dooby Brain)

(Our 4th and final toothpaste key, after the fold...)

Toothpaste Tube Squeezers & Human Endeavor

At Eastpack this Summer we met Ray Liberatore who showed us the “EZ Squeeze Tube.” Having recently broached the subject of consumers actually cutting open their toothpaste tubes (in order to get what they paid for) now seems like a good a time to take a look at Liberatore’s package-improving product.

Tube squeezers are one of those inventions that point up the inadequacy of a certain kind package. Up until the invention of the can opener, cans were being opened with knives and rocks. (See: Early Can Opener Patents)

The toothpaste tube has provided a similar inspiration for human endeavor. Consider the range of patented ideas shown above, invented between 1919 and 2010.

Although they make a reusable consumer product (inset above right) Liberatore’s real innovation is in proposing that such a device should not just be a packaging accessory, but an integral part of the package. Not such an outlandish proposal considering how adverse many consumers are to wasting even a small amount of something they’ve purchased. What’s more frustrating than a package with inaccessible contents?

(More patent illustrations of toothpaste tube squeezers, after the fold...)

Cutting Open Toothpaste Tubes

While researching the previous post, I happened to see this photo on CopyRanter which reminded me of those earlier toothpaste tube dissections we admired in 2009.

I was wondering how this tube was cut apart so cleanly when I found the photos below, clearly showing that it is by freezing a tube of toothpaste, that this is acomplished.

The motivation for cutting up the toothpaste tubes above appears to be intellectual curiosity. (About the stripes.) But consumers are cutting up toothpaste tubes for other reasons, as well.

While manufacturers have stealthily shrunk packaging capacity, many consumers, desperate to get everything they can out of the package, have resorted to scissors.

Addressing the need to get every bit of the toothpaste out of the tube, Guo Lili proposes adding a nick (for tearing) to the base of a conventional toothpaste tube — giving the package a sort of Achilles heel.

In contrast to the simplicity of this design, consider the complexity of Crest’s “Neat Squeeze” container below, invented in 1989 by Van Coney.

(Neat Squeeze, after the fold...)

Don Poynter’s Cocktail in a Toothpaste Tube

Scotch whiskey flavored toothpaste tube and carton via Whiskey Wednesday

A follow up to our 2009 post about cosmonauts with vodka in toothpaste tubes... I figured it was high time we brushed up on the subject of six proof toothpaste.

I like the argyle-patterned branding of these 1950s alcoholic-beverage flavored toothpastes from Poynter Products. I also like the cross-category referencing of sideways bottles on the box and the tube. (Note how the bottle silhouettes are pointing in the opposite direction from the business end of the toothpaste tube.)

Invented by founder Don Poynter, these novelty toothpastes really did contain a small amount of their corresponding flavors. (Scotch, Bourbon, Rye...)

Examples of Poynter’s advertising for these products appear on the right. (Top right photo from Michael Dietsch’s Flickr Photostream; lower right photo from DigitalObjectsArchivist)

Photo of 1954 Rye whiskey flavored toothpaste tube and carton (via: Etsy)

These products enjoyed a brief but heady run for their novelty and amusement value. Poynter appeared on “What’s My Line?” in 1956.

Photo by Wallace Kirkland from Life Magazine, 1955

Soon there there were jokes about the product appearing in print...

An extensive test of a new whiskey-flavored toothpaste was made, comparing it with a control group using a similar formula, but without the whiskey-flavored ingredient. Researchers found that those using the whiskey-flavored toothpaste brushed their teeth after each meal, including lunch at work, — and — as many as fourteen other times during the day. The results showed that these people — using the special whiskey-flavored toothpaste — had twenty-one percent more cavities but they couldn’t care less!

Pit & Quarry, Volume 57, 1965

But as outlandish as the product concept was, Poynter was really not the first to think of it. Joan Blondell’s 1935 film “Traveling Saleslady” had posited exactly this sort of product line.

Still from “Traveling Saleslady” — (I’m guessing that’s a tube of “Cocktail Toothpaste” in her hand)

The latest in the Warner Brothers series of commercial comedies tells how Joan Blondell combines her charm with Hugh Herbert’s inventive genius and wrecks the toothpaste market. Being no admirer of the orthodox dentifrice flavors, this reporter considered that both Mr. Herbert and Miss Blondell deserved to succeed with their Cocktail Toothpaste. A whisky flavor for a morning pick-me-up, a Martini flavor for the hour before dinner, and a champagne flavor at bedtime ought to help the disposition as well as the teeth. Miss Blondell thought so too, and so did her clientele. The big out-of-town buyers were, in fact, so delighted with the new product that they bought it on its own merits, and did not lose their tempers when Miss Blondell declined their invitations to dinner.

Andre Sennwald, 1935 NY Times Movie Review

Again, publicity about this movie mostly played the product concept for laughs, little suspecting that in two decades the market would (for a time) embrace the concept.

Cocktail Toothpaste: For years and years, starting way back around 1929, we have advocated the use of various cocktail, cordial and wine flavors in tooth paste. It remained for First National Pictures to recognize the value of this contribution to the marvels of merchandising and to make use of it in a movie, “Traveling Salesladies.” Many of those who have seen this picture and who are no admirers of the orthodox tooth paste flavors have commented very favorably upon the Cocktail Tooth paste which the entrepreneurs of this cinema market throughout the country.

Drug and Cosmetic Industry, Volume 36, 1935

(Some competing cocktail-flavored toothpastes, after the fold)

Beautiful Breath: Package Design & Trade Dress Drag

On left: Rigaud’s 1915 Un Air Embaumé packaging; on right: Marcel Duchamp’s 1921 Eau de Voilette bottle

“Duchamp created this “perfume readymade” from an empty bottle of a Rigaud perfume called Un Air Embaumé (Scented  Air) that had been designed by Julien Viard, a sculptor who was known for creating perfume bottles with figural stoppers.”

Victoria Rose Pass
Strange Glamour:
Fashion and Surrealism in the Years between the World Wars

The advertisement above (from eBay) shows Viard’s original bottle design. (A sculptural detail on the side of the Un Air Embaumé bottle is shown on right.)

“Julien-Henri Viard, an award winning French sculptor, worked for his father, Clovis, from 1900 until the father’s death in 1927. Julien continued to run the glass workshop until 1938 when it merged with glass producer Depinoix. Julien is best known for his elegant perfume bottles with many examples surviving until today in collections world-wide.”

Selling Things Webstore

_______________________________

“... the versatility of Julien Viard is such that it is difficult to fit all his work with a single type... a huge variety of containers, with exquisite patina and perfect finishes.”

Museu del Perfum

“Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath: Veil Water) is the amusing title Marcel Duchamp gave to a work of art that he made — with the assistance of Man Ray — in the spring of 1921. At first glance, it appears to be little more than an ordinary perfume bottle, although readers of French might confuse it with a mouth wash, which, if consumed, would give them, as the label indicates, belle haleine (beautiful breath). We now know that in order to produce this work, Duchamp appropriated an actual bottle of perfume issued by the Rigaud Company of Paris in 1915 for Un air embaumé, the name given to the most popular and best-selling fragrance the perfumery had produced in its sixty-five year history. Advertisements for this product feature a scantily clad female model holding a bottle of the perfume below her nostrils, the essence of the liquid rendered visible as an undulating, ribbon-like shape floating through the air. The model is shown taking a deep breath, her eyes closed and head tilted slightly back, as if to suggest that the scent possess the qualities of an aphrodisiac, rendering powerless all who inhale its intoxicating vapors. It may have been precisely these qualities that attracted Duchamp to this particular brand of perfume, for he wished to draw attention to the woman whose features are depicted on the bottle, his newly introduced female alter-ego: Rose Sélavy.”

Francis M. Naumann
Christie’s, November 2008

Left: Julien Viard; center: Duchamp in drag (Rose Sélavy); right: Francesco Vezzoli, also in drag

(More about Francesco Vezzoli, after the fold...)

New Package Design for Warm Whiskers Eye Pillow

Another booth that we visited at Gift Fair last week was DreamTime, Inc. The new packaging for their line of Warm Whiskers eye pillows caught my eye, because of the way the product conceals the eyes of its face-shaped die cut cards.

I’m always on the lookout for packaging that functions as an anthropomorphic proxy—either for the seller or, in this case, for the consumer. It’s a wonderfully direct way of showing the product’s purpose—showing the eye pillow in use on a person’s face—but oddly attention-getting precisely because the person’s eyes are hidden.

Personally, I felt compelled to lift the mask up and peak underneath—just to confirm that there were actually eyes printed there! That kind of interaction with the product and its packaging can’t be a bad thing. (And I have, in the past, ruminated about why a retail package should never stare the consumer down.)

Previously this product was packaged in a fancy, but generic organdy bag.

The new cards come with an easel back for counter display and a hang hole to make them peggable. I’m not too crazy about the wishy-washy brand logo, but (to my eye) the packaging concept, the girly illustrations and the cute products more than make up for it.

I don’t have photos of them, but I also recall seeing anthropomorphic die cut displays for stuffed animal “neck wraps” at their booth...

(More about the “neck wraps” after the fold...)

Chained Polyhedral Portion Packs

Trace Thoma’s 6-Pack employs a chain of five triangular prisms, each containing one bottle of assorted beers and winding into a pentagonal beer carton. The sixth bottle resides in the center space, and there’s some funny business about how it’s actually supported underneath. (See photo on right) But unwound, it makes an interesting display and I’d also be curious to see it displayed inside-out. (I think it would make a chubby, 5-point star shape.)

Stéphanie Sansregret’s “L’Kit de Survie” has six triangular boxes (containing assorted instant coffees) that wind together to form a hexagonal prism shape. (via: Packaging UQAM)

Note: Laurence Gregoire’s chocolate packaging—a string of 10 connected prism-shaped boxes—is another good example and can also be seen on Packaging UQAM.

Verónica Jarquín’s Ludo Pasta, envisions a 4-pack assortment of pasta varieties, contained in four connected triangular boxes that, I’m guessing, fold together to form a square. No picture of that, unfortunately.

(A related packaging patent, after the fold)

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

Bassett’s Egg Shampoo Cream

Egg-shaped tins from 1909 that once contained “Bassett’s Egg Shampoo Cream”

Unusual packaging for a shampoo, but the Bassett Supply Company of Rochester, NY may not have been the only company to use it.

There was also a “Marvelette” brand Egg Shampoo Cream using “a unique package in the form of an egg” on the market in 1910. Also based in Rochester. For all I know, Marvellette Laboratories may have just been a division of Bassett Supply Company.

See also : Silly Putty & L’eggs

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Donald Deskey’s Odorono Jar

Celebrated industrial designer, Donald Deskey is well-known for package design of iconic brands below. Perhaps less well-known, is his structural design of the “Odo-Ro-No” Cream Deodorant jar for Northam Warren Corporation.

Deskey packaging from the exhibit, “Creative Conscious: The Unconstrained Mind of Donald Deskey” (Photo via: Gilmore Branding)

Based on advertising images, Deskey’s art deco jar was in use during the 1940s. Haven’t been able to find any photos online of an actual surviving jar of this type.

The embossed lid was apparently discontinued sometime in the 1950s in favor of a plain flat version. (as with the pink one above)

Don’t know whether Deskey had anything to do with Odorono’s graphic design.

(Odorono’s trademark papers, after the fold...)

Formula No. 9

On left: an unearthed jar of Charles Antell Fomula No. 9 (photo by Debby Davis); on right: a 1953 photo of Charles Antell’s founder, Charles D. Kasher from Life Magazine

Okay, I know that I said that two weeks of Dead Horse Bay archeology was enough, but we went back there last weekend and I happened to find this Charles Antell “Formula No. 9” jar. Never heard of the product before, but its vintage styling and hormonal claims piqued my interest.

Promoted as a baldness cure—(“Did you ever see a bald-headed sheep?”)—the lanolin-based Formula No. 9 was the premier product of Charles D. Kasher’s Baltimore-based hair care juggernaut: Charles Antell, Inc. (“Antell” was his Mother’s maiden name.)

Originally this milkglass jar’s cap was white, enameled metal. (See photo on right from Pro Commerce) After 50 years buried in a Brooklyn landfill, its rusty cap has now bonded with surrounding rocks and roots. Giving the jar, itself, an epic hairdo.

Pictured above, holding a jar of Formula No. 9 in his hand, Charles D. Kasher looks like an interesting character. The product does not appear to have prevented hair loss in his case.

A gifted huckster, Kasher was a master of the unusually long sales pitch. (The more you tell, the more you sell.) His 30 minute television commercials (with titles like “A Hair Raising Tale”) were among the earliest examples of what would eventually be called, the infomercial...

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have done everything but go into your home and put it on your hair every day for thirty days. Now, it’s up to you. If you’re tired of hair trouble, and you believe as I do that [Charles Antell Formula No. 9] has the answer, step to your telephone now. Call the number you are about to hear. And if you don’t believe, or aren’t convinced, call the number anyhow. Because if it works, and it will, it’s certainly worth the price ... if it doesn’t, it has cost you nothing.”

via: NY Folklore

His Life Magazine photo accompanied an article entitled, “Money Makers of a New Era”— subtitled: “Despite taxes they take risks and make money from own businesses.” (Note to today’s neo-Reagan Republicans: Charles Antell, Inc. made loads of money and employed people despite taxes and certain onerous governmental regulations...)

Docket 6102, Charles Antell Co., Inc., and others. Order issued December 18, 1953 The order issued by the Commission in this case prohibited false and misleading advertising of Charles Antell Formula No. 9... This order affected the  advertising  program  of Charles Antell amounting to approximately $8,000,000 annually. Among other things the order forbade claims that Formula No. 9 would prevent baldness or loss of hair...

Annual Report of the Federal Trade Commission
For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1954

One year later, Billboard reported that Kasher had cashed out, leaving the hair care company that he founded and starting a new television advertising company called “Television Advertising Associates” or TAA. (Note how Billboard characterizes Kasher’s career as a “meteoric rise” from “hepest of hep med workers” to “top spot on the totem pole at Charles Antell”)  Although he does not yet seem to have a Wikipedia page, Charles D. Kasher was a serial entrepreneur whose main career was yet to be revealed...

(More about Charles D. Kasher, after the fold...)

Martha Stewart & Lifebuoy Soap

Ever since we found a video of the Martha Stewart Tareyton Cigarettes commercial, we’ve been on the lookout for her 1956 Lifebuoy Soap commercial. Yesterday, it suddenly appeared on the Advertising Age web site. Unfortunately for us, that video was not the embeddable type, so last night I made this crude silent-movie version below...

Then this morning I found this embeddable version (via Professor Barnhardt’s Journal). It has a slightly reduced aspect ratio, but at least it’s a “talkie”...

 

Stewart mentioned her role in this commerical on Larry King Live in 2003...

STEWART: I remember making some commercials. I did a Lifebuoy soap commercial.

KING: You did?

STEWART: Well, when I was like 15.

KING: Lifebuoy, Lifebuoy.

STEWART: I played a young married. Can you imagine? As I say, I was 15-years-old.

CNN transcript of “Interview with Martha Stewart, Martha Kostyra”
Larry King Live, December 22, 2003

After seeing it again at an event last week Stewart commented, “I loved seeing that commercial because who smelled? — Did he smell or did I smell? It was done on Shelter Island. ... I took off two days from school, I had a chaperone.”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Shoe Box : Tissue Box

More orthographically-projected “shoe boxes” reminiscent of the ones we showed last December, but these boxes (designed by groovisions in 2006 for Oji Nepia) are meant to be both shoe box and tissue box. The idea being that once the shoes are removed the box may be saved to dispense tissues.

Nice business on the “soles” of these boxes where there appears to be evidence of something having been stepped in. Which is odd to see on the proxy box for your brand new shoes, but does create a clear spot on the treads for some legible product information.

(Via: Packaging of the World)

(Another box and second thoughts, after the fold...)

Uncapped Landfill Jar #2

This eight sided jar has embossed letters on each panel which (if you start with the upper case “B”) spell out the brand “Barbasol.” Guessing that (prior to containing sand and seaweed) this jar must have once held shaving cream, I checked their website’s history section which confirms:

Over the years, Barbasol has been sold in a variety of packaging types and sizes. The Giant Jar was originally sold for 75¢.

As the photo on right shows, this jar originally came in a red, white and blue folding carton. That box apparently did not make it to Dead Horse Bay’s “bottle beach.” Nor did the jar’s cap. There are, however, a surviving examples to be found online...

(More Barbasol jar photos, after the fold...)