box vox

Bottle Tables

Left: Harry Allen’s “Cocktail Table.”; Right: Nathan Tobiason’s “Wine Table.”

Above: Gregor Stoltz’s collaborative PET recycling project table.

Above: Don Wine’s “Port Wine Table.”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Purple Cow Packaging

Vintage Holloway’s Purple Cow candy wrapper from Jason LieBig’s Flickr Photostream; William’s Purple Cow Lager can from The Beer Can Guide; Milka Chocolate’s purple cow shaped folding carton (via: Packaging of the World); a vintage “purple cow” fruit label for Washington apples for sale on eBay ($250)

Based on an 1895 poem by Gelett Burgess, a “purple cow” generally meant something “out of the ordinary” or something you don’t see every day. As depicted in these vintage packages, each with its whimsical cow illustration, the concept was fine.

I’m not so accepting of the new over-arching definition of “purple cow” as something remarkably innovative, as set forth in Seth Godin’s book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. Because of this book, some people are now calling any ground-breaking, category disrupting product a “purple cow.”

For some reason, I find this new meaning a loathsome thing. To me, the name “purple cow” diminishes the hard work of innovation, making it sound like something merely capricous.

I doubt Steve Jobs would ever have given one of Apple’s products as insipid a name as “purple cow” and yet all over the place there are people now saying that the iPad and the iPhone are “purple cows.”

You need look no further than the scapbooking craft company The Purple Cows to understand the uncool connotations that this name carries.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

NOS Consumer Confusion

I’d seen “NOS” energy drink around for a while, but aside from noticing that the logo was sort of clunky and spelled “son” if you looked at it upside down, I didn’t think too much about it.

I hadn’t realized it was named after a leading brand of nitrous oxide. Or that “NOS” stands for “Nitrous Oxide Systems.”

Considering all the attention paid to the negative influence of energy drink brands with names like “Cocaine” and “Hemp,” I was surprised not to have known about a “Nitrous Oxide” energy drink.

NOS even put out a version of their bottle, designed to resemble a Nitrous Oxide Systems tank, but it’s more about caffeinated racing cars, than huffing inhalants, apparently.

NOS 22oz PET was awarded BevNET’s Best of 2007 for Packaging Innovation...

“The authentic package design of NOS 22oz PET was inspired by the actual nitrous oxide canister, developed by Holley Performance Products, which prompted the design and use of ‘valve’ over caps,” said Bill Meissner, Chief Marketing Officer at FUZE Beverages.

The packaging is instantly recognizable and the association with Holley’s Nitrous Oxide canisters has been well received by customers, vaulting NOS to No. 7 in the energy drink category.

Packaging Europe

With such similar looking packages in different product categories, is there any danger of consumer confusion, a la Skinny & Sweet?

(More confusion, after the fold...)

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...)

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...)

Camouflage Pattern Beverage Branding

On left: Camouflage pattern Miller beer can (from: The Sparkler); on right: Busch beer’s autumnal camouflage (from: 2CoolFishing message board)

Originally developed as a functional pattern (as opposed to a decorative pattern) camouflage might seem an odd choice for product packaging since the pattern is meant to conceal.

Usually product packages are designed to attract attention so it’s striking when a package is designed to disappear into the background. Of course, the environment of store shelves is quite different from outdoor environments. So what blends into the background in the desert sands might actually be quite conspicuous at the grocery store. And vice versa.

Probably the point of using camo in this context has more to do with masculine connotations of hunting and military service than in concealment.

Miller Brewing had this to says about it’s limited edition camouflage packaging:

“Miller High Life is again honoring its century-old connection with the outdoors by introducing limited-edition, camouflaged packaging and cans of Miller High Life and Miller High Life Light.”

Photo, above right, from Wishful Slacker

2009 Vault Citrus camouflage can from ebid; photo on right from Eating in Translation

It should also be noted that there are products available for camouflaging beer cans...

(One more thing about camouflage beverage branding...)

Camouflage Cans

Definition of “Camouflage Can”...

A can produced in olive green for the U.S. military from 1944-45. It used to be thought that the cans were colored olive green as camouflage, but it is now generally believed that they were painted green simply because the US Army had almost everything it purchased painted that color. Most camouflage cans are rare and are highly desirable to collectors. Many were shipped to troops overseas and so cannot be found in the US easily.

from Rusty Can

(Also called “olive drab” or “OD” cans.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Mr. Sprinkles Package Design Makeover

An exception to the general waning of CPG clown packaging:

“Mr. Sprinkles,” (whose weeble-like bottle won the 2009 “Gold” award from the National Association of Container Distributors) has recently been redesigned.

Originally the bottle was more closely akin to inflatable punching bag clowns (see inset right) but, while the overall effect of the new package design is less of a fully-embodied, anthropomorphic pack, the new clown illustration is now more identifiable and less threatening. The product still shows through the window into the clown’s sprinkle-filled belly.

The illustration style looks familiar. (Maybe someone knows whose work this is?)

Photo above left comes from the orginal “Mr. Spinkles” trademark filing. The photo above right is from Bakerella.

(See also: Gömböc Bottle)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Ron English: Popaganda Shopdropping

Ron English is the artist who created the zipper/banana album cover mash-up that we wrote about last January.

More recently he’s been doing some cereal box package design (i.e.: art) which he’s been shopdropping into supermarkets. These “popaganda” food repacks are subversive in the same dumb sort of way that Wacky Packages were: creating momentary consumer confusion and adding a satiric, negative spin to trademarked food brands.

Some commentators have taken the cereal series as nutritional agitprop in opposition of childhood obesity. I’m not sure that English’s agenda is so politically correct, but I could be wrong.

The fun part of shopdropping, however, is when consumers puzzle over the aberrant branding messages and, in some cases, blithely purchase them.

Part of the reason I prefer not think that English’s messaging is sincerely literal is the “Sugar Diabetic Bear” below, which in my (diabetic) view is amusing, but not entirly accurate. Yes, Type 2 diabetes can be brought on by obesity, but what about Type 1 diabetes? Eating sugar certainly didn’t cause my diabetes. (See: Diabetes Myths)

(One more thing about Ron English and diabetes, after the fold...)

Bottles with Embroidered Shirt Labels

Another example of cross-category, clothing-related package design: Eau de Lacoste “Poloshirt in a Fragrance” bottles with their alligator shirt embem. Note the fabric texture on the sides of the bottle. (See also: Package as Clothing)

My earliest memory of an embroidered alligator emblem was when my mother in the late 1950s or early 1960s created some counterfeit Lacoste shirts for my grandfather, my father, me & my little brother. This was motivated more by the alligator than the brand status, I think, since we lived in south Florida, not so far from the Everglades. (See also: Crocodile Boxes—Alligator Bags)

Still, my mother must have been aware that the Lacaoste alligator emblem was a self-proclaimed “status symbol.”

René Lacoste founded La Chemise Lacoste in 1933 with André Gillier, the owner and president of the largest French knitwear manufacturing firm at the time. They began to produce the revolutionary tennis shirt Lacoste had designed and worn on the tennis courts with the crocodile logo embroidered on the chest. Although the company claims this as the first example of a brand name appearing on the outside of an article of clothing, the “Jantzen girl” logo appeared on the outside of Jantzen Knitting Mills’ swimsuits as early as 1921. In addition to tennis shirts, Lacoste produced shirts for golf and sailing. In 1951, the company began to expand as it branched from “tennis white” and introduced color shirts. In 1952, the shirts were exported to the United States and advertised as “the status symbol of the competent sportsman,” influencing the clothing choices of the upper-class. Lacoste was sold at Brooks Brothers until the late 1960’s. It is still one of the most popular brands in the United States, sporting the “preppy wardrobe”.

from Wikipedia’s entry on history of Lacoste

Invariably, when packaging serves as a metaphor for clothing, a consumer naturally tends to anthopomorphize and even identify with the product contained.

(The advertising, after the fold...)

Laundry Label Bottles

A bit of trompe l’oeil, cross-category package design...

Stocks Taylor Benson’s shrink sleeve bottle labels for Morrisons laundry liquids (on left) emulate the standard “care instructions” woven label for garments (on right). Winner of a 2011 Pentaward.

(See also: Trompe l’Oeil Price Tags)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Wooden Packaging

Top row: Anicka Yi and Maggie Peng’s cedar-encased fragrance bottles; 2nd row, left: Andrée Rouette’s ABCD veneer-covered maple syrup cans (via Packaging UQAM); 2nd row, right:  Espen Hansen’s veneer-covered AO Vinje gin box; 3rd row, left: Society27’s wooden shoebox; 3rd row, right & below: Léo Breton-Allaire’s spruce gum chewing gum concept (via: Packaging UQAM); 4th row left & below right: Maude Bussières’s detachable wooden pencils concept (via Packaging UQAM); 5th row, left: Debowa oak-encased vodka bottles; bottom row: Gerlinde Gruber’s wooden, puzzle-like jewelry box

Packages made of wood (See also: Wood Framed Bottles)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Beach Glass Bottles

Two kinds:

1. Bottles with beach glass on the inside like the “Beach Glass Mix in an Old Milk Bottle” on the left from Rocknotes’ Etsy store. ($18.95)

2. Bottles with beach glass on the outside like the 2006 “Beach Glass 40 of Olde E” on the right by Mike Leavitt with beach glass glued to an Olde English 800 malt liquor bottle. (The label is painted on.)

(See also: 4 Cardboard Shoemakers and Beach Glass + Plastic Soup)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Nozzle Necklaces

Upper left: Sterling silver “Spray Can Nozzle” pendant from Solitary Man ($255); upper right: Nozzle Necklace w/ Krylon logo cut out of a can by Jaymeer, 1997 (see also: Silver Nozzle); lower left:  Hand-made clogged nozzle necklace by Steven Jacobs ($15); lower right: Sterling silver “Tag’n Run” necklaces—with and without diamond from Red Sofa ($65)

Some packaging jewelry of a very specific type: necklaces made from spray paint can nozzles.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Coca Cola’s Dripping Negative Space

On left: “liquidated” Coca Cola logo by Zevs; center: a recently discontinued Coke can; on right: Zoo’s package design for Rubén Álvarez yogurt.

The first time I saw the seasonal Coca Cola can above was from a distance of about 3 yards (2.75 m). I was in the back of the supermarket by the meat cases when I noticed some cans with what appeared to be dripping white frosting (or melting glacial ice?) on display in a Coca Cola end cap.

I left my shopping cart where it was and crossed over for a closer look. Not drips at all, but just the negative space behind some polar bears on a silver ridge.

Maybe I’m predisposed to seeing dripping graphics everywhere, but, even if this optical illusion is unintentional, a dripping white package does seem in keeping with Coca Cola’s frosty, cold gestalt. And, to my eyes, the white ink comes to the foreground and the silver metal of the can is the more natural background.

None of this matters much in the face of another negative controversy. The package design was intended to be part of Coke’s “cause marketing” effort to protect the polar bear, but this message is being overshadowed by the problem of diabetic consumer confusion.

“I purchased three six-packs because I thought they were diet,” Gail O’Donnell of Danvers, Massachusetts, told ABC News.

“I drank one and wondered why it tasted so good. I didn’t look at the can. … I am a diabetic and can only drink diet sodas. They need to make it so it is not confused.”

Coke and Diet Coke Cans Should Be Polar Opposites, Buyers Say

Coca Cola has therefore discontinued production of the white can, switching back to last year’s red version. So diabetics (like me) won’t get confused and drink regular, caloric Coke by mistake, screwing up their blood sugar.

Come to think of it, the red can looks a little like dripping blood.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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...)

Wonder Bread Shoes: 4 Pairs

As it seems to be “shoe week” here on box vox, I thought I’d go ahead and take a look at some of the footwear that’s been wearing Wonder Bread’s “trade dress” in the last couple of years...

1. An And1 “wear test sample” that was never manufactured for mass consumption.

2. Wonder Bread style Pro Keds. Their tagline: “the best thing since sliced bread.” Photo via: PBNation (See also: Bread and Sneakers)

3. Wonder Bread bags as shoes worn by Moe from The Simpsons in an episode entitled, “the Grift of the Magi.”

4. The Wonder Bread “color way” for polka dot BAPE Stas.

(Moe’s shoe video, more of And1 and another example, after the fold...)

Bottle Cap Shoes

I didn’t understand these at first: pictures online of miniature sneakers mounted on top of bottle caps, but no pictures of the caps on a bottle. Turns out to be some sort of Adidas/Pepsi promotion from 2008:

Adidas & Pepsi [Japan] team up with [these] limited edition ... Adidas ... on a Pepsi bottle cap. The cap doesn’t actually fit onto a bottle as it is meant for display purposes although it looks very similar.

Found-NYC

All photos from Butsuyoku. Collect all 60.

(57 more, after the fold...)

2 More Trapezoidal Boxes

Did a round-up of trapezoidal boxes a while back. Here are two more that I thought looked good together. They’re not new.

The one on the left is Milner Gray’s modern/classic package design for a 1950s Pyrex gift set (No.3a). I like how the handle (and the dark color) make this carton look like a hefty, 1-ton weight.  (via: BurningSettlersCabin)

The one on the right is a flat, trapezoid-shaped box for the ARC6 flashlight. (Now discontinued.)

Pairing them up together, I thought the ARC’s embossed “burst” logo sort of related to the Pyrex crown logo. And it also looks, in this photo, as if the ARC6 box had a silver-grey neutral color, matching the black & white Pyrex packaging photo. That, I think, is a misperception based on a skillfully lighted “hero shot.” The ARC6 flashlight box seems to have actually been white. (via: CPF Reviews)

(Another photo, after the fold...)

Molecular Gastronomical Canned Food Labels

Don’t much about molecular gastronomy, but these El Bulli Texturas canned food labels caught my eye...

Photo above from: Servus München.

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