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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)

Package-Related Music Packaging

Assuming that we can still call album “cover” artwork that accompanies a digital download “packaging” then the image above is surely part of a package-related music package. The cover of Edison’s free “Dehydrated Water” EP is obviously a roughly retouched version of the Bernard Dehydrated Water can that we were looking at yesterday.

Another Edison release—in collaboration with Evak—is also package-related and, in this case, there is an actual (albiet “Limited Edition”) release. Six Pack O’Death simulates the look, if not feel, of a Budweiser beer label. Artwork by Mildew.

(See also: S.A.P. and Immortal Water)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Empty Cans of Dehydrated Water

Top row, left: from EraPhernalia Vintage . . . (playin' hooky ;o)’s Flickr Photostream; on right: from David Reeves’s Flickr Photostream; 2nd row, left: via BackpackingLight forums; on right: via No Budget Films; below: from Sweetheartville’s Flickr Photostream; bottom: from ohkayeor (Lovin' our cool weather)’s Flickr Photostream

Our friend Mr. Ronse recently brought a gag gift known as “Bernard Dehydrated Water” to my attention.

Packaged as if it were a canned food product, this item is clearly a part of that larger category of gag gifts: packages, containing ephemeral contents. (See: Rob Walker’s recent Design Observer post, “Rarified Air”)

The thing that’s unusual in this case is that “dehydrated water” seems to be the only novelty product of an otherwise legitimate food company: Bernard Food Industries.

Apparently on the market since 1962, their dehydrated water beverage is the only gag gift mentioned in a long list of trademarked applications for their standard label design. Also interesting, is how they’ve stipulated their trademark’s use for “novelty gift items, namely, empty cans.”

(Some trademark documents, after the fold...)

Coney Island Brand Exotic Canned Foods

Last week, while researching the Coney Island Steeplechase Jack-Glasgow Grin thing, I happened to discover “Coney Island Brand exotic canned foods” — artist/“rogue-taxidermist,” Takeshi Yamada’s rogue consumer packaged goods...

The original factory Coney Island Fine Foods was located in the heart of the Dreamland Amusement Park in the Coney Island area of Brooklyn, New York. The owner Henry J. Feltman... opened a seafood restaurant, Palace of Mermaids, in Coney Island and served varieties of exotic dishes from all over the world. His financial success led him to open a new factory to package and market his popular foods in the Northeast. The company became famous and very popular by originating Coney Island style Clam chowder and Coney Island style canned clams in Coney Island in 1862. At one point, Feltman’s clam chowder was as famous as two other famous foods which originated in Coney Island; hot dog (1867) and frozen custard (1919). Unfortunately this famed company was destroyed by the Dreamland Fire of 1911.

Takeshi Yamada’s Museum of Wonders

Some of his label designs, below...

(See also: Flux Mystery Food)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Canned: Florida Sunshine & London Fog

Toilet Paper Tubes

Tube-shaped toilet paper dispensers. A cross-category, package-related consumer product?

Maybe, as with Oldenburg‘s giant toothpaste tube, there’s some subliminal identification at work here. (toothpaste extrusion = bodily excretion?)

A product line, the manufacturer hopes to extend: from toothpaste to shampoo to cartoon licensing...

Novelty bathroom accessories like these will inevitably also contain a certain gag gift gestalt. The Coca Cola Zero tube, however, struck me as particularly odd: it’s soda, packaged in a toothpaste tube. Only it’s not really soda, it’s toilet paper! Get it?

 

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Radioactive Gag Gift Packaging

The last chapter of Jerry Jankowski’s book, Shelf Space (modern package design, 1945-1960), is about “gag gifts.” These are usually conceptual affairs, in the sense that—(although the gag may be sort of dumb)—as a product, it’s little more than an idea contained in the package. One product featured in this “canned laughter” section of Jankowski’s book is a can of “Genuine Los Angeles Smog.” (See photos below)

From The Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Museum Collection, this can of “Original Canned Radiation” is obviously the same basic concept. Selling an empty can of air as a sort of rueful attempt at finding humor in the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident.

“Canned Radiation” from Three Mile Island produced  by Brenster Enterprises of Etters Pennsylvania.

This was probably the most popular souvenir associated with the accident at Three Mile Island.

The six suggested uses indicated on the label were:

1. Remove label and tell your enemy its laughing gas.
2. Energy free night light (illuminates in darkness).
3. Mix with cold cream for that radiant beauty.
4. Instant male sterilization (sniff twice daily).
5. Use as a room air freshener.
6. Toothpaste recipe: mix 3 to 1 ratio with basking soda, for ever glowing smile.

ORAU Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Museum Collection

 

The funny thing is, several of those bulleted points above are ideas that have actually been tried in the past for serious, non-gag products. (See: Radioactive Packaging)

Nice smog can from eBay, circa 1968 (“Buy It Now” price : $49.95)

(A different label design for “Genuine Los Angeles Smog,” after the fold...)

Wacky Packages

photos from the wackypackages.org site

Before there were Garbage Pail Kids, there were Wacky Packages, a strange line of humorous trading cards & stickers for kids from Topps that first appeared in 1967.

Entirely based on existing consumer packaging, each Wacky Package satirized either the product itself, or else some other unrelated cultural subject. Each set was sold with a stick of bubble gum and packaged in a wrapper.

photos from the wackypackages.org site

The concept was usually based on some look-alike word in the logo. Thus, Gravy Train become “Grave Train” (an oddly prescient parody about a brand of dog food that will kill your dog); Chef Boy-ar-dee becomes “Chef Girl-ar-dee Feminist Spaghetti—approved by Women’s Lib” (showing signs of its 1960's vintage); and Duzn’t Do Nuthin’ is based on “Duz” detergent, a product that no longer exists (and really shows its age by featuring a Beatnick as the punch-line!)

(lots more images and more to read after the jump)

Magnetic Packages (they attract and repel)

A few years ago I noticed a neighbor with two scotty dogs, one white and one dark. It reminded of something, but it took me a while to finally put my finger on what it was. When it finally came to me, I got onto eBay and bought me some “Magnetic Spunky Dogs.” This package has been in my desk drawer ever since. A product, made in Hong Kong, it had a humble header card with a staple smack dab through the middle. Hang hole not fully punched out. (As “new old stock” it was apparently never hung up on a hook.) Same artwork front and back. (No UPC's in those days!) Note the ¢ sign rather than a $ sign! With packaging like this, I’m guessing there wasn’t a lot of market research done or a focus group conducted about the design. No PRS eye-tracking here! Not saying I love the layout, but it explains the product well enough.

I recently stumbled onto this nice collection of “dime store” packaging on Kirk Demarais's Secret Fun Spot. (These 10 header cards are from his site.) His collection even includes a Spunky Dogs card. (More about Kirk Demarais and “dime store packaging” after the jump)