CPG as RCU. Delsym’s current advertising campaign imagines their product packaging as a television remote control for muting distracting family cough symptoms. (Detail of a print ad by Roy Tuck, on left)
(The print ad in its entirety, after the fold...)
Bay Area Green Cross Dispensary, Inc. has recently rebranded their “medical cannabis” product line with a new registered trademark and a new packaging design...
“in response to revised labeling and packaging guidelines issued by the San Francisco Department of Public Health (DPH). The new labels are designed to better inform users that the product is medicine, not food, and to make the product unattractive/unappealing to children.
I’m not sure I agree that the new branding is strictly medicinal. The “freshly baked” tagline puts this logo somewhere between the baked goods section of a supermarket and stoner-culture comedy films like “Half-Baked.”
Also in the same press release is this:
“Our new packaging complies with the new regulations, enhances safety, and integrates the flare and style that The Green Cross is known for.”
In this context, I can’t quite decide whether the use of “flare” (rather than “flair”) is an inadvertent malapropism or an oblique reference to “lighting up. Although it could also refer to a “flare up” of glaucoma or some other medical condition requiring the use of Incredimeds brand medical cannabis.
More information here: Medical Cannabis Edibles —(but no mention the package designer).
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design
Last year, Medical Marketing and Media’s “Best Over-The-Counter Product Advertisement/Campaign Gold Award went to AbelsonTaylor and Abbott Nutrition for their Ensure “Nutrition in Charge” commercials. (CG animation by Bent Image Lab)
In these commercials, an anthropomorphic bottle of Ensure hectors the other anthropomorphic occupants of the fridge (some of whom are fruits & vegetables —others are other packaged foods) about healthy nutrition. It’s unclear whether the Ensure bottle is playing the role of coach or drill-sergeant. Either way, this anthro-pack is clearly a mesomorphic dominant male.
“Ensure has a unique blend of prebiotic fiber to help promote digestive tract health, and antioxidants (vitamins C and E and selenium) to support the immune system.”
In contrast to Ensure’s muscular bottle, consider the pencil-armed, ectomorphic Aktifit bottle. (3D art direction by Champignon Images ; production by Frame Eleven; modeling, UV’s & texturing by Fabio Quaggiotto; compositing by Mike Frei. Agency: TBWA Switzerland)
Aktifit also makes immunological health claims and employs an anthropomorphic bottle, but its contents are probiotic rather than prebiotic.
“Emmi Aktifit is a probiotic drink made from pasteurized skimmed milk, providing the body with lasting strength from the inside. Clinically tested LGG culture stabilizes intestinal flora, promotes digestion and strengthens the body’s immune defences.”
As a character, the European Aktifit bottle shows less aggression — more passive resistance. Apparently immune to cold season, it happily reclines in a beach chair as it snows. (Is this the cold weather of the fridge?)
(More Ensure commericals and some Aktifit “out takes” after the fold...)
In a way, this one’s a follow up to Karen Abel’s PBR flowers. Like her, I found some discarded packaging in an empty planter. Unlike her, I’m not thinking of making these into flowers.
Unusual to see such a sexually explicit illustration on a retail package. If this were a trend, what would we call it? Pornographic branding? Pornographic graphic design? (See also: Packaging Junk)
At first I thought it was a condom package—a common enough form of litter in our neighborhood.
Printed on a fancy holographic foil stock... Muti-national flag icons lined up in a row, but all the text was in Japanese so I couldn’t read what it said. I searched for the UPC number in Google and learned that it’s a Japanese patent-medicine sex-pill called “Stree Overlord” (sometimes misspelled as “Street Overload”) Not a condom package, after all.
It turns out that this product is one of many mysterious “herbal” products sold at the deli on our corner, even though there’s evidence online of the FDA intercepting imports of Stree Overlord because “Required label or labeling appears to not be in English” and because “The article appears to be a new drug without an approved new drug application.”
But those aren’t the only regulations that Mayo Kaisha Pharmacy Export Ltd. is flouting. They are also trampling trademark law. The two characters on the box are Chun-Li and Ryu from the Capcom video game known as “Street Fighter.”
Interestingly, Stree Overlord’s own trademark is also being infringed upon. Their web site has one page complaining:
“It has come to our attention that Stree Overlord has become so popular that many have decided to duplicated and copy from us to try and take away what we have worked so hard for.”
(There are now counterfeit versions of the product being manufactured in China.)
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design
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
On left: photo from Sheaff-Ephemera; on right: a photo from eBay
Bassett’s Horehound Troches: another product from the same company that sold Bassett’s Egg Shampoo Cream.
“Troches” is a word we don’t hear much these days. If this product were around now, the word would be “lozenges” or “cough Drops.”
Would have been nice to find a photo of their 25¢ “elegant glass bottle” (a torpedo bottle), but this bottle-shaped trade card is all I could find online.
Before starting the Basset Supply Company, Albert G. Bassett was in the drug store business. Judging by the last line on the back of the trade card, Horehound Troches were also sold on trains.
(See also: Die-Cut, Package-Shaped Recipe Booklets)
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design
Recently I saw a design patent for a jar and it struck me that the jar wasn’t much bigger than its cap. The patent didn’t specify what it was designed to contain. I was thinking it would be funny if this jar contained something whose directions called for using “one capful” of the product.
The strange thing is, the patent was assigned to distillers, Shenley Industries. (Note: Paul Rand’s design for Shenley’s Gin packaging above, left)
Assuming the jar didn’t contain a single shot of distilled spirits, I wondered, “What was it meant to hold?”
(Mystery solved, after the fold...)
Some vintage medial waste found on the beach at Dead Horse Bay:
1. An injectable medicine vial (shaped just like my insulin bottles, only a litle bigger) with a script “L” on the bottom, identifying its source as Eli Lilly—(again, the same company that manufactures my insulin today). But, who knows what injectable drug this bottle once contained?
2. Part of a huge 20cc glass syringe with Luer-Lok branding. Luer-Lok is Becton, Dickinson’s trademarked name for cofounder, Fairleigh S. Dickinson’s patented hypodermic syringe connection system. No sign of the needle or the plunger.
The contents now washing out of this eroding landfill preceeded the AIDS epidemic by about three decades. So no worries there. Although, as one person familiar with the area put it, “Don’t get too comfortable handling it. The 1950’s were the worst for chemical dumping in our country’s history. The garbage from the 1850’s [on the other hand] is deep in the middle under the airport.”
Not that you can’t find more recent medical waste on a New York City beach. Just last April, Debby (my partner at Beach Packaging Design) found a relatively fresh vial of blood on South Beach. (photo on right)
This more contempory bit of medical waste still had its label showing the source to have been Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.
As suggested by its name, “Franklin Lakes” has lakes and is not adjacent to an ocean. This blood vial, therefore, did not float all the way to Lower New York Bay from one of Franklin Lake’s lakes. Not without some illegal human intervention.
But I digress. Here’s what my 20cc Luer-Lok syringe probably looked like when it was still intact...
(See also: Diabetic Packaging, Early Insulin Packaging and Color-Coded Bloodstream)
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design
Musterole: Before & After. Not the usual “before & after” package redesign photos. The photo on left (by Rick Schies) and my photo (on the right) shows what the small white jar looked like “before”—migrating from its uncapped landfill to Dead Horse Bay Beach—and “after.”
Early advertising below shows that this jar originally came in a box.
Another Musterole ad from 1913 touted the clean whiteness of the jar:
“You get this clean, white ointment out of a clean, white jar. You simply rub it on—and the pain is gone!”
Smearing Mustard on the Skin, by Roger M. Grace
2005, Metroplitan News Company
(One more early Musterole ad, after the fold...)
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...)
Top left photo from l_c_m_tt_’s Flickr Photostream
At MOMA until May 9, 2011: George Maciunas’s “One Year”
ONE YEAR (1973-1974) is a art installation by Lithuania-born American artist George Maciunas (1931-1978) consisting of the empty containers of various food and household products that he consumed over the course of one year. The work reflects the American consumer landscape of the early 1970s and the monotony of Maciunas’ daily regimen.
(via: NYC ♥ NYC)
(If you click on the top left photo and look closely, you will note that, in addition to food, Maciunas consumed a lot of asthma medications. This helps to explain what follows, after the fold....)
Continue reading "One Year (in the life of George Maciunas)" »
Oh yeah. Halloween. I guess that was yesterday. Oh well: a penny late and a pint short.
Among the packaging meant to resemble blood bags, Halloween candy figures most prominently—but other products (that are not specifically Halloween-related) will also occasionally embrace this gimmick...
...like heat packs and ice packs (blood bags that come in boxes)...
...or “Blood Bath” brand shower gel.
(More photos and examples, after the fold...)
Via today’s NY Times: “Breakthrough: The Dramatic Story of the Discovery of Insulin” an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society that opens today.
The packaging has changed surprisingly little since its earliest manufacture subsequent to its discovery in Canada in 1921. The large photo above, from Eli Lilly and Company Archives, is of early insulin packaging from 1923. The inset photo is the kind of insulin that I take today—also manufactured by Eli Lilly, but made from recombinant (synthetic human) DNA rather than pork & beef pancreas...
The expense and logistics of large-scale insulin manufacture were initially daunting. But soon trainloads of frozen cattle and pig pancreas from the giant Chicago slaughterhouses began to arrive at Lilly’s plant. By 1932 the drug’s price had fallen by 90 percent.
Rediscovering the First Miracle Drug
By Abigail Zuger, M.D.
NY Times, October 4, 2010
The “I am not intoxicated” card (on right) is also from the exhibit. I remember being given a card like this when I first became diabetic. A serious thing since diabetics having insulin reactions have at times been killed by police officers, misconstruing their symptoms.
Yet it also seems like a “Ceci n’est pas une pipe” sort of paradoxical statement whose truth might be difficult to parse. Since a diabetic could conceivably be intoxicated. I, myself, have (on super-rare occasions) had low blood sugar and been (slightly) intoxicated simultaneously. (The thing to do at that point is to immediately switch to juice.)
Carrying a card like this serves a similar function to medic alert tags. Both of which, one could say, work as a kind of packaging—a “care instructions” tag for the unconscious diabetic.
One thing I wonder about, since insulin first came out around the same time as American and Canadian prohibitions: were tipsy-acting diabetics treated worse due to the illegality of drinking?
(See also: Color-Coded Bloodstream, Diabetic Packaging, Diabetic Jewelry)
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design
On Left: a photo by Daniel Steger showing the rescue cognac/brandy keg commonly associated with Saint Bernard dogs; on right: homemade St. Bernard gear, apparently made from a brown plastic “Barrel of Monkeys” toy container—note the logo. (Photo via: Tremble.com
Above: details from two vintage magazine ads, both substituting the traditional keg/barrel with more contemporary alcoholic beverage packaging. (Both ads in their entirety are shown at the end of this post)
According to Wikipedia, although bred as rescue dogs, “The monks of the St. Bernard Hospice deny that any St. Bernard has ever carried casks or small barrels around their necks.” Apparently this is just a popular myth, possibly started by a painting.
Nevertheless, the myth has been perpetuated and stoked by brandy brands like Hennssey and others...
The implied health benefit—the idea of brandy that could be used as a life-saving elixer—was not lost on other alcoholic beverage manufacturers. Hence, the tongue-in-cheek use of St. Bernards in Michelob Beer and Smirnoff Vodka advertising.
Still, packages that refer to St. Bernard dogs are nowhere near as common as references to barrels in general. I couldn’t find any St. Bernard shaped brandy bottles, for example.... although the “Booze Hound” decanter below left is cute. (Its nose is a cork.)
On left: “Booze Hound” decanter; on right: ubiquitous Avon cologne bottle—their contribution to this concept—(and nearly any other figural bottle theme you can think of)
(More St. Bernard packaging, after the fold...)
The screen shot above is part of a project by Beach Packaging Design partner, Debby Davis: an online “Toxic Trail Map of Staten Island.” (There is also a printed version that is to be included as a poster in the centerfold of the Fall 2010 COAHSI newsletter.)
“With the support of a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts and Staten Island Creative Communities, artist Debby Davis has spent the past year mapping and documenting the areas of Staten Island which have been contaminated by industry corruption and neglect.”
Here is something that plenty of other communities could probably also use: a map of places its citizens might want to avoid.
[Site #15] Among the places we try not to picnic here on Staten Island: a radiologically contaminated spot near the Bayonne bridge where 1,250 tons of uranium ore, earmarked for The Manhattan Project were once stored. “The site, located in a weed and junk-filled lot adjacent to the Kill Van Kull and the Bayonne Bridge is easily accessible through a rickety chain link fence.”
[Site #36] But not everything here is so futuristic and atomic. Staten Island was also a major manufacturing center in the days of patent medicine.
The Oakland Chemical Company’s factory was located in the Staten Island town of Rossville. They manufactured hydrogen peroxide under the brand name, “Dioxogen.” Like other medicinal products of the time, Dioxogen’s advertising claimed a multitude of hyperbolic health benefits. “The only active force in Dioxogen is Oxygen—the cleansing force of the universe.”
Bottle on right was purchased on eBay. Their bottles were also packaged for a time with a paper outer wrap—(very similar to early Listerine Mouthwash packaging.)
Dioxogen packaging photos above via: Sure Cure Antiques
1916 Dioxogen ad via Modern Mechanix
(More about Site #36, after the fold...)
Cowley’s embossed rat poison bottle from Ruby Lane
Couldn’t do an entire “animal bottle” week without finding at least one rat bottle: Cowley’s Original Rat & Mouse Poison came in bottles with an embossed rat. (Not super-old, just 1940s old.)
I might have preferred to find some rat-shaped “bitters” bottles similar to yesterday’s pig bottles. But if being partial to rats, means I have to write about rat poison, then so be it...
The active ingredient in Cowley’s rat poison (it should be noted) was arsenic...
Among our cases, liquid rodenticide was the most common source of arsenic for both intentional and unintentional poisonings in Mississippi. Fifteen of the 27 unintentional poisonings... were by ingestion of a liquid rodenticide... One recent Mississippi case of an accidental arsenic poisoning involveding three children occurred when a mother poured arsenic-based rodenticide over crackers and left them on the floor overnight. Three of her children ate the poisoned crackers the next morning. Specifically, Cowley’s Rat and Mouse Poison was named as the brand of arsenic-containing rodenticide in each of the 16 cases where a brand name was recorded. This product is no longer being manufactured, and thus its registration with the Mississippi Department of Agriculture, Division of Plant Industries, has not been renewed since 1988. Previously stocked bottles of this rodenticide, however, remain on Mississippi store shelves, available for open public purchase.
Arsenic Exposures in Mississippi: A Review of Cases
Mary Jane Park, BS, and Mary Currier, MD, MPH, Jackson, Miss
Southern Medical Journal, April 1991
I did find one non-poisonous rat bottle similar to one of Tuesday’s squirrel bottles.
(One last photo, after the fold...)
On left: vintage cod liver oil bottle; on right soy sauce bottle/packets from Jamesies’s Photobucket
I’m thinking of devoting this week to animal-shaped bottles. Starting with fish.
In an earlier post about animal-shaped packaging we touched upon, but did not fully explore the diverse animal kingdom of figural bottles. It seems to have been a big thing for manufacturers of liquids at the turn of the century.
The choice of animal is sometimes ingredient-related, as in the cod-liver oil bottle above and sometimes the animal serves as a sort of serving suggestion—as in the the little soy sauce bottles.
But other times it’s more homophonic, as in Dr. Fisch’s Bitters (below) which came in a fish-shaped bottle simply becasue the Doctor’s name sounded like “fish.”. (Similar to the fox-shaped bottle we mentioned in our post about Fox’s U-Bet Chocolate Syrup—a fox-shaped bottle as a reference to Herman Fox, the company’s founder)
The photos of vintage “Fish Bitters” above are via: AntiqueBottles.com. (Interesting how the label went on the hidden belly of the fish.) W.H. Ware’s 1866 design patent for this fish-shaped bottle is via www.bottlebooks.com
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design
Thinking about the apparently propensity (of certain inventors) for combining smoking and drinking, I wondered, “How far has this trend gone without my having even noticed?” (As it happens: things have gotten pretty far out...)
Unbeknownst to me—(a non-smoker and dilettante drinker)—it is now possible to reverse the usual way of doing things. Thanks to a number of recent technological breakthroughs, today’s modern consumer now drinks cigarettes and inhales alcoholic beverages.
The “Liquid Smoking” brand, above, is actually something of a misnomer. More like an energy drink with borrowed tobacco glamor, it originally came in a can designed to resemble a Marlboro cigarette pack, but contains no tobacco or nicotine. Recently the product appears to have undergone a brand makeover. (inset photo on right) Electronic cigarettes come closer to using a sort of liquid tobacco, but while futuristic and high-tech, they are still inhaled like old-fashioned cigarettes and do not constitute a breakthrough tobacco beverage.
The name “Liquid Smoking” derives from the barbeque favor additive known as “Liquid Smoke.” (Photo of hand holding Colgin Liquid Smoke, above: from Meghan Deutscher’s Flickr Photostream)
Photo, above, from: Andrew Filer’s Flickr Photostream
“Liquid smoke”—while having nothing to do with tobacco, really is a liquid made from smoke.
“Liquid smoke consists of smoke produced through the controlled burning of wood chips or sawdust, condensed and then passed through water, which captures and dissolves the smoke-flavored components in solution.”
“A Ham is a Queer Thing for a Druggist to Sell...
...It is, but Krausers’ Liquid Extract of Smoke to smoke it, is not.”
Originally developed as a meat preservative—and promoted as an easier alternative to using a “smoke house”—liquid smoke is another of those products that date back to the era of patent medicines.
Krauser’s “Liquid Extract of Smoke” was actually manufactured and sold by a pharmacy based in Milton, PA.
The advertisement on right was published in 1899, in the Meyer Brothers Druggist, Volume 20.
(More liquids & smoke, after the fold...)
We covered house-shaped packages about a year ago, but most of these are better examples. (God knows why I couldn’t find them last year.)
Starting out where we left off, we have... a bitters bottle. Not sure what brand this was. Might have been “Drake’s Plantation Bitters.” They favored tall, log-cabin-shaped bottles. Maybe this clapboard house shaped bottle was a for a less rustic clientele?
Funny how 5 out of 7 of these packages appear to have Victorian, “fish-scale” shingled roofs. A lot of house-shaped packaging skews in the direction of Halloween haunted house. It’s also worth noting that, except for the bitters and the fire-place matches, these are all kid packs.
(See also: package-shaped houses)
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design
On left: E.W. Kemble’s 1906 “Death’s Laboratory” cover for Collier's National Weekly; on right: Joseph Keppler’s 1881 “Death’s-Head Doctors — Many Paths to the Grave” for Puck Magazine (via: The Ephemera Assemblyman)
Two illustrations about the dangers of patent medicine that both employed the same cognitive-illusion device.
Joseph Keppler’s illustration from 1881 (with tombstones for teeth, on right) was first. Keppler founded the muckraking and satirical Puck Magazine—(at one time headquartered in The Puck Building.)
25 years later E.W. Kemble did his “Death’s Laboratory’ illustration (with bottles for teeth, on left) for Collier’s National Weekly. Beginning in 1905 Collier’s published “The Great American Fraud”—a series of articles by Samuel Hopkins Adams that exposed the dangers that unregulated patent medicines posed to public health. These and other muckraking articles of the time led to the passing of the “Pure Food and Drug Act” of 1906 and the creation of the FDA.
(Another patent-medicine-related Collier’s cover, after the fold...)
Continue reading "Patent Medicine & the Cognitive Illusion Skull" »
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