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Super PAC Packaging

As we enjoy a new, hyperbolic political season, generously funded by large amounts of Super Political Action Committee money, I thought it might be a good time to take a look at some earlier types of Super Pac.

Not surprisingly, the name was previously associated with packaging.

SuperPac, Inc., whose logo appears at top, offers “A Tradition of Excellence in Flexographic Printing.”

SuperPAC™ (logo: above center) is a trademark of Thomasville Furniture:

Thomasville’s promise to provide our customers with the best overall kitchen, bath, and other room solutions initiated our development of SuperPAC, our patent pending packaging technique.

And SuperPac is also the name of a British company that makes a car stereo accessory. (Logo by Frankman Design)

Superpac is the new way to hold your detachable car stereo front. Designed to replace the dull black plastic case supplied with most car stereos, the Superpac offers you a stylish way to protect your cherished face-off style car stereo.

Mastey de Paris carries a SuperPac “Intensive Reconstructor Conditioner for Stressed, Damaged Hair” (above, right)

Superpac reconstructs damaged hair, rebuilding and reinforcing the hair’s protein chains. Superpac enables hair to retain its elasticity and structural integrity with newfound bounce and resilience.

Mastey de Paris

There was also a Timberland Super Pac boot. (via: Gwar Izm)

Nowadays, a candidate whose political campaign benefits from Super PAC money is not supposed to “coordinate directly” with his or her Super PAC benefactor. In practice, however, a candidate’s Super PAC is often run by a close ally—a Super PAC man.  (e.g., Jon Stewart is Steven Colbert’s “Super PAC man”)

Not to be confused with an earlier “Super Pac-Man.”

Top & center: Commodore 64 “Super Pac-Man” packaging from Moby Games; bottom photo: a General Mills Pac-Man cereal with “Super Pac-Man Marshmallows” from Jason Liebig’s flickr Photostream

Now, if we were willing to be more liberal about the spelling of the term—accepting say “PAK” as a reasonable variant (as in Political Action Kommittee?)—then there’s even more to think about.

(More, after the fold...)

A “Penny Machine” for Christmas

Photo via: The National Museum of Play

Above: something I once wanted and didn’t get. Anyone who grew up celebrating a consumer Christmas has one of these. Not necessarily this toy in particular, but something they wanted for Christmas—something they asked Santa Claus for—and did not receive. The “Penny Machine” is the one that I remember.

I had forgotten that it was called a Coney Island Penny Machine, I’m pretty sure it was just a “Penny Machine” that I told my mother was my number 1 Christmas wish. Clearly, the Remco television commercial below was what sold me on this product.

I must have been a pretty avaristic child to want a toy that endlessly dispensed other toys. Sort of like the trick of using your wish to ask for more wishes.

I hadn’t remembered the commercial being so olde-timey. I don’t think I would have identified much with the boy in the commercial, although I totally identify with the boy on the box—(who looks just me at that age). Perhaps it was the fantasy of impressing a girl with my skill in winning prizes that explains this commercial’s effect on me. Never mind that the carnival attraction, in this case, would have been located in my toy box.

Whatever desires it unleashed in me, my mother didn’t seem as impressed with this product or its commerical. Had it been a birthday request, I might have worked harder to persuade her. With Christmas, however, I figured it didn’t much matter what she thought about it. As long as I was right with Santa, it needn’t concern her. My record of good behavior stood for itself and made me confident that the Remco prize-dispensing machine would soon be my prized possession.

I know this sounds a lot like Ralphie and the Red Ryder BB gun in “A Christmas Story” which is embarrassing, but remember: in that movie [spoiler alert] he ultimately got what he asked for. The significance of not getting what you ask for is different.

Not that I’m whining about it now or that I had gotten everything I ever wanted up until that Christmas. But it’s the first thing that I can remember specifically asking Santa for, that I later noticed I didn’t get. Which raised certain existential questions...

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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...)

Entenmann’s Boxcar

Photos above and below by Rich Melvin

Licenced Entenmann’s/Lionel O gauge operating boxcar comes in an  Entenmann’s-style see-through pastry box:

“It is not often that a railroad club car¹ gives you a craving for sweets, but that is what happened when I saw the 2010 Lionel operating car from the Railroad Museum of Long Island (RMLI) in its authentic-looking white and blue Entenmann’s baked goods box...

This innovative box design was the brainchild of Bob Mintz, chief design engineer of the RMLI.”

Ed Boyle, How Sweet It Is
O Gauge Railroading, June-July 2011

(Another photo and a footnoted digression, 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...)

Geografia’s Polyhedral Planet

We went to Gift Fair last week (NYIGF) and one of the booths where I lingered the longest belonged to Geografia, a company that makes polyhedral paper globe kits, among other things.

When I saw the cube-shaped globe, above left, I said, “I bet that‘s a magic cube.” Sure enough the “Earth & Sky Twistable Globe” was a fully-functioning, folding and unfolding “magic cube” made from 8 smaller cubes—(the same sort of cube as our own Gumball Cube Pack).

In one state, the “Twistable Globe” shows a map of the world. Turned inside-out, it shows a map of the stars. (Really like the inside-outside / introvert-extrovert idea of this.)

Another intriguing reversible globe was their “Lands & Nations Flippable Globe” which was very similar to Jessica Comin’s “laranja mecánica” that we looked at recently. In her case, the cube could be turned inside-out to form a rhombic dodecahedron. The “Flippable Globe” is a cube that can be turned inside-out to form a regular dodecahedron. And its parts are tabbed, rather than permanently hinged together.

The projection of maps onto polyhedral shapes is something that Buckminster Fuller and others have also explored, but Geografia’s products manage to provide fascinating new polyhedral perspectives and (geo)graphic insights.

Here’s a video showing one of their “Sectional Globes” being assembled...

(We’ll be featuring more stuff from Gift Fair over the next week or two.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Kooky Kans

From the “Mixo” dual oil & vinegar bottle of the previous post, we now turn to a different Mixo whose “Kooky Kans” are the latest enterprise of serial entrepreneur, Mike Becker (who previously founded Funko and Flapjack Toys.)

Mixo’s first product line, Kooky Kans combine the look and nostalgia of tin lunch boxes along with the fun of your favorite action figures. I’m filling my Kooky Kans with two things, delicious candy or our super amazing instant playsets we call Kookycraft. Kookycraft is kind of like Japanese Origami meets cereal box cut-outs... of the 60 & 70s.

Mike Becker, Chairman of Fun

 An example of Kookycraft is shown below...

 

Note the can-shaped man in the apron. This is Mr. Mixo, the presumptive company mascot. I was struck by his uncanny resemblance to another anthropomorphic packaging mascot: the Big Shot soda jerk...

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

3 Rocket Shaped Bottles

A subset of vehicular packaging: rocket shaped bottles with fins. (In each of these three recent examples, the brand includes the letter “Z” for some reason.)

1. Zimbi Juice Drinks (on left) are described as “Aerodynamic Nutrition in Earth’s first flying bottle.” Their rocket shaped bottles, are recyclable, but are aslo intended to be reused as toys:

Zimbi flying bottles really fly! The bottles are aerodynamically designed to fly when thrown empty; Once you have discovered the bottle’s secret, you can throw the bottle over 100 feet.

IMPORTANT: Only throw the bottles empty. Throwing any bottle that is full of liquid can be dangerous.

2. Zun Energy Drink’s rocket shaped bottle (center) was launched in 2009. Here, the rocket serves as a metaphor for the “brain-blasting Energy®” the consumer derives from drinking the beverage.

3. LazyTown Go Water (on right) is Nordic Water’s TV tie-in brand of children’s bottle water that comes in an “easy to hold, rocket-shaped bottle.”

(Additional photos of all three brands, after the fold...)

Wacky Packages Display Box

7x8x1.25" deep empty box originally contained 48 packs. Topps 1974. Lid art includes grocery bag containing “Wormy Packages, Quacker Oats, Mrs. Klean.” Edge wear with one corner split. Still glossy and Fine. ($75)

via Hakes

(See also: Wacky Packages, Wacky Pack Anecdote, Wacky Pack Press Sheet, Packy Wacks, Supergraphic Wacky Packs and Wacky Packs: Right or Wrong?)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Package as Vending Machine

Another surprisingly elaborate package for the lowly gumballl. A far cry from the simplicity of the Lucky Cat packets, but no more absurd than our own Gumball Cube Pack.

I bought my miniature gumball-dispensing package, on left, at Rite Aid Pharmacy. I found the counter display picture online.

(Some other gumball machine packages, after the fold...)

Uncapped Landfill Bottle #4

This bottle turns out to have contained either Fitch Dandruff Remover Shampoo or Fitch Ideal Hair Tonic. (The same bottles appear to have been used for both products.)

I like the way these men’s hair care bottles originally had matching embossed skirts & caps. The company’s founder, Fred W. Fitch, started out as a barber, so the slanting, slightly helical pattern is probably meant to evoke: barber pole.

And, as was so often the custom in those days, these bottles were, themselves, packaged in a carton. I like the concentric exclamatory graphics on the box.

In 1946 Fitch’s advertising ran afoul of FTC.

In 1892, Frederick W. Fitch was a barber in Madrid, Iowa (pop. 565). His shampoo became so popular that he quit barbering to make “Fitch’s Dandruff Remover Shampoo.” By last year, his company had annual sales of $11,000,000. The advertising that did the trick: “Fitch Shampoo removes every trace of dandruff on first application.”

Last week, after 54 years of such advertising, the Federal Trade Commission decided that it was “false and misleading.” Reason: it made the public believe that “dandruff is an abnormal condition.” The truth, according to FTC: “Dandruff is a physiologically normal condition . . . and cannot be removed permanently through the use of any cleansing agent.”

Fitch Won’t Save It
Time Magazine
Monday, June 10, 1946

(“Fitch Shampoo Airport” after the fold...)

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...)

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...)

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...)

Package Design & Chattering Teeth

Top left: 1970 Talking Teeth box on ebay; on right: Talking Teeth box from That Restless Mouse; 2nd row, left: 1940s Yakity-Yak Talking Teeth box The Invisible Agent; on right: Neato Chattering Teeth from Radarsmum67’s Flickr Photostream; Bottom row: Talking, Chattering Teeth from Gold Nuggets Etsy shop

Yesterday’s denture-shaped candy package reminded me of these products... “Talking Teeth” ... “Chattering Teeth” ... “Talking, Chattering Teeth”...

Display box photos via The Magic Depot

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

Package Design Conveyor Belt

Now open for business: our new web site features this interactive, conveyor belt style shelf showing Beach Packaging Design’s portfoilio. (Mouse over at either end to see more)

On the actual web site the small packages serve as the menu for selecting larger images. (Here they just convey themselves back & forth for your amusement.)

If you‘re in the market for some package design, please stop by.

Feel free to browse, but be careful. (You break it—you buy it!)

Wonder Bread Banks

3 types of Wonder bread loaf banks: hard plastic, die-cut paperboard and soft rubber/vinyl.

At first I was puzzled by the company’s persistence with the bread-package as piggy-bank idea, but then I thought: “the other kind of bread!”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

The Wonder Bread Anthro-Pack

In earlier versions of Wonder Bread’s anthropomorphic mascot—“Freddy, the Fresh Guy”—he is clearly a full-fledged anthropomorphic package—a loaf of bread in a branded bread bag. (In later versions he seems like a single slice of bread.)

The upper left photo, from Felixtcat’s Flickr Photostream is actually a rotating inflatable. (See inset on right)

Regarding the different outfits, my sense is that the Freddy with the bow tie is the earliest—(as in the upper center photo from Thomas Hawk’s Flickr Photostream)—but I could be wrong about that.

The upper right photo from Ken B. Miller's Flickr Photostream shows a costumed mascot in 2004 at the Philadelphia Zoo.

There were a number of anthro-pack premiums created, including the 1998 limited edition Freddy the Fresh Guy plush toy and the ring premium. (ring photos from Ruby Lane and from Tracy’s Toys)...

And along with the Fresh Guy antho-pack, there are also consumer costumes allowing one to inhabit a Wonder Bread persona...

See also: Packaging Costumes

(A “Fresh Guys” ad, after the fold...)

Wonder Bread Raincoat, etc.

1. Wendy Hill’s Wonder Bread raincoat, made for her sewing class in high school. (circa: 1960s)

2. Catherine McEver’s similarly waterproof bread bag outfits, envisioned for Barbie dolls. (See: Wonder Bread Barbies) This one is “Prom Barbie.” (circa 2010)

3. The Wonder® bread company, itself, appears to have also noticed this connection between rain gear and their plastic bread bag packaging, as evidenced by these complimentary rain bonnets (some of which are for sale on eBay)...

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Rat Fink Packaging

On left: packaging for Ed Roth licensed products from House Industries; on right: Rat Fink in a can of 1 Shot paint from Jalopy Journal

I was terrible at building models as a kid and was always a little disappointed that the plastic parts weren’t already colored since I couldn’t hope to paint them as nicely as the picture on the box. Still, when I was a kid in the sixties I remember asking for and receiving a Revelle Rat Fink model. I think it was one of the hot rod series, although I was really mainly into the rat...

Anyway, it seems I was in good company seeing as how House Industries co-founder, Andy Cruz was also into R.F.

“...Around this time, Cruz’s obsession with the Southern California hot-rod culture epitomized by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, the car builder and illustrator famed for his grotesque Rat Fink caricatures, and was spending all his extra money on Rat Fink models, iron-ons, decals and other ephemera. “It hit me one day,” he says. “Why not have my hobby work for me?” In 1996, Cruz’s revelation led to a licensed collaboration with Roth that yielded his Rat Fink font, a translation of Roth’s hand-lettered type into the digital realm.”

–Jesse Ashlock, AIGA

I’ve gotten plenty of use out of those Rat Fink fonts, but it’s interesting to learn the back story behind their getting into this area in such big way.

The most important part of inspiration is being true to one’s sources, so we jumped at the opportunity to work with hot rodding legend Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Ed was a pop artist, accomplished letterer and a consummate self-promoter, which are all cues we took when conceptualizing our first foray into licensing. By combining our maniacal penchant for authenticity and our appreciation for Ed’s impact on the masses, we reintroduced his genius with eight fonts, 32 pieces of artwork and an authentic Revell-style model box.

“Rat Fink” House Industries

(Note: the can of 1 Shot paint in Rat Fink’s hand above)

(More of their pinstriping T-Shirt cans, after the fold...)