Packaging as Content | Box Vox

September 22, 2019

Packaging (past tense): Claeys Candy Trapezoidal Box

The “puff ball juniors” trapezoidal box

It’s been a while since our last polyhedral packaging post. And too long since our last official “packaging (past tense)” post. Come to think of it, last month we didn’t manage to post anything at all!

So, when I saw this Michigan Carton ad in the September 1958 issue of Modern Packaging Magazine, I was like, “What have we here?”

Why is this woman grocery shopping with white gloves and a pillbox hat? And what is she holding in her hand?

Why, it’s a trapezoidal candy box with a triangular window! And it’s that type of trapezoid you get by combining 3 equilateral triangles.

Then, when I searched online for “Puff Ball Juniors,” I immediately found this postcard (below) touting their hexagonal retail display carton. And telling us that it wasn’t just “puff balls” that came in such a box. Claeys Candy also sold “Cream Nut Clusters” and “Vanilla Creams” in these trapezoidal boxes.

Claeys’ Displays

Michigan Carton Co. may have also produced Claeys’ hexagonal counter display box. Looks like it held 32 of the trapezoidal boxes, and even included a built-in, trapezoid-shaped header card. I searched for patents covering the package and/or the display box, but (aside from the postcard) I found nothing.

The back of the postcard says:

COUNTER DISPLAY UNIT

New — Attractive — Different

Self-contained unit. Just remove lid, and it’s ready to sell itself on checkout counters, aisle displays, or on your regular shelf.

The only other evidence I’ve found of their trapezoidal candy boxes, is this IGA ad from 1955:

The South Bend Tribune, published this ad for Ray’s IGA in 1955. The same 3 candies mentioned on the Display box postcard are also cited here under the heading, “CLAEY’S WINDOW BOX CANDIES.”

Claeys Candy was founded in 1919 by Jerome C. Claeys. It was based in South Bend, Indiana —where Pete Buttigieg is now mayor, although he was not yet born. (Being as it was 100 years ago.) And he also wasn’t yet born in 1958, when this trapezoidal box was for sale in the area.

The company still exists, although they now specialize in old-fashion hard-candies, and their branding is now more old-timey, as if to capitalize on their 1919 origins.

Their mid-century trapezoidal box, however, proves that (for a while, at least) the company had tried to make their packaging thoroughly modern.

July 22, 2019

The Provensen “Kellogg’s Zoo” (locating the lost critters)

Leo Burnett and the Sugar Frosted Flakes “critters”

When Leo Burnett’s ad agency began creating a menagerie of product mascots, some started calling it “the critter agency.” And yet, of all the “critters” that the agency launched, Tony the Tiger probably stands apart. (First on four legs, and then just two.)

Originally called “Tony the talking tiger,” Tony was by no means the only critter developed for Sugar Frosted Flakes. The company also developed at least five other animal characters.

Some have written that Tony the Tiger was created by children book illustrators, Alice and Martin Provensen (on right). And some have written that Martin Provensen single-handedly created him.

Tony first appeared in 1952, but even the Provensens’ daughter is not sure if he was created solely by her father or as a joint effort between both of her parents.

Alice Provensen, Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator of children’s books, dies at 99
Matt Schudel, The Washington Post, May 2, 2018

Former ad men at Burnett, however, tell an entirely different tale.

We don’t mean to re-litigate any of that. We’ll just acknowledge that the tiger character’s name, concept and some preliminary artwork were already in place before Provensen(s) ever got involved. And that one or more Provensens created the final, finished illustrations.

What’s undeniable, however, is that Alice and Martin Provensen did make a number of animal character illustrations for the Kellogg Company.

Supposedly Kellogg’s goal was to have a character for every letter of the alphabet, but only Tony and Katie [sic] ever made it onto the box.

David Hoffman, The Breakfast Cereal Gourmet, 2009

The Kellogg’s (Provensen) Zoo

Some claim that Kellogg’s held a contest, letting consumers pick the mascot. Kellogg’s Australian website actually says so, but I can find no evidence to support this. The company did create a split run of packaging: some with Tony the Tiger, some with Katy the Kangaroo. And both of those characters appear in some television commercials. But the Provensens also made illustrations of 5 other Sugar Frosted Flakes animals.

Including: Newt the Gnu, Elmo the Elephant, George the Giraffe, Zeke the Zebra and Pete the Porcupine.

If you hunt around the Internet, you’ll probably find the odd picture of Tony’s old friend, Katy the Kangaroo. But what ever became of all the other Provensen critters from that early “Kellogg’s Zoo” is a mystery. They seem to have… disappeared.

Leif Peng, The Provensens & Tony the Tiger, Today’s Inspiration, 2009

We’ve done some hunting around the internet and have rounded up these missing Provensen critters… [Read more…]

June 10, 2019

Kellogg’s Variety Pack: “settles all differences” campaign

Kellogg’s Variety Pack as peace-maker

We ended our previous post with a 1959 commercial showing how Kellogg’s Variety Pack could satisfy a consumer with differing Jekyll-and-Hyde cereal tastes. A year earlier, in 1958 Leo Burnett (Kellogg’s advertising agency) created this “settles all differences” campaign.

Here, they illustrate the ways in which Kellogg’s Variety Pack “settles all differences” — between people who are actually different people. Although 5 of the 7 people depicted are not technically people. (Including, as they do: bull, dragon, wolf, lion and lamb.)

But the real mystery here is: who did the loose and loopy, watercolor/ink illustrations?

[Read more…]

May 24, 2019

Forget “the whole package.” You’re really a multi-pack.

Define: Unitary Packaging

Lately I’ve been thinking about “unitary packaging.” Although, I can’t seem to find any definitive definition for that term.

Some people use it to describe a multi-pack of smaller packages. A six-pack carton of beer or soda, for example. Or the two-pack milk cartons we were looking at in an earlier post.

But people also describe packaging whose contents are only potentially separable as “unitary.” (A plastic wrapped head of cabbage, for example.) And in some cases a “unitary package” might only contain another single package. A bottle in a blister pack, for example.

Right now, I’m more interested in the “multi-pack” definition.

“unitary packaging” as metaphor

It’s this “multi-pack” definition that I have in mind when I tell you that “unitary packaging” is a good metaphor for each of us.

Crazy? In a world where men are “barrel chested” and women have “Coke bottle figures,” we’re already using packaging terms to describe our bodies. Likewise, some of our body parts have been given packaging-related names. (bags-under-your-eyes, six pack abs, “Get off your can,” her box, his package, etc.)

So what does it mean when we say that someone is “the whole package,” if not a collection of multiple parts? And since none of us is ever really just one thing, I think a unitary multi-pack is a much more apt metaphor for what we are. And (2 out of 3) novelists seem to agree with me. [Photo of Salmon Rushdie, via: American Booksellers Association]

…many of the characters in the novel [The Satanic Verses] are for a long time not really unitary selves, they’re just collections of selves. They’re kind of masks, they put on this or that role, and they can change very dramatically. And I think that’s also true about people, that we are not unitary selves, we are a kind of bag of selves, which we draw out from; we become this or that self in different circumstances.

Conversations with Salman Rushdie

“…the complete package of selves within each and everyone of us, a poorly coordinated and poorly chosen squadron of idiots, each with its own myopic drives…”

In Search of Destiny, 2008
Étienne de L’Amour

Of course, I haven’t actually read either of these books. But still, even out of context, I think these quotes are good proof-of-concept for the validity of the metaphor. But wait, there’s more! … [Read more…]

May 2, 2019

I got my Lou Reed library card!

Not everything in my wallet relates to package design. But when I got this email last month from New York Public Library, about their Lou Reed library card I immediately wanted one.

Special Edition Lou Reed Card Available at the Library for the Performing Arts

To celebrate the opening of the Lou Reed Archive, The Library for the Performing Arts recently released a special edition library card featuring photographer Mick Rock’s iconic picture of Reed. The Lou Reed library card is available exclusively at The Library for Performing Arts on a first come, first served basis.

Reading that “first come, first served” part made me weirdly anxious and a little desperate. I was busy with work, after all. How could I justify a trip way uptown to Lincoln Center to score a card from the Library for the Performing Arts? (Somehow, I found the time.)

The thing is, even without the card, I feel like I’m already a “card-carrying” Lou Reed guy. [Just check out some of my earlier Lou-Reed-related posts: Bobby Grossman’s Corn Flakes, Die Originalen, Under the influence of Lou Reed, George Arents Jr., Mick Rock: Glam! at Show Gallery, Swedish shrink sleeve design (it’s so cold in älska)]

[Read more…]

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