Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Packaging (day 3)

via Mike Kazaleh’s Cartoon Research

For day 3 of our “Reynolds Wrap Packaging week” we want to reflect on Reynolds Wrap’s packaging business.

Although they launched their flagship “Reynolds Wrap” brand in 1948, the company started out as a packaging business in 1919.

The Reynolds Metals Company was founded in 1919 as the U.S. Foil Company in Louisville, Kentucky by Richard S. Reynolds, Sr., nephew of tobacco king R. J. Reynolds. Initially, the new company supplied lead and tin foil wrappers to cigarette and candy companies.

from Wikipedia’s entry on Reynolds Group Holdings

Reynolds Wrap and Big Tobacco

Grant Simmons of Grantray-Lawence Animation created the Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Packaging commercial above. His observant little girl ruminates briefly about the smoking habits of adults.

Hello. I observe. (That means I notice what’s going on.) And, by observing grownups who smoke, I observe that all the leading cigarettes are protected by aluminum foil. Zip. Look at that shiny aluminum foil: Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Packaging.

Companies today, of course, are less apt to crow about their connections to big tobacco. Reynolds Aluminum, however, had connections to tobacco that were both familial and part of its own corporate narrative.

For a time, Reynolds Wrap seemed to go out of their way to highlight their cigarette packaging. They ran the ad below in 1960.

A woman is standing in front of a wide array of abstracted aluminum-packaged product categories. They might have focused on the wide array, but they chose instead to go with tobacco. The headline reads: “How Better Packaging for Cigarettes …Started a Whole New Way of Life!” By 1960, however, most people had already caught on to the fact that cigarettes were more likely to cut life short.

Reynolds Aluminum ran this full-page ad in a 1960 issue of the Courier-Journal (a Louisville, Kentucky newspaper)

The Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Packaging seal

Reynolds Wrap made packaging the centerpiece of a lot of its advertising.

And some time around 1953 they designed the “Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Packaging” seal, which began appearing in their advertising.

a 2-page Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Packaging ad from a 1958 issue of Modern Packaging (via: Automatic Ephemera)

4 ads appearing 1n 1962 issues of Modern Packaging (via: Wishbook)

Although Reynolds made a concerted effort to reach manufacturing customers through trade magazines, they didn’t stop there. In fact, they placed many more ads in popular, general interest magazines. Surprisingly, these ads also focused more on their packaging business than on Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Foil. But why would they do that?

on left: 1958 Reynolds ad highlighting Cracker Jacks; on right: 1954 Reynolds ad with an unbranded ice cream package

Significant Packaging Identification

Watch what happens as the Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Packaging Seal appears now on … famous-brand products. Watch as more and more manufacturers climb on the bandwagon. This is the first significant packaging identification in sales history. It applies only to the finest product protection known… aluminum. And it tells its story with the name that best evokes to all women the fresh-keeping power of foil … Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Packaging!

However small on the package, that seal will loom larger and larger in the customer’s eyes… because, to her, it’s a guarantee of protected quality.

Sales Management, 1953

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…and each package carries the imprint of the new “Reynolds Wrap Seal.” This seal, a variation of the Good Housekeeping Seal, is in the form of a shield in the shape of the Reynolds trademark, and carries the words “Quality Protected with Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Packaging. It is being adopted by a wide range of manufacturers.

Sales Management, 1954

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Aside from telling aluminum’s story to the home audience, television helps win new corporate clients for Reynolds — especially in the burgeoning field of metallic foil product packaging.

“In these days of stiffening competition… a prospect might well be justified to ask our sales people, ‘why should I do business with you — why not with Alcoa? What’s in it for me?’

“Our answer,” says Mr. Kintner, “inevitably is that our television works for them, too. People recognize our seal on the products they buy, will instinctively buy these packages instead of competing brands.”

BUILDING AN ALUMINUM EMPIRE ON AIR
Broadcasting Magazine, 1958

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The company has also profited by promotion of a “quality seal,” an emblem made available to all packager customers for use in advertising and on their containers, that says simply: “Quality protected with Reynolds Wrap aluminum packaging.

Modern Packaging 1962

Aluminum on the March