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July 9, 2004:
Product
Packaging
Interview
with Thomas Hine author of the book,The
Total Package
Mike
Carruthers:
The packaging of the products we use everyday. We don't
often take notice but the packaging is very critical. Take Quaker
Oats for example
Thomas
Hine:
Previously oatmeal had been sold in great big barrels
and people thought of it as something for horses more than for
themselves.
Thomas Hine
author of the book
The Total Package.
This
man Henry Parsons Crowell had a mill that was able to produce
more oatmeal in a year than Americans had ever eaten in a year.
And he had this great incite of putting it into smaller packages
and giving these packages personality, putting the Quaker on
it to give it a sense of purity. Very soon afterwards initiated
things like sending box tops in.
Interestingly
Thomas says the tin can was invented in 1815 but the can opener
wasn't invented for another fifty years.
Canning
was invented under the auspices of Napoleon so they were really
huge things enough to feed an army in other words and they opened
them with a hammer and chisel And then cans became really popular
in America during the Civil War. That's when in fact the can
opener was invented.
And the
Marlborough cigarette box was the first product packaging designed
to be seen on tv.
Marlborough
cigarette had earlier been a feminine product and had rather
a kind of delicate graphics and they cut it down to a very simple
red and white outline that you'd see on fuzzy tv screens.
At
somethingyoushouldknow.net,
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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