We opened a bottle of wine the other night, and the interesting wording on the cork prompted some conversation. The cork (above; click to enlarge) was covered with WHOOH WHOOH WHOOH and with one odd COUGH.

What is that about?

Check out the brand of the wine:

Smoking Loon. WHOOH WHOOH COUGH.

It was a nice little detail to carry the brand of the wine (which we were obviously not paying much attention to – I think the decision was basically white) into a fun surprise. Great packaging design.

Jolt has relaunched with new packaging and new flavors

• Cherry Bomb
• Cola
• Red
• Ultra
• Blue

Kind of a duh article about how difficult packaging is to open, but perhaps a small element of zeitgeist.

Mona Doyle recently filmed people attempting to open bags of pre-cut lettuce. The tape plays like a bit from the television show “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” Everybody uses force and torque that would otherwise be reserved for the gym. Either the bag opens suddenly and sprays lettuce all over the floor, or defeat is conceded and scissors or knives are employed.

When Doyle, whose Philadelphia company does research about food and beverage packaging, showed the tape to an audience of produce packers, they chuckled. But Doyle says that belligerent packaging is making consumers spitting mad. They use words “hate” and “difficult” to describe products that seem to be welded shut.

…

Doyle has no solid statistics on injuries caused by our hassles with packaging, but they do exist in England. One study there shows that ‘wrap rage,’ as it is called by the Brits, has been the cause of more than 60,000 injuries. These often occur when consumers resort to knives and scissors to deal with stubborn packages, according to a 2003 report in the Daily Telegraph.

(That said, here’s a paradox: Hard-to-open bags don’t seem to be stopping us from buying pre-cut lettuce, considered the biggest marketing phenomenon in the history of produce. Sales of the convenience item are soaring. The Produce Marketing Association reports that sales hit $2.6 billion in 1994, then $8.8 billion in 2003. The numbers are expected to zip up to $10.5 billion in 2005. Obviously, cutting our own lettuce into bite-size pieces irritates us even more than cutting open a bag.)

Doyle says American consumers’ demands for ease and convenience have evolved over decades and, once given an easier way, we demand even easier ways. In plain language, we are spoiled.

Bottom Feeder is a gonzo food review blog. They find interesting grocery products, taste ’em, and write ’em up. Something I’ve been doing, too (Tofu2Go, Tiger Power, Grapple, and Bumblebee Entre Style Tuna.

Campbell’s Seeds (in Japan) is produced by a third party, Tokyo-based World Flower Service. Inside is a choice of seeds to grow miniature tomatoes, miniature pumpkins or green peas. The idea of a more labor-intensive Campbell’s came to mind from an interior design magazine that showed the can immortalized by Andy Warhol being used to grow herbs in the kitchen.

Intro
Pete’s Tofu2Go is a series of products that attempts to create new, appealing, and useful applications for tofu.

This includes Snackable in four flavors, with dipping sauces
* Sesame Ginger with Jazzed Ginger Soy Sauce
* Thai Tango with Mango Wasabi Sauce
* Lemon Pepper with Mango Chipotle Sauce (U.S. only)
* Santa Fe Sizzle with Pineapple Mango Fusion Sauce (U.S. only)

as well as Marinated Cubes in Tequila Lime and Sesame Sizzle (for cooking or snacking), and dessert.

The Package
We tried two flavors of dessert tofu, Very Berry, and Caramel. Looks pretty good on the package; bright colors, familiar flavors (i.e., yogurt, or pudding).

Look at the tiny little spoon they come with! Kinda cute, if somewhat less than optimally functional.

Here’s everything. Each package contains two substantial containers. and two baby spoons.

The packages break apart – with some effort – for individual consumption, and I guess packing in lunches, etc. We tried it at home.

Serving
In order to open it, one must grasp the clear thin plastic layer at one corner and pull back. It’s fairly well attached, and so one must steady the hand against a surface in order to pull. Of course, at the beginning of the opening process, the only thing to steady against is the tofu itself. This caused the strawberry version to bulge rather sickly through the opening, a large layer heaving with eagerness to depart.

When I finally got the plastic off, the excess liquid in the container gathered on top of the tofu, presenting a wet, glistening, slightly pink and almost alive surface. It wasn’t so appetizing.

But things went from bad to really bad when I opened the caramel. Some difference in the texture of the dessert lead to a completely different bulging behavior. With the caramel, the pressure of my hand on the plastic caused the tofu to flood sickeningly and rapidly out the opening.

It was the first time I wished I was a videoblogger, because the video would be much better than these pictures. The quick and dramatic depature of the tofu slurry looked for all the world like an exploding zit. Not good.

Eating
I really was hoping for the best. But it was inedible. The water in each spoonful created multiple textures, a weakly-flavored water with a gelatinous pile of glop in the middle. With no yogurt or pudding taste, but something like medicine, a Robitussin or other medication that makes ya shiver.

And even though the package says “serving suggestion” – I really did think the caramel was going to have some drizzled caramel sauce or a layer of topping in the container somewhere. I figured the phrase referred to the nice berries on the side but not the lack of a topping. I felt grossed out, but also scammed.

This is a product to avoid.

Note: This is the fourth in an occasional series of reviews of new grocery (and other) products that strike me as interesting or unusual. See also Tiger Power, Grapple, and Bumblebee Entre Style Tuna.

Dreyer’s is going to jam as many attributes into one packaging label as possible. If your mouth gets tired while saying it, you may have a design and branding problem.

Dreyer’s
Slow Churned
(Rich & Creamy)
Light
Vanilla

And the one at the link above (the image was too small to post here) also includes
New!
Vanilla Bean (with Real Bean Specks)

Meh. I’m exhausted. Too many subcategories of features and benefits and attributes and brand. Why is this so hard?

I didn’t know about this, but according this story, this slow-churning technology (with no props to John Hiatt, I guess) makes lower fat ice cream taste like it’s full-fat. Hmm.

Snapple-a-Day is a meal replacement beverage from Snapple, leveraging the brand of Snapple in a very weird way. It’s like they are distant cousins, there seems to be no direct relationship between the regular ol’ Snapple and this stuff (on the same grocery shelves with the various MetRx bars and other science-y kind of non-food foods).

There’s obviously some packaging scam going on here that I can’t quite sort out. Breakfast cereal seems to come in two sizes, say 16 oz and 21 oz. Visually, the two are almost equivalent, perhaps the larger size will be less than an inch taller and not visisbly wider when looking at the retail shelf. The price for the larger size can be very small; yesterday I saw a 20c increase for the larger size. Why would anyone, therefore, buy the smaller size?

If you ignore promotions (half price, 2 for 1) on either size, what is the purpose of the two sizes in the line? Is it a tactic to gain more shelf space by offering more product choices? That’s my best guess, but that just seems to ridiculous, I don’t want to believe it’s true. Any insights, please leave a comment!

Nabisco 100 Calorie Packs are a brilliantly simple packaging and branding innovation. Give people more control over what they eat by packaging a fixed calorie amount.
100 calories seems like a harmless enough amount to snack on and it’s an easy number to help tally your daily intake. Portion control is a complex aspect of dieting, with endless confusion about what is a portion? What is a serving?
The 100 Calorie brand takes precedence over the ingredient brand (although some of those such as Oreo Thin Crisp are special-to-this-product-line extensions, with presumably lower-cal reformulations).