box vox

Dead Rabbits and Carrots Beer

Promotional packaging for San Francisco’s Carrots Boutique by advertising firm, Pereira & O’Dell. (Package design variously credited to Chris M. Romero and also Dan Van Der Deen.)

The objective was to create a buzz around this high-end fashion boutique (CARROTS) and specifically around their men’s line, driving new male customers into the store. We created a limited edition, designer beer made from carrots. We brewed the beer, handcrafted the bottle wraps, and applied the labels. The 22(oz.) burlap-wrapped bottles were hand-delivered as gifts to specifically targeted men and the 12(oz.) beers were served at CARROTS-sponsored events and in-store to enhance men’s shopping experiences.  Among the hundreds that received the bottle as a gift and the ones that tried it in the store, many people actually placed orders for beer to take home, turning a unique promotional item into a sexy and successful new product. Not to mention creating a buzz around the store.

–Pereira & O’Dell

The label and package design caters to the (presumably male) cartoon sensibility, wherein deceased creatures have X’s for eyes. Hence: a dead rabbit icon whose X-shaped eyes are also echoed in the orange stitching of the burlap “bottle wrap”. The burlap is another macabre touch, wrapping the bottle in a sort of burial shroud. The effect is dark and portentous—albeit in a cute, Tim Burton-ish sort of way.

This is a beer made from carrots, (for a store named “Carrots”) so that explains the rabbit. But why dead? “Dead rabbit” could be taken as a reference to girls getting pregnant—(as in “the rabbit died”)—but that seems unlikely to be the message here...

There was also a “Dead Rabbits” gang in NYC in the 1850s whose story was fictionalized in Scorsese’s Gangs of New York. (Again: not likely the intentional reference for us here.)

Is the idea just that Carrots Beer packs such a punch that our rabbit is merely knocked out and not dead at all? That might be closer to it... Plus, multiple Xs have implications with regard to alcoholic beverage quality and —(in the public’s cartoon imagination, at least)— with regard to alcohol potency. Think: XXX.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Canned Camera

Not a packaging camera, but a cross-category, canned camera.

Unbelievably, the whole cat motif is based on the idea that this is a camera designed specifically for taking pictures of cats. The camera has flashing colored lights and “meows” to attract a cat’s attention. Not so good for taking candid shots of cats. Although if we define a “candid photo” as one taken without the subject’s knowledge, then, perhaps, it’s debatable. What does a cat know? Does looking at the camera make it “self-conscious” ?

Huh! It’s gradually dawning on me that this “cat” camera is packaged in a can as a reference to cat food. I didn’t get that at all until just now. Maybe this is because the graphics on the can are not particularly cat food-like. Never-the-less, I do like the way the photo is cropped. (Imagine cropping out the cat’s eyes...)

(Another Holga, canned cat camera, after the fold...)

Lucky Cat Candy Packet

Tiny cellophane packet achieves a surprisingly effective illusion: transforming its contents —(two gum-ball shaped candies)— into a miniature Maneki Neko.

Different packets feature different facial expressions.

(More photos after the fold...)

IlliteRAT with Alpha-bits

IlliteRAT ©1976 David Wilder (starring my pet rat, Lucky)

Not the first time we’ve mentioned rats (or mice) here on box vox and, as previously disclosed, I myself, once had a pet rat. Given to me by another rodent-loving classmate at RISD, “Lucky” played a starring role in my friend, David Wilder’s video, illiteRAT. Hadn’t seen this tape in over 30 years, but I think its conceptual rigor still holds up.

And it was nice for me to see the little feller again, after all this time. (I don’t really remember what the cereal box looked like that Lucky’s Alpha-bits came in. Lets just say, for arguments sake, that it was the one on the left—photo from The Imaginary World—with the mouth-shaped, faux die cut window.)

In my last year at school, I lived in an office building in downtown Providence where I’d let Lucky scamper, dog-like, about the loft. It’s surprising how frisky a rat can be.

I recall eating a lot of ice-cream cones one Summer. (This was before I found out I was diabetic.) I got into a habit of methodically reducing the size of the ice-cream cone—keeping it in classic proportions—until I had formed a miniature, rat-size ice-cream cone. This, I would then present to Lucky and he’d grab it in his hands and eagerly finish it off. (Sort of fractal, now that I think of it...)

Sadly, my free-range policy of giving Lucky the run of the place, ultimately led to his demise. Turned out there were dusty old trays of rat poison under the radiators, that I didn’t know were there.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

ZuPreem

From ZuPreem: Canned food for wild animals. (I like the inset animal face illustrations with the shield-shaped manes)

(Dry food for omnivores and primates, after the fold...)

Packaging Toys for Dogs

It’s only when your old dog starts getting bedsores that you fully realize the fallacy of the expression, “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

Taking my old dog to the veterinarian this week, I noticed these pet toys for sale on a spinner rack. Plush pet toys with embroidered labels from Multipet.

Anthropomorphizing much? (Or do dogs really dig packaging?)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Soda Candy

Another cross-referential packaging concept: soda flavored candy in soda cans. More tiny, pretend packaging for kids. “Soda Can Fizzy Candy” is made in China for California-based importer/distributor, Kidsmania, Inc.

Comes in a six-pack, of course. We were a little surprised by the look of the actual candy. Reminds us quite a bit of rabbit pellets, although it did taste like various flavors of soda and had a slightly fizzy, Alka-Seltzer aspect. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

(Photos of the six-pack and the candy itself, follow after the jump...)

Packaging as Imprisonment

When I was in 5th grade my mom encouraged me in a small study of spiders. We had discovered a mother spider and her egg sac somewhere in or around our house. We made a jar like the one shown above with air holes hammered into the lid. Mother spider and egg sac were captured and placed in the jar.

Everyday I would check the jar to see whether the blessed event had yet occurred. I don’t remember what was done about food and water. Perhaps my mom was handling that.

One day I picked up the jar to see if the eggs had finally hatched and it took me a few moments to comprehend that the babies had indeed hatched out. They were much more numerous and much smaller than I ever expected. So small, in fact, that they had no trouble fitting through the air holes in the top of the jar and were at that moment crawling all over my hand!  Realizing this, I screamed and dropped the jar. Habitat, smashed to pieces on the kitchen floor.

(After the jump: tiny spiders)

Victor Mouse Trap 4-Pack

(First, a little background about me & mice...) When I was a kid I used to keep pet mice. It all started when the garbage man in my neighborhood in Sarasota, Fla. (around 1964) handed me a coffee can with a lid. Inside the can was a live, tame mouse. My mother let me keep him. (Later, in college, I graduated to pet rats, but that’s another story.) I mention my first pet mouse only to acknowledge that I have a continuing affection for rodents and to fully disclose my conflicted feelings about pest control products.

At Home Depot last month I lingered for a quite a while in the pest control section thinking about the Victor® mouse traps, their logo and whether or not I wanted to blog about it. At the time I decided that, as a rodent-lover, I would not go there.

Soon afterwards our good friend and neighbor, Jacqueline had a sudden infestation of mice. This was due to some packages of bird seed and cat food that were stored in the basement, but were not mouse-proof. (Bad animals taking food from the mouths of good animals?) She went to Home Depot and purchased the entire Victor mouse trap product line—doubtless the very same mouse traps whose aesthetic properties I had been ruminating over. It was the coincidence of Jacqueline’s use of Victor mouse traps that has led me to write about this, after all.

(A shocking photo and more to read after the jump...)

Vote Cat!

I don’t know what office this cat is running for, but—the way I feel right now—I’m inclined to vote for him. (Our dogs just had a fight so I’m feeling kind of “pro-cat” at the moment.)

Our friend, JD King had become quite the cat-lover in his old age. Consider how many of his awesome illustrations now feature felines. (See for yourself at his blog!)

This particular illustration seems pretty timely what with election coverage, writer’s strike and a green car. Love the TV antennas. (More cool cat illustrations after the jump...)

Cat Toy 10-Pack

Kind of a stupid, I know, but maybe no stupider than giving Christmas gifts to your cat. Debby and I were at PetSmart and we thought it was cute the way the mice in this holiday 10-pack had their noses and tails emerging through the holes in the clam shell.

I sure felt stupid ironing 10 ribbon tails in preparation for taking this photo!

Magnetic Core Memory Door

Before there were hard drives—before there were RAM chips—there was magnetic core memory: An arrangement of donut-shaped magnets, the polarity of each could be switched by the current of 2 wires passing through the hole. In this way each magnet could be set to an “on” or “off” (binary) position. Needless to say, they don’t make memory like that anymore. I got this one on eBay a long time ago.

I always liked the geometry of the arrangement and entertained ideas of monumental sculptures with steel cables and car tires. Never did that, but in 1999 when our dog broke the glass in our front door (for the second time) in his zeal to get to the mailman, I found an application for this cool pattern.

Clearly, we needed some method of preventing said dog from putting his head through the glass. I didn’t cotton to the idea of Plexiglas or those perforated screens, so I made this door screen out of brass rods and brass compression fittings (that plumbers use) following the core memory arrangement.

I won’t go into the arcane details of how it was done, but I’ve never been what you’d call a great craftsman and it took a very long time.

(more photos after the jump)

The Alpaca Mouse

Last month, Debby and I discovered a small, mom and pop alpaca farm on Route 47 (south NJ) right next door to a produce stand that we often go to. Tish Carpinelli let us feed her animals out back and, since it was Debby’s birthday, she picked herself out a sweater from the little store, Absolutely Alpaca,  in back of their house. I had to have this handmade, catnip mouse, ostensibly for the cats at home, but really because I just like it. It’s made of a very dense “felt” that Tish somehow fashions from the fleece. I like how it’s so minimal (like a Joseph Beuys cat toy!) and at the same time kind of darkly reminiscent of an owl pellet, as if it might contain an actual mouse (or the remains, thereof). It also kind of calls to mind a “hair ball” which also seems very appropriate for cat toy. Now that I've photographed it, I may let one of those stupid cats play with it. Eventually. Possibly by Christmas time...