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May 17, 2008
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)
I’m sorry to say that the challenging task of cleaning up tiny spiders and broken glass fell mainly to my mother. Even so, I reckon it was an educational experience. I learned that spiders have large families and that the air holes for a spider’s nursery should be smaller.
Looking for pictures online (of bugs in jars) I learned a few other things…
Spice jar lids can be used for somewhat smaller air holes. Jars have traditionally been used for two kinds of specimens: live specimens and dead specimens. Collectors of the latter use a “killing jar.”
I also discovered this interesting product called “Garden Spider Web Frame” from Insect Lore. (Note the topical tag line: Nature’s Original Web Site!)
Could not, for the life of me, find a proper bug-in-a jar photo for this post. Which is why I had to take my own photo. This afternoon’s arachnid casting call led to the discovery in our basement of the (live) specimen you see here. (The 2 photos at the top and the 2 photos below.) Happily he (or she!) fared better than the tiny spiders from 1965. No girlish screams or broken glass this time. Safely released back into the basement.
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design
8 Responses to “Packaging as Imprisonment”
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Interactive packaging
Randy has a round up interesting interactive packaging from the past – via NOTCOT. I love packaging that actually does something—that changes or becomes part of the experience when you use the product. There are three classic examples of…
Animation on the side of a bottle.
http://www.chungdha.com/2008/02/aa-drink-bottle-animated.html
It’s my own design but not in production. That should be interactive enough for a packaging design.
What about the always fun and exciting Ramune sodas with their Codd-necked bottles? I always try to get anyone who hasn’t had one of these before to try one. It’s like a carbonated liquid-cocaine contained in a bottle that is essentially a frustrating cat toy for humans. (There are seriously detailed instructions online explaining how to get the marble out)
Codd-necked bottles! An excellent example. I remember my son was really intrigued by those a few years ago. The novelty of the mechanism was a huge added interest factor for those beverages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle#Codd-neck_bottles
I wanted to mention chocolate oranges, though it struck me that while they’re pretty interactive, the packaging doesn’t do much other than stand the shock. Are there any of these that don’t involve eating?
PEZ perhaps?
the duraflame log packaging serves as the kindling to start the log
I am curious if the flecks of silver left behind on the pillsbury dough is dangerous to eat? Mine always has those….and they are so small anyone can overlook them while ingesting. Or maybe they are harmless?