packaging as content

December 1, 2009

Mustard Jar Fight Scene

The famous mustard-jar-fight-scene from “This Boy’s Life” features Robert DeNiro as the scary, abusive “Dwight,” using a not-quite-empty-enough mustard jar to punish young Leonardo DiCaprio (as “Toby”) for having wasted the remaining contents. (Sorry about the bad aspect ratio of the video—not my doing…)

Shows how a humble mustard jar can become a fiendish weapon—(see: Package as Weapon—which, come to think of it, also features poor Leonardo DiCaprio as a victim.) This harrowing scene also raises a practical question about packaging: how much of a package’s contents can we reasonably expect to actually use? And how much is inaccessible and will therefore be wasted?

Kai-yu Lei’s “dual-open bottle” (above) that I just noticed on PopSop, attempts to address this issue. As does Sherwood Forlee’s reversible peanut butter jar that we wrote about last year. Checking Forlee’s website again, I see he’s made some actual prototypes since then. (below)