packaging as content

August 30, 2010

Fish Bottles

On left: vintage cod liver oil bottle; on right soy sauce bottle/packets from Jamesies’s Photobucket

I’m thinking of devoting this week to animal-shaped bottles. Starting with fish.

In an earlier post about animal-shaped packaging we touched upon, but did not fully explore the diverse animal kingdom of figural bottles. It seems to have been a big thing for manufacturers of liquids at the turn of the century.

The choice of animal is sometimes ingredient-related, as in the cod-liver oil bottle above and sometimes the animal serves as a sort of serving suggestion—as in the the little soy sauce bottles.

But other times it’s more homophonic, as in Dr. Fisch’s Bitters (below) which came in a fish-shaped bottle simply becasue the Doctor’s name sounded like “fish.”. (Similar to the fox-shaped bottle we mentioned in our post about Fox’s U-Bet Chocolate Syrup—a fox-shaped bottle as a reference to Herman Fox, the company’s founder)

The photos of vintage “Fish Bitters” above are via: AntiqueBottles.com. (Interesting how the label went on the hidden belly of the fish.) W.H. Ware’s 1866 design patent for this fish-shaped bottle is via www.bottlebooks.com

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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