Box Vox

packaging as content

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December 16, 2011

Clown Cereal

ClownCerealsClown cereal boxes (Kellogg’s, General Mills & Post) were, I think, all from Dan Goodsell’s Flickr Photostream

My early childhood was spent in Sarasota, Florida, home of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College.

While clowns have been culturally waning for some time now, in those days, there was a show called “Circus Boy” on television (starring a young Micky Dolenz who grew up to become the Monkee‘s drummer) and there were lots of circus-themed packages at the grocery store. Not yet scary, clowns were still considered a good way to market children’s cereals.

Why the sudden interest in clowns, you ask?

(Asked and answered, after the fold…)


English-WitzClowns

I noticed that both Ron English and Dan Witz (of the previous 2 posts) have done clown-related artworks.

English has done a number of Ronald McDonald related artworks and a painting of a child in clown makeup and an army helmet (conflating the childhood fantasies of running away from home to join the circus with running away from home to join the Army).

The 2004 video below documents Witz’s elegantly minimal gesture of adding a weather balloon clown nose to an already anthropomorphic house in Brooklyn.

I like the way the balloon threatens to blow away down the sidewalk at one point. (Sort of reminds me of the gumball behavior in this video of ours.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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