This month, let’s start with a quiz:

What’s the world’s most recognized brand packaging? (a) Apple, (b) Coca-Cola, (c) Amazon

The human eye can distinguish more shades of what color than any other? (a) green, (b) yellow, (c) blue

Bubble wrap was originally intended to be used as what? (a) wallpaper, (b) helmet liner, (c) radio telescope insulation

Fun fact: In 1927, Austrian Edward Haas III developed a little candy using a kind of baking powder and mint oil. He took the first, middle and last letters from pfefferminz (German for peppermint), put them on the label, and Pez was born. Haas intended his product to help people cut down on smoking.

There’s no data on its success in reducing tobacco use, but we all know what happened after the company introduced its handheld dispenser in 1949. That packaging propelled Pez to stellar fame (with an official museum in Connecticut) and it’s now sold in 90 countries. Packaging works.

Details about the intricacies, histories and oddities of packaging are known among many industry professionals. To me, learning and sharing the lesser known aspects of anything can give it added depth. It has also, in the words of my beloved spouse, turned me into a fount of useless knowledge. I’m good with that.

The collection has been enjoyable to pursue because I start out armed with doubt, and if something is left standing after the fight then it’s worth discussing. These are billed as facts, but unless there are good references to back them, they can end in shreds on the floor. Sometimes they turn out to be half-facts.

Such as: “Coffee aroma is sprayed onto the lids of instant coffee jars so it smells of freshly ground coffee when opened.” This sounds awful, but it’s partly true, and mostly wrong.

A former production manager at a major coffee company explains that coffee “liquor” is extracted from fresh roasted and ground coffee at the factory; that’s where the appealing aroma lives. That same extraction is returned to the powdered coffee after the appropriate processing. It’s not just sprayed onto a jar lid.

Surveys have shown that the smell of coffee is one of the most pleasurable in life. It follows then that coffee packaging continues to be examined, intensely, year after year. We all want that magnificent and, shall we say, intoxicating aroma to remain in the container and explode into olfactory comfort and joy when we open it. As with so many other things on earth, oxygen is the enemy of the smell of coffee. (It’s also the most corrosive element on earth.) So, vacuum sealing is a good idea – so are the one-way gas valves on some coffee bags.

“Details about the intricacies, histories and oddities of packaging are known among many industry professionals. To me, learning and sharing the lesser known aspects of anything can give it added depth.”

As for lids, there is something to be said about scented plastic. Olfactory design is getting a lot of attention in the coffee business, because the aroma experience of coffee is buried under the plastic protective cover. The little hole out of which we drink coffee from take-out cups does not give our scent system much to register, and it also concentrates hot liquid in the mouth. Some say that the plastic contributes an unwanted character to the aroma. Hong Kong-based Mint Urban Technologies is one company that has worked on this problem, and it manufactures a two-part coffee-scented lid “that enhances the beverage’s original smell.”

Fact: The packaging insulation used by Lush, the cosmetics company, is edible. The “peanuts” that protect the shipped products are starch-based and safe to eat, though they have no taste. Retail employees have been known to pop one or two into their mouths to entertain – startle, probably – new staff members.

This one will leave you breathless: The standard size of a wine bottle is 750 ml. Why? One of the reasons given is kind of far-fetched, but it’s such a feel-good answer that I’ll believe it.

The use of glass wine containers started slowly in the 18th century, but by the 1800’s it was the norm. Sizes, however, were all over the place. In those days, they were made by glass blowers. These guys had good lungs, but their capacity was limited. The largest size they could blow with one exhale was between 700 and 800 milliliters. The industry settled on 750.

A more boring answer has to do with the difference between English and French measuring systems and the fact that the English imported a vast amount of French wines. Long story short, the compromise led to the adoption of a fifth of a gallon, which is around 750 ml.

Why do water bottles have expiration dates? H2O doesn’t change. Ever. It stays that way. Stuff like chemical compounds, minerals, bacteria and larger creatures can find their way into it, but the water lives on as is.

Some say that aspects of plastic bottles leach into it, meaning molecules from the container itself or aromatic compounds. Either of those types can be undesirable. Others disagree with this postulate. One group says that the expiration dates exist because the state of New Jersey requires it, so manufacturers stamp every bottle rather than make a separate run just for the Garden State.

The human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other. We know a lot about color in the label converting business, so this answer will make sense. According to Adam Wu, a Canadian neurosurgeon, “Green lies in the middle of the solar spectrum, and the sun peaks in its output on those wavelengths. The more photons in a spectral region that are available to be observed, the easier it is to distinguish shades. The middle of the spectrum, where our photoreceptors overlap with one another the most, will automatically be where we can see the most shades.”

Each Christmas 83 km2 of wrapping paper ends up in the trash or the recycling bin (32 square miles). That’s just in the United Kingdom. That amount will cover half the nation of Liechtenstein. That doesn’t include bows and ribbons, tape, tags; shipping boxes, tape and interior insulation; food packaging; beverage packaging; Christmas cards and envelopes, retail gift cards, and place cards at the dinner table. And that doesn’t include the rest of the world.

Okay, bubble wrap. If you said helmet liner or radio telescope insulation (lol), you’re wrong. In 1957 in Hawthorne, NJ USA, Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes sealed two shower curtains together, creating bubbles between, which they then tried to sell as wallpaper. Didn’t fly. Let’s try greenhouse insulation. No luck. They kept at it and thought of packaging. When IBM expressed interest as shipping protection for its new 1401 computer, an icon was born.

Fielding and Chavannes formed Sealed Air Corporation in 1960 to manufacture its heavily patented product. They were inducted into the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame in 1993.

Oh yes, the quiz. What’s the most recognized brand packaging in the world? This is an unfair question because the answer is impossible to pin down. Endless searching for the truth yields a consensus that Apple has the top position. Amazon and Coca-Cola are in the top five. Others include Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, McDonalds and Disney. Some lists show IBM, Walmart, Visa, Nike and FedEx.

I’m heartbroken that Lawn Darts is nowhere to be found on any list. (I’ll show myself out.)


The author is president of Jack Kenny Media, a communications firm specializing in the packaging industry, and is the former editor of L&NW magazine. He can be reached at [email protected].