February 23, 2009
That orange with a straw stuck in it.
It meant a lot to people. They liked that thing. Probably because it was a sex symbol. So Pepsico had to go back to the old symbolic genitalia for the Tropicana carton.
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106 comments:
What an odd thing to complain about.
But from a marketing perspective, the orange with the straw in it is definitely a better image. You can pour a glass of OJ with any brand. But only Tropicana tastes like it came straight from the orange. Or so the imagery suggests.
You know, I noticed the new cartons at Sentry earlier this month -- all white, as I recall -- and remember thinking Why?
I think marketing idjits sometimes advocate change just so they can tell the company that they're working hard for the money. It surprises me when a company believes them -- the upper management needs to read more Dilbert.
Bi-i-ig ovary, tiny tiny phallus.
Drinking Tropicana orange juice makes me feellike I have gotten Koro’, the Indonesian shrinking penis disease.
No thanks.
I like the mustard packages with a picture of a bottle of mustard on the outside.
The glass of OJ is a little the same way. Showing what's in the container by showing it in some other container.
Then there's the coloring book with the cover picture of a pig carrying that same coloring book with the picture...
I didn't notice the logo change, nor do I even recognize the old one. It must be a marketing scheme in some other medium.
Genitalia isn't my first impression, but if you go that way the current logo would be female.
Bite the wax tadpole.
Whatever the truth is, it's good publicity for a non-essential product in hard times. If you go to the NYT story, there's a giant photo of the product.
No harm to the brand, only warm fuzzies.
There once was a Professor of Law
Seduced by an Orange with a Straw.
What turned her head
Was breakfast in bed.
That Sexy Peel left her in awe.
Perhaps Pepsi could go back to the old style can design while they're at it. I thought that the red, white and blue design was elegant and classic, as opposed to the very adolescent, MTV designs adopted since.
Slightly OT - The greatest logo ever was the Sunoco Pegasus. Why they did away with it is beyond me.
Last night I had dinner at a restaurant that had ice cream-filled oranges on the desert menu (like this: http://tw0.us/sc). Didn't get it. Too full from dinner, and what freak wants ice cream on a cold, rainy day.
Sometimes an orange with a straw stuck in it is just an orange with a straw stuck in it.
My first reaction on reading this was "why would anyone complain?" Then I remembered encountering those new containers at the grocery last week. Rather than reading the new white labels to figure out my usual "no pulp," I grabbed a never-tried colorful local brand that brightly informed me what was in it.
I couldn't tell you half the brands I buy; I grab the familiar package. I'm the older, undesirable demographic with my brands firmly established, even if I don't know what they are.
8 oz OJ gives you 120% of your daily need of Vitamin C. Remember those tiny OJ glasses?
If I'm not mistaken Pepsi didn't do away with the red, white and blue bands, they just changed the way the bands undulated around the can. Makes no sense to me.
I'm still looking for the left hand side of the $1000 sunny dollar.
Yay! I hated the new graphic design - too much white space, the label gave an impression of emptiness and was actually harder to spot in the refrigerated case than the old one. The new typography was an unimpressive, slightly anorexic looking sans-serif of the (overused) sort that looks like a European generic product. And the boob-like mini-orange cap was harder to open and harder to close than the old non-representational orange ribbed cap. The new design also featured the inclusion of some irritating "hey look, we're 'green'!" corporate twaddle, which seemed like a scam to collect personal data from customers.
Graphic design of packaging and labeling in America has been tumbling right down the slope of ugly mediocrity for the last 10 or 15 years so it's good to see someone put on the brakes for a change.
"If I'm not mistaken Pepsi didn't do away with the red, white and blue bands, they just changed the way the bands undulated around the can. Makes no sense to me."
It was to make it look more like the Obama logo.
Pepsi also adopted for itself the wan-looking san-serif type that was so ineffective on the new Tropicana packaging.
Why did the Sunoco Pegasus vanish?
a) Redundant due to the merger of Socony (Sunoco) with Esso, creating Exxon.
b) No one in the modern age understood the mythological reference;
c) The design was not a clean, fast read.
That double 'x' spelling got a lot of press way back when. It was a radical step in corporpate branding
Mad magazine joked that Nixon had also changed his name:
"No matter how you spell it, it's still the same old gas."
If that straw is indeed a phallic symbol, it is not very complimentary. Men would never buy it if that were so.
Trey
Ricpic,
This is clean, elegant, distinctive, and classic product design. This isn't.
The new Tropicana packaging looks like it is a store-brand or generic, instead of brand-name Tropicana. Big mistake, although I personally like the new packaging.
Why the race to look different from all the old icons? There seems to be a false wisdom in being lead by the children's instead of the adult's sensibilities. In the short run, that amounts to branding suicide. Perhaps the digital age's "new product of the month" is the money shot of the present generation and they want all old stuff put down a memory hole. FYI, the Store Brands and Tropicana usually come from the same cannery/packers and the extra money is for the Brand packaging's hint of quality and two way loyalty relationship. So throwing that Packaging away is like Tropicana wanting to relearn the New Coke lesson.
Be Sociable.
Have a Pepsi.
Through the 1950s, this fizzy sugar water was marketed as a dietetic alternative to Coke that people in the 'smart' fashionable set drank.
Masterful examples of illustration advertising art. And copywriting.
Which of these designs is more effective at creating a distinctive graphic impression of the product.
Coca-Cola is better than Pepsi anyway. Where I come from, Pepsi is a trailer park drink.
Didn't Mobil (actually Magnolia Petroleum) have the pegasus?
Sometimes a straw is just a straw.
But OMG, the old Tropicana was like buying a Penis-Melting Zionist Robot Comb. Maybe it worked for women. Men don't buy much OJ anyway; that stuff can kill ya ....ba dum bum.
Seen another way, the old Tropicana package had a very ample orange on it. Not some wan, anorexic thing, but voluptuous and full. Like Kate winslet ingesting that thin little straw, Gwyneth Paltrow.
"Ricpic,
This is clean, elegant, distinctive, and classic product design. This isn't."
Simon, that sort of uglification happened to everything. It was the iconoclastic effect of postmodernism coupled with the transition from hand-work to digital work in graphic design. Everything became too overdone, too baroque with a surfeit of drop-shadows, overlays, gradients, asymmetry, and a confusing excess of typefaces.
Being an Atlanta native,the Coca-Cola and Pepsi wars are well remembered here. Pepsi being in second place always tried harder, 10 oz instead of 6 oz, and lively advertising, suchas "More bounce to the Once", reminding you which cola was more to drink. But Coke's branding did very well anyway. In Atlanta itself Loyalty to Coke is still Palpable. The ongoing cola wars are as cutthroat as ever. May the best Corn-syrup and water drink win.
Sometimes an orange with a straw stuck in it is just an orange with a straw stuck in it.
Yup!
I always though Pepsi was made mainly to pour down the sink; a plumbing purgative.
Oh yeah, the Original 6 0z coke bottle (with the bottling city written in the green glass on the bottom) will be forever the greates Phallic marketing icon, pre-dating Freud's popularity.
"May the best Corn-syrup and water drink win."
There's some flavoring in there as well.
By the way, it's almost the time to stock up on Kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola, which is Coke made the way Nature and Nature's God intended: with real cane sugar rather than corn syrup.
Can anyone tell I don't do the shopping?
I wouldn't be able to buy certain items because the graphics horrified me, or buy a half dozen of something because of the sexy orange on it.
In the morning when i jog at the park there is a pepsi distributer at one end of the track. It amazes me how many of these trucks rollout in the morning spewing burnt diesel fumes in the airspace where i do my rehabilitating walk part of my morning exercises and take deep cleansing brathes, or try so to say.
I often think of the old fashion milk truck that would deliver milk on the back porch when i see these guys rolling out before dawn. Then i think of my childhood dream where coke or pepsi would be delivered via faucet and spigot. That all
was spoiled in math class when our teacher stuck an iron nail in a glass of coke and told us to watch. Think of my old iron pipes with cola running through them. Oh, I so did love geometry and algebra with that man. I really did.
Pallidian... There are places in Atlanta wher pepsi cannot be found stocked alongside the Coke products."You are either for us, or you are against us" is an original Cola Wars thought. The Emory University Campus is one such place. Of course a half a billion dollar endowment from Woodruff, and founding moneys from Candler create permanent loyalty from Coca-Cola U.
Fear Factor
A shrinking penis,
A bloated twat;
The last he's seen is
Swallowed! what WHAT?!
You can take orange juice and make a screwdriver.
What else can you do with orange juice?
Morir Soñando... delicioso
New Tropicana packaging is way too washed out. First thing I said to myself when I saw it. Especially for a product they try to differentiate.
The round orange had a clear, well defined perimeter. Old green lettering was more rustic. You'd think they'd focus group this stuff.
The greatest logo ever was the Sunoco Pegasus. Why they did away with it is beyond me.
It's still all over the Mobil stations around here. For example, the Pegasus is the icon you hold the MobEx "Speedpass" up to at Mobil pumps.
From the man who rails against yuppies and pretends to be of the people: "Coca-Cola is better than Pepsi anyway. Where I come from, Pepsi is a trailer park drink."
Trailer park? What's wrong with trailer parks, you snob.
EDH - My mistake calling it the Sunoco Pegasus. You're right, it's the Mobil Pegasus and it's still in use.
I am also not allowed to buy pastries, given my wont to sexualize everything.
Long johns? Doughnuts?
Oh my; I 'd never leave.
Anyway, most logo changes smack of the desperation of plastic surgery among 70 year olds. Please, don't do it. If people aren't buying as they used to, it ain't likely the logo.
To me, Pepsi a an aluminum can regenerating company.
Pepsi is an...
I am also not allowed to buy pastries, given my wont to sexualize everything.
Could that explain the lack of pants? ;-)
I spent 4 of my first 5 years living in a single-wide trailer in a trailer park, AJD, so I'm allowed to write such things. I also learned my valuable interpersonal skills there. Fuck off.
"Trailer park? What's wrong with trailer parks, you snob."
They attract too many tornadoes.
Pantslessness is an acquired taste, Darcy, favored mostly amongst cartoon marsupials.
As for trailer parks, they were designed with the intention to serve as a place to despise, to arise from and never return to, to escape, to supercede, to improve upon, to have been from, but with no intention on returning..
Not unlike hailing from Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Without trailer parks, white trash would have to revert to living in abandoned school buses. And that would be cruel. Plus the supply is limited.
Why is a tornado like a wife? It screams when it comes and takes your house when it goes.
Anyway, I share some people's curiosity that there are enough people out there that took it upon themselves to complain. I suppose the absolute number was likely small, and the marketing wonks thought "if this many actual complaints are coming in, the number of people who don't like it but are silent must be quite large." Even so, I'm surprised that people actively complain about such things.
Then again, it is not really fair to complain about people expending energy on such things if the marketing geniuses are going to spend energy and money changing something that was fine in the first place.
By the way, it's almost the time to stock up on Kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola, which is Coke made the way Nature and Nature's God intended: with real cane sugar rather than corn syrup.
You can buy Mexican Coke (with sugar) now at the yuppie grocery store here called Fresh Market. It comes in bottles and I think it’s 2 or 3 dollars a piece.
On OJ, Simply Orange is the best anyway.
If you are not from the South, it may be difficult to comprehend the psychic importance that Coca-Cola--and Delta Airlines--had in years past.
They were possibly the first two corporate national consumer-brand giants to rise from destroyed infrastructure and a source of incredible customer loyalty.
North Carolina's quarter is a trailer park with tornados on the horizon. At least that was the plan.
Vermont has a guy peeing on a tree.
Coca-Cola must be a "base" used by Dr Pemberton to settle people's over acidic stomachs. When old batteries had the terminals with cable connections that were corroded with that greenish fuzz stuff, the old timers would say to pour a Coke on it, and it worked. The world still sees a coca-cola logo as the symbol of American economic imperialism that was the first introduced into their cultures.
The New York Times reports customers complained.
That doesn't mean people complained. It means people noticed and wrote or called or emailed their preference, providing valuable feedback and NYT reported it as people complaining.
I actually complained when Helmsman's changed their recipe for mayonnaise. They wrote back saying they believed the change was for the better. But they got my vote, and rejected my opinion. I've been making my own mayonnaise ever since. It's fun! And it's 500% better, and that's within my customary 12% exaggeration for dramatic effect.
Cute, Chip. I miss your links to recipes!
There has been nothing more phallic in advertisements than the early Joe the Camel.
John Steinbeck has a 6 page paean to mobile homes in his 1962 Travels With Charlie. He saw this new trend as the epitome of modern living. Bizarre reading it at this remove.
Yankees drink Pepsi. A Northern chain bought up a local drugstore and stocked up on Pepsi instead of Coke. This was significant enough to make the newspaper. There are Pepsi drinkers here, but it's a nasty habit they acquired somewhere up North.
Sorry, I had a moment of Southernness.
Pepsi just ain't Coke. Coke is the good stuff.
They attract too many tornadoes.
Laugh now, but I believe someday, some researcher will find an attraction between a critical mass of aluminum and the steering currents of tornadoes.
The danger of too many MBAs. This isn't the first time braniacs at companies did something tremendously stupid and the company reacted like a deer caught in the headlights before going back to the tried and true. In addition to New Coke, there was the Honeycomb cereal fiasco (well almost all of Post cereals) and several other instances where dickweeds at companies thought they were smarter than everyone who preceded them.
(My theory on how to fix the world: step one--get rid of all MBA programs. No, that was step two. Step one was shoot all the lawyers.)
Christy--
Suggestive is your Chanel.
Share the fantasy.
Here
and
here
"Pepsi just ain't Coke. Coke is the good stuff."
I love you Beth.
Has anyone here been to the Coca Cola museum in Atlanta? It looked pretty cool but we had just spent the morning in the Georgia State Aquarium and that was enough for us. Next time we're there I might have to check it out.
Beth said...
"They attract too many tornadoes.
Laugh now, but I believe someday, some researcher will find an attraction between a critical mass of aluminum and the steering currents of tornadoes."
I think the relationship is that trailer parks are situated on flat open land. Tornadoes hate hills and forrests. Hide your house there and you will only have to worry about flash floods and forrest fires, but not tornadoes.
Oh, damn it! I wish I'd said that before Beth. :)
Thank you, Slave Laborer George #3W7D, much more to my liking.
Nothing like an ice cold Co-Cola in a metal tumbler.
"Pogo said...
Pantslessness is an acquired taste, Darcy, favored mostly amongst cartoon marsupials..."
I must disagree. I'm no marsupial, nor cartoonish, yet I'm sitting here ...uhhh ... probably sharing too much... yeah... (*blush*)
I did say mostly.
:D
My grandmother would add Coke and OJ to the water when boiling a country ham. She also made mayo in a blender. My dad would eat it with a spoon.
I thought Simply Orange was awful--biting and bitter.
Why did Sinclair Oil have a dinosaur? That's the only thing I remember of the 64 World's Fair, so it was a successful logo.
What do people like to drink in Wisconsin, apart from Beer. Do the dairys push yogourt drinks? I suspect there are no wineries under all that ice and snow. Perhaps Pepsi Cola is your favorite soft drink, not that there is anything wrong with that. Do the Norwegians make salted fish drinks? My mind goes to Prarie Home Companion images.
70 comments about this?
Get-a-life...
Nothing worse than rancid orange juice, is there?
Palladian, I'm feeling the love. It's the real thing. The way it should be.
Christy: rancid bacon.
You asked!
Michael said...
70 comments about this?
Get-a-life...
You're the one who spent your morning reading them.
By the way, did anyone else notice at the link that NPR doesn't know the difference between an "aisle" and an "isle?" Here was the headline: "Frozen Food Isle Benefits From Recession."
"Palladian, I'm feeling the love. It's the real thing. The way it should be."
I think my fierce Coke partisanship comes from my southern grandmother who would allow no other carbonated beverage in the house.
Need proof of my devotion to Coca-Cola? Me in 1980.
"By the way, did anyone else notice at the link that NPR doesn't know the difference between an "aisle" and an "isle?" Here was the headline: "Frozen Food Isle Benefits From Recession.""
I can understand their confusion. NPR people don't do frozen food.
The Frozen Food Isle was an important early victory for Japan in WW2.
From there they hoped to attack the US mainland, first with fish sticks and bomb pops, then TV dinners.
Man, Palladian, that's some serious Coke worship.
Alt·hou·sian -(Àlt tousÃn, -z" Ãn), adj.
1. of or pertaining to people who imagine sexual innuendo in almost every visual or textual subject they encounter.
Palladian... one of my grandmothers, and an aunt-in-law worked at the CoCa-Cola company (the real syrup maker on North avenue next to Georgia Tech) and in 1955 the employees all threatened to go on strike because a new company President banned coffee from the premises. Needless to say, it was the new guy who blinked first. The political power of Robert Woodruff in the 1950's era was enormous(and Cedarford he was not Jewish),but he was just another Atlanta guy raised in the early 1900,s like his friend Bobby Jones, the golfer from the 1920's. Needless to say Coke is the only soft drink served at the Masters golf Tournament in Augusta.
Truth in Advertising!
Beth, I'll take your word for it about rancid bacon. I love it too much for it to stay around long enough to go bad. Though my comment was more about opening a fridge door/blog looking for nourishing goodness and being slapped in the face with the spoiled, the bitter, and the rancid.
with the spoiled, the bitter, and the rancid.
kinda like opening a post here and finding titus, Michael and Cedarford all on the same thread...
I think my fierce Coke partisanship comes from my southern grandmother who would allow no other carbonated beverage in the house.
In my family we were only allowed Pepsi in the house. But now that I make my own decisions, I buy Coke (or the store brand).
I've also betrayed Fleischmann's margarine (with butter) and Miracle Whip (with Hellmann's).
Yes, we bought the fancy margarine.
Pepsi just ain't Coke. Coke is the good stuff
And you haven't had real Coke until you've had the south of the border made with cane sugar coke. There is no comparison.
Christy, that sounds like a new TV show.
I don't let bacon or OJ stay around long enough to go bad, but I once reached overhead for a tray in a walk-in fridge and discovered a lost bacon supply. It was unforgettable.
I'll have to scope out some of that cane sugar Coke - I suppose that's the stuff I grew up on in the sixties?
I'm all for cane sugar - it's a major Louisiana crop (and so is citrus, since that's on-topic today).
Screw corn syrup. That subsidized crap has ruined us all.
Yay for cane sugar.
I'm allowed to criticize 'cause my state grows the noxious stuff for syrup and ethanol. yes, MN is a Mogan David-Boone's Farm-Ripple-wine cooler state.
The coke you can get south of the border will burn a hole in your nose.
"I'll have to scope out some of that cane sugar Coke - I suppose that's the stuff I grew up on in the sixties?"
Yup. There are many conspiracy theories that suggest that the introduction of "New" Coke in the 1980s was simply to provide cover for the switch-over from cane sugar to HFCS. They introduced "New" Coke, withdrew "Real" Coke long enough, they thought, that people would forget what sugar-sweetend Coke tasted like, then axed "New" Coke and introduced "Coke Classic" which was the old flavor formula with the cane sugar replaced by HFCS. But it does taste different, it has a different "mouth feel" than the sugar-sweetened Coke. Look for the Mexican-bottled stuff or look around for Kosher-for-Passover Coke, which has a yellow cap with Hebrew letters printed on it.
Unfortunately Coke doesn't keep very long so it's impossible to stock up enough for the whole year. If you want, I can score you a bottle or two of the Passover Coke, Beth. I live in a neighborhood full of orthodox Jews and it's readily available.
Did I just say I'd score some coke for Beth from the neighborhood Hasidim?!
COCA-COLA!
Hasidim Passover Coke, huh? Is that protected, like Native American Church Peyote?
If you pick up an extra couple of bottles, I'd love to refresh my memory.
When my family moved to New Orleans in 1975, we moved to Mid-City, a blue-collar neighborhood full of residential streets with corner stores and tracts of warehouses. At our corner was a defunct grocery named FUBAR (the owner was a WWII vet). Despite having closed the store, the guy kept two Coke vending machines out on the street corner, and they were stocked with the 12 oz and 6 oz green glass bottles, for a quarter each. Same price, either size. He kept this up through the end of the 80s, and never raised the price.
There was a wooden bench alongside the store, and it was a daily ritual to stroll down to the corner, sit and enjoy a frosty drink, and leave the bottle in the wooden crate he provided. This was especially wonderful on hot August evenings, when the temperatures had been in the high 90s all day.
Fleischmann's did the same thing with margarine as Coke did with New Coke. They decided sales were declining because people wanted butter flavor. So they added artificial butter flavor to ALL their products. Everything you made ended up tasting like chemicals. Chemical flavored rice-crispy squares anyone?
And that was after the New Coke fiasco.
P. S. Fleischmann's, people stopped buying your product because it costs 10 times as much as the store brand. Also, it's margarine and that stuff is poison!
Palladian, I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but there is an interesting history to sugar in the syrup made by Coca-Cola and other soft drink makers.
Soft drink makers used to ship syrup (sugar plus flavor) to bottlers. Around the same time ( I can't remember the exact dates since I read the business case about 10 years ago) corn sweeteners became available, the bottlers demanded that they be able to purchase flavor concentrate without the sugar in it. They felt like the big companies were overcharging for the sugar portion of the syrup. They may have had a point--even though it is difficult to disentangle the value of the flavor, which is pretty intangible, with the value of the sweetener which is a commodity and therefore has a highly defined value. In any case the bottlers won the contest and as a result, they use the cheapest sweetener they can get, which is corn syrup.
It is too bad for the consumer though. Corn syrup is not the same as sucrose: Sucrose is a dimer of Glucose and Fructose while corn syrup is a mixture of these two monomers. Also, I suspect that bottlers stretch concentrate and so we end up with colas that are too sweet, but bland. They couldn't get away with that when the sugar/flavor ratio was fixed in Atlanta.
Traditionalguy asks: "What do people like to drink in Wisconsin, apart from Beer?"
Well, this is the dairy state, so, we have milk in our breakfast cereals, then we have a beer.
They couldn't get away with that when the sugar/flavor ratio was fixed in Atlanta.
I'm sure Coke could specify the type and concentration of sugar to be used in the contracts they have their bottlers sign.
They could certainly try. The bottlers wouldn't agree without extracting a concession of some kind--like price...
They could certainly try. The bottlers wouldn't agree without extracting a concession of some kind--like price...
Yes, but I think it was something decided at Coke, not by the bottlers.
By Coke switching to corn syrup, they kept costs down for everyone and were better able to compete against Pepsi on price, which was gaining market share.
"es, but I think it was something decided at Coke, not by the bottlers."
You are incorrect. The bottlers, who are independent businesses, purchase their own sweeteners. Coke, has nothing to do with this.
Is it possible that Coca-Cola has (or is tempted to) modify their formula to work better with the prevailing corn sweetener? Maybe. I suspect that that was the reason for New Coke.
For those of us who also like Dr. Pepper, here's the real thing...
The bottlers, who are independent businesses, purchase their own sweeteners. Coke, has nothing to do with this.
I don't know. I found this NY Times article that seems to indicate Coke has a big say in what kind of sweetener is used. Of course it is the Times, so who knows if it's true.
Corn syrup is in almost all sweetened products today. There has been no news release of scientific studies on corn syrup that I have seen, but an obesity epidemic has increasingly flooded the developed world starting in the mid 1980's. It would not surprise me if that is causation, and not mere correlation, due to corn syrup replacing sugar. Have you noticed that even canned Sweet Peas are packed in a sugar and water brine. That is real sugar. It can't be that hard to use the real sugar in our foods.
For diet drinks the "sweetener" is already added.
Orange malaise.
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