Bottles, Cans, and Other Iconic Packagings

From sodas to soup cans, burgers to chocolates. Some products grew up with us and their packagings are imprinted in our minds. That’s why in this article, we’ll talk about some of the most famous.

World’s Most Popular Bottle

To talk about this product, we could just do it with an “onomatopoeia”. It would be something like this: Tsss… gulp, gulp, gulp…ahhh…
(In fact, one of their latest ad campaigns focuses on this insight)
Saying that Coca-Cola is an iconic product would be falling short. But their glass bottle is as famous as their soda. Its silhouette is worldly renowned, but it wasn’t always like this.
Since the brand’s origins, they’ve tried many different packaging designs (the first resemblance of their current design appeared in 1915), however, the “Contour” bottle appeared for the first time in 1977.

This is the design that has turned into the soda’s titan image for almost 50 years. One that made it into the “Time” magazine’s cover.
Decades went by, and it still looks the same… while I need to change at least 20 times before leaving my house (and yet I’m not convinced of what I’m wearing)

Pass the Ketchup

When we think about one of the world’s most famous food dressings, Heinz and its iconic bottle come to our mind.
Few know that their first product wasn’t tomato flavored but horseradish.
Many years later, they started producing their sauce magna, in a manner of saying.

Their first ketchup bottle was produced in 1876, but it didn’t look anything like the one you can get nowadays.
It was made of glass. This decision had the purpose of showing consumers the purity and quality of Heinz’s product.
In 1980 they started producing the octagonal pack we all know and love. The company chose this shape in particular because it was something completely different from the competition.
Even though this pack became a cultural icon, in 1983, Heinz changed it again.
The new one is made of plastic, easy to squeeze, saying goodbye to tapping the bottom part for ketchup or having to stick a knife in the bottle to help the sauce to come out.

2002 turned Heinz upside down, literally. Because they presented an innovative pack with their label turned upwards. They realized that their consumers leave their bottles with the cap facing down. With this new label, Heinz made sure you can always see their brand correctly.

Pop Soup

Can you picture Andy Warhol’s famous painting but instead of red and white, orange and blue?
Well, it turns out that the iconic cans of soup originally had those colors.

The history that changed the brand’s history started in 1898 when Herberton L. Williams, Campbell Soup’s treasurer, went to a football game.
This match faced the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell (this last team used a red and white suit).
Legend has it that Herberton was so impressed with Cornell that the next day, he proposed to change the colors of the soup’s can.
He was a visionary, right?

A Mountain of Chocolate

One of the most popular chocolates in the world is Toblerone. There’s no doubt about that. However, no one is certain about the origin of their iconic packaging.
Basically, there are two theories.

The first one says that the packaging is influenced by a Swiss symmetric mountain (Toblerone’s chocolate comes from this country) called Cervino or Matterhorn.

The other theory was backed by Theodore Tobler’s sons (he was the inventor of Toblerone).
They say that the chocolatier was shocked by a burlesque show’s closing act in which some dancers formed a pyramid. This gave him the idea for the weird shape of his chocolate.

It doesn’t matter which one was responsible for the packaging; what’s undeniable is that Toblerone’s shape helped make the brand famous.

Golden Box

When McDonald’s appeared, the fast-food industry changed forever.
Since 1955 each of their product’s launches have become a success of their own. However, one of their biggest hits happened during the sixties.
The company needed to appeal to the kids market. That’s why Bob Bernstein, one of the heads of the marketing and advertising department, came up with the idea of “Happy Meal.”
Legend has it that he got the inspiration from watching his son eat his cereals while staring at the box.

Some packages turned out to be products of their own. As important as the products they carried inside.
We know that there are many other examples. Which ones do you think we should include in another article? Leave us a comment.