Hasta La Ideas

Six years ago, if you had asked a random person on the street if they were excited about retail giant Target‘s redesign of the prescription bottle, you likely would have received one of two answers: 1) “Why would I be excited about the redesign of a prescription bottle?” or 2) “Who are you and why are you asking me weird questions?” There’s a chance you might also get slapped. But once Deborah Adler‘s brilliant retooling of something so familiar was released, the world went gaga for it. We ask now if we are on the cusp of the same thing with bottles of soda. In case you missed the stories about it in Plastics News or Packaging Digest, the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group has quietly been rolling out new packaging for its entire line of soft drinks, which includes brands like 7up and Canada Dry (the eponymous brands in the company’s title will not be redone…yet). Redesigned by the Kansas City based firm R&D/Leverage, the new bottle is referred to as their “Legacy” model, a departure from the “Splash” bottle they’d been using since 1995 (the packaging from most every other soft drink brand is very familiar, so you’ll understand what we’re talking about here). The new “Legacy” features a more sports drink look, with a larger top and a more easily gripped middle. The bottle was developed over 28 weeks between the firm and the company and “included comprehensive qualitative and quantitative consumer validation — everything, including consumer shopalongs.” It’s been rolling out across the country since April, but unless you spend as much time in the soda isle as we do (we have a problem), you might have missed it. So will this re-do change the face of soda bottle design as we know it, or are we just talking about this because we think it’s funny that we stumbled across outlets like Plastics News and Packaging Digest and we have a soft spot for trade magazines? We’ll leave that up to you to decide.

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