Tropicana Goes Generic with New Packaging
October 26, 2008 by Susan Gunelius
Filed under Marketing
I’m assuming that Tropicana didn’t mean to turn its packaging into a generic knock-off, but that’s exactly what’s happened. Check out the new Tropicana packaging pictured below.
They’re not fooling anyone. The cheap looking 7-11-esque packaging doesn’t make me feel any better about forking over a whole lot of money so my kids can get their Vitamin C in the morning.
Your thoughts?
Hat tip to Brand New for this brand packaging faux pas.
Image: Tropicana
Technorati Tags: tropicana,branding,generic brand,store brand,packaging,package design,tropicana packaging,pepsiCo
I’m so glad to see that others agree that its a horrid new look. I’m usually all for modern design and for over a decade had a business devoted to it (not in the packaging area though…)
Long before I found out that there was a surrounding controversy, I told my girlfriend who was shopping with me, how bad the new design was, and pointed out why. I usually don’t speak out or pay much attention to this sort of thing, so you know that I had a strong opinion about this one. I’m glad to hear that they’re going to change it back. Keeping it would HAVE to be a mistake!
On a related note, I actually like the new Pepsi packaging. Its simple for one thing, and unlike a sliced orange, I don’t think a picture of a cola nut makes the average person’s mouth water, so here the abstraction is appropriate.
“A picture is worth a thousand words” as they used to say in my Psychology in Advertising class, and the original carton design accomplished this much more efficiently! I had to study this new carton design for quite some time before I understood what I was looking at and even a good bit longer before I could determine my usual selection of the “low acid” variety.
A well-printed (four-color process) freshly cut orange slice gives you an immediate idea as to what’s inside, and its a hundred times more appetizing than that abstracted juice glass that looks like it was printed at home on someone’s basement press with cheap ink.
The half-an-orange screw top is a cute, eye-catching idea though, and therefore a good one (if its not hard to open). I hope they can keep it!
I was shocked to see the new packaging for tropicana. In fact, I thought it was a bad attempt to cut costs and make the product look more generic or organic feeling. However, it really turned me off. When I heard in the news that Pepsi was going to change the packaging back to the previous design, I said to myself, who got fired at Pepsi…for the company to go back to the “old” look so quickly, someone in the Pepsi marketing department paid big time for that failure.
My wife and I are…excuse me, were, big Tropicana customers. While the redesign is somewhat of a bust, the more disappointing factor about having a generic looking carton, is that the price stayed the same (if not went up, in certain areas). The even MORE frustrating part about Tropicana’s lineup, is they removed Low Acid from their selection, the one and only kind we use to purchase. Not good. We now purchase our local grocery store brand. Pepsi’s re-branding is not so great either, but I’m not a huge customer of their cola. Mt. Dew…now that’s another story!
I have to make a correction. I guess our local grocery store decided to stop carrying the Low Acid variety. Tropicana still has it available on their website (and probably in other stores). Still doesn’t explain the generic looking carton.
I do not see the fascination with the old packaging. It’s the sort of thing that dominated store shelves for far too long: Big obnoxious over Photoshoped looking pictures with ridiculously rendered type. Give me clean and easy to read any day. The taste of the general public is head scratching. I’m so glad I didn’t have to design this product then be told to go back to the piece of garbage so many love. Get over it, 80’s Floridian airbrushed t-shirt packaging is out.
New Tropicana logo was pulled, sadly the 2009 Pepsi logo is still ruined. Pepsi is going crazy with generic store brand looking packaging.
I’m with the others that the new packaging was a terrible mistake. My biggest complaint of it is that is too diificult to see what variety you were choosing unless you were a few inches from the container. It was printed very small near the top, right at a fold.
However, I was in the store on Monday and the old container appear to be back.