And the juice was (almost) jaunty

I was contemplating my box of OJ this morning because I'd already done my work and didn't have anything better to do. (O.K, well, yes, I could have read the newspaper or started rereading the style manual or wiped the dust off my Hula-Fabulous Betty Boop Bobble Head, but honestly, it was way too early for that.)

This was a mini box -- a 6-ouncer. A carton that in its mini-ness brought me back to the elementary-school days of Capri Sun and juiceboxes and tiny plastic straws with an aluminum-piercing pointy end. I tried opening the box from one side, pulling back the flaps where it said "open." But it did that annoying thing where only part of the cardboard paper comes up, which meant that to get any further would have required much plying with fingernails and most likely much spillage of sticky orange substance all over keyboard as well.

Thankfully, on these boxes there's also the delightful Straw Hole! That's the box's enthusiasm. The people who manufacture the box obviously know how dang hard it is to open these boxes the intuitive peely way, and so they minimize the sidesaddle "open" with faint italic type and a tiny white arrow and instead play up the Straw Hole! in bright red type with a giant swooshing arrow that points to said hole. I only lament that the juice doesn't also come with a straw like the one drawn on the box to demonstrate the proper straw insertion point, a straw that is the height of jauntiness with its red and white candy cane stripes.

Jaunty juice. Now that's the sort of thing to make a gal pleased (or at least less perturbed) about going to work way too early.

Comments

[Tony S]

Your mention of kiddie drinks brought back memories and I thought you might like this site. It's an archive of food packaging back when that was more an artistic exercise than an exercise in frustration for the consumer: http://theimaginaryworld.com/page4.html