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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
Pepsi underrated the fact that Tropicana has consumers so attached to the old-‘Tropic’ packaging that they were unlikely to appreciate a younger looking futuristic design. We did an eye tracking study on the effectiveness of the ‘New’ pack in the UK where we have never had the straw graphic and the results predict a 13% loss of sales. Tropicana shoppers don’t see new packages at shelf and are drawn to Tesco’s own brand products that have some similarities to the UK Tropicana pack. The truth about the sales loss has little to do with that graphic, and everything to do with shoppers ‘ability to find the new packages at shelf. Consumers have to find the product at shelf before they can buy it. One eye tracking study and this could have been avoided!
People who don’t buy a product because of the packaging are probably the top 5% stupidest humans on the planet. example: I like panda licorice, and I’d buy it if it came wrapped in burlap. What’s with people? Get lives!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1068 days ago
[...] may know the details by now (and if not see Jackie Huba, Susan Gunelius or Stuart Elliott at the NY Times for excellent recaps), but Tropicana has suffered a new media [...]
1114 days ago
[...] Bizzia [...]
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.
New Tropicana logo was pulled, sadly the 2009 Pepsi logo is still ruined. Pepsi is going crazy with generic store brand looking packaging.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 think Tropicana’s NEW packaging looks great! It’s a shame that some people cannot accept ‘change’ and something new and refreshing. I don’t understand what all the hoopla is, honestly! I don’t think the new design is “generic” looking, at all. It looks clean, bright and eye-catching! Regardless of the packaging, I think that most consumer’s buy a product because it’s GOOD and they like it!
the glass of juice reminds of an orange flavored drink. Has Tropicana become a Tang drink? wow….yummm…more sugar.. What a mistake…did Pepsico go to an advertising agency? A Package Brand design company would not have allowed this. Better rethink your talent pool and go back to the pros.
Thats awesome Tropiciana… take a trusted and loved brand source of the orange with a straw that you have cultivated to the point that it’s pretty much a pop-culture item and squash it.
Then, when no one is looking, re-brand your containers such that not only does it look generic, but people are confused about what they are buying in the first place.
Thumbs up to your complete waste of money and resources!
Are you people seriously not going to drink the OJ because the packaging is different? Even worse it looks generic<<god forbid. C’mon this is news??? Who cares what they want to put on their carton, the stuff inside is still the same! “Oh my God, that orange juice doesn’t look like the tropicana I usually drink, better put it back” seriously people get over it.
Tropicana also uses their straw logo on the refrigerated railcars they use on their ‘juice train’ that runs between Florida and New York, which itself is another unique branding mechanism. It would appear that the folks at Pepsico simply have little respect for the history of some of the companies they buy, mistakingly thinking that Madison Ave knows better.
Just to let everybody know. As of February 23, 2009, Tropicana has decided to switch back to the traditional “straw in orange” packaging. After all the negative feedback received on the new packaging it was clear that it just wasn’t going to be a change for the good. So probably mid March you will start to see the CLASSIC packaging of Tropicana. This is not a rumor and is 110% true.
The Dec 08 packaging design mockup at the top of this blog post was not all that bad, with the cute orange half caps and the clear colour labels on the top. But after looking at the production threadedmarketing.com image posted kindly by Alicia on 12/27, I much prefer the original packaging of Tropicana with the orange and the straw. The new packaging looks simply horrible and boring.
I rarely buy orange juice, but when I do, it’s always Tropicana (the best IMO). I hadn’t noticed the change in design, and it was an article on NPR News this morning that prompted me to Google it. According to NPR News, PepsiCo is going to revert to the original packaging after such bad feedback from the marketplace.
There’s beauty in subtlety. I think the packaging looks great.
Well everyone can rest easy now, Tropicana is going back to the old packaging!