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Cool Packaging Ideas?
FoamNuts asks: "Gone are the boring days of foam inserts and styrofoam peanuts. We all like to buy toys, and my question is simple:
What's the coolest packaging you've come across? Yesterday I got a Sony CD-RW which was secured in a warped plastic inner-tube. My previous HP CD-R was packed in a clever plastic/cardboard combo
where the cardboard folded up and a plastic sheet lifted and supported the drive in a cool hyperbolic way. Sometimes we forget the other places cool engineering shows up." I guess I'm just a Philistine when it comes to packaging. Anything is cool as long as I don't have to grab the X-acto blade to carve thru layer-after-layer of plastic.
A potential customer would call or write or whatever in and we'd ship them out a free 30-trial of our software. It was on a single floppy and ran only on Novell Netware servers. The plus was that was then the corporate LAN standard and this product installed in 5 minutes, creating the address books, rewriting login-scripts, configuring accounts, everthing.
Once it was installed it defaulted to EVERYONE getting an account and the client, and it really did work quite well. Of course once it had been running for 30 days it deactivated itself for everyone but the Administrator, thus causing the users to demand en masse our be purchased and turned back on.
Our tricky part was getting the universally overworked Server Administor to install the darn thing. Sure they'd order the free trial but if it sat buried in their Inbox it didn't do any good.
The solution: Unstackable packaging.
We shipped out the kits in 8.5"x11" boxes that were wedge-shaped, nothing could sit on top of them without sliding off. Thus our brightly colored box was always on the top of any pile reminding folks to install it.
Between the packaging & our "courtesy follow-up calls" offering to walk the potential customer through the install (and yes they were real support-folks, not scripted drones) made for an incredible success rate. For something that we internally called "the worlds cheesiest email" (a play on our slogan "the worlds easiest email") it made a mint and built a corporation.
It may not have been the most "kewl" packaging but it worked magnificently and succeeded at selling the product.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Real popcorn was used back in the mid-sixties for packing slot cars sent to regional and national drag races. This was back when most kids could only afford to send the cars and not themselves.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
There exists such a thing, and I've received many things packed with it. They come in the form of cylindrical peanuts that have the appearance of normal foam peanuts, although they're a light brown instead of white. Anyway, they're made from starch, so they dissolve quite easily in water (takes about 4-5 seconds in lukewarm water) and are safe to eat (well, to a point, anyway...after enough I'm sure the cardboard dust et al would pose a threat). I dunno how well they stand up to sunlight and such, but I'm sure your friendly neighborhood bacteria would have no problem with them after they hit the landfill.
A little late, but....
We get AOpen PCs from a local vendor. They come with an easy to remove keyboard, software/cables/moose package, sitting on a handled tray. But the best is the PC. It is has the baggied, form-fitting foam packaging, all secured by one of the biggest rubber bands I've ever seen. Now that's a creative LART!
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Well, the VA Linux packaging is pretty cool. The server goes in, then a box containing cables, books, etc. It's easy to pull the top box out. I've done a few trade shows and demos and it comes in pretty handy for cables and small devices. Now if only the servers weren't so damn big. I couldn't close the back door of a rack one time if anything was plugged into it.
Also, I got an IBM Thinkpad a few years ago that was suspended in a plastic sheet inside the box. That was pretty cool
Yawn. Pink Floyd's PULSE, 1995
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Bubblewrap - you can never have too much bubblewrap
Bright-colored foam pellets, instead of plain white.
TUX-shaped foam pellets
Foam bricks that look like bricks (3 holes, red color)
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Well, it's not packing material, but I've gotten two of these V-Lite video tapes in the mail. Pretty neat. It's essentially a very cheap VHS tape that weighs a fraction of a real tape. One of their claims is that it is unusual enough that people will notice it and want to try it.