Posted By: dmatasavich
It is a sad day in NYC when you can ask random people going down the street what Manhattan Special is and hear every answer except the coffee soda that puts all energy drinks and lattes to shame! If you are ready to move on from the bush league of mid-afternoon fixes demand that your local bodega starts carrying Manhattan Specials for you!
For a great article on the pick me upper, read what Michael Wilson of the NY Times had to say;
For the New Yorker of a certain age, the first sip was a rite after nursing: from mother’s milk to Manhattan Special. Those little glass bottles may as well have come with nipples.
And brother, what a sip. In today’s world of energy drinks and juices and endless vitamin boosters and ginger and ginseng, there is still nothing that resembles a cold Manhattan Special, a thick and fizzy, jet-black blend of espresso and seltzer topped off with a bracing wallop of pure cane sugar. It muscles its way around the mouth, making itself at home, before bounding down the throat like a big, goofy kid going to play in the basement.
The first sip was often the start of a lifetime of little glass bottles, for Manhattan Special, a hand grenade of caffeine and sugar, is nothing if not addictive. Generations of New Yorkers, especially Italians, grew up jittery as junkies on the stuff outside its big plant in Williamsburg, on the street that gave it its name, Manhattan Avenue.
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Posted By: dmatasavich
The Associated Press is reporting on a NYC man marketing Obama and McCain themed rubbers. My only question is, do you use the condom of the guy you support or are against? Who am I kidding it doesn’t matter, regardless we are all gonna get screwed this November, so you might as well at least use protection!
The presidential race is in full swing — but not the way you might think. A young New York City entrepreneur has decided to “have fun” with the campaign by marketing condoms featuring images of Barack Obama and John McCain.
Benjamin Sherman, who created the company Practice Safe Policy, says the Obama condom carries the slogan “Use With Good Judgment.” The McCain version says “OLD BUT Not Expired.”
According to the Web site, McCain condoms “are battle tested, strong and durable, for those occasions when you just need to switch your position!”
While the company can’t guarantee the condoms are 100 percent effective, it says it’s certain “that without wearing one, there’s likely to be an Obama-Mama in your future.”
Click here for your Obama condoms or here for McCain rubbers.
Posted By: dmatasavich
When I think of spread legs, two things come to mind; the first, I don’t think I need to mention, and the second involves me and cops during a “routine stop”. However, Print Magazine has added to my thought options by writing a great article on spread legs in advertising. The article includes numerous images of the classic “A-Frame”, a cutoff-torso-spread-leg framing device, and claims it to be the most copied design theme ever used. Thinking back to all the National Lampoon movie covers, they just might be right.
Read the full article and see all the images here.
Posted By: dmatasavich
This particular phenomenon, known as the “Droste effect,” is named after a 1904 package of Droste brand cocoa. The mathematical interest in these packaging illustrations is their implied infinity. If the resolution of the printing process—(and the determination and eyesight of the illustrator)—were not limiting factors, it would go on forever. A package within a package within a package… Like Russian dolls.
At my grocery store I could only find three examples: Land O’Lakes Butter, Morton Salt and Cracker Jacks. These packages each include a picture of the package itself and are often cited by writers discussing such pop-math-arcana as recursion, strange loops, self-similarity, and fractals.
Since so many products are nearly indistinguishable from their packaging—(a tube of ChapStick, a can of Coke)—I figured that there would be lots of examples. My brief supermarket survey showed me otherwise. It’s quite rare. You can easily find packaging that includes packaging pictures, but it’s almost always a picture of the inner packaging—(the outside of the box shows the packets contained within)—or else it’s a cross-marketing campaign where pictures of other packages in the product line are shown—usually on the back.
The Droste effect seems to be most applicable to packaging with illustrations. For those products that include an illustrated mascot, it would seem a natural thing to have the mascot holding the product package. Tony-the-Tiger holding up a box of Frosted Flakes. The Planter Peanut fellow offering us peanuts from a jar or a can. What aren’t the mascots doing this? The reasons are perhaps understandable. Better to emphasize the consumer’s end use of the product or to convey the purity of the ingredients. (Rather than to make their packaging into recursive ads-within-ads.) Hence: a bowl of frosted cornflakes ready to eat; mixed nuts offered to guests, not from the can, but from an elegant serving dish. And yet, a lot of products are being consumed directly from their single-serving packages. Why not a bottle of Coke with the polar bear holding a bottle of Coke?
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