To this list of inconspicuous product details I hereby nominate the blue strips of tape used in the packaging of three-packs of Cracker Jack. If this doesn't ring a bell, here's the scoop: Boxes of Cracker Jack, in addition to being sold individually, are also sold in packs of three. The weird thing is how these three-packs are assembled. The typical approach would be to use shrinkwrap or cellophane, as is used for, say, those sampler packs of single-serve Kellogg's cereal boxes. But the Cracker Jack three-packs are bound together by two strips of shiny blue tape, one running along the tops of the boxes and the other running along the bottoms. These tape strips don't appear on any other product I can think of, which makes them sort of a signature Cracker Jack element. In fact, if I try to imagine a shrinkwrapped three-pack of Crack Jack, the image just doesn't compute -- the three-packs are bound with blue tape, period.
The tape strips look and feel anachronistic, like relics from an earlier packaging era. As it happens, this works quite well with Cracker Jack, much of whose marketing appeal is rooted in nostalgia (a note on the package, in fact, says, "Tastes just as good as you remember"). So have the Cracker Jack folks consciously decided to retain the tape strips over the years as a way to evoke the product's old-fashioned heritage? Or are they just too cheap to buy a shrinkwrapping machine?
Neither, as it turns out. As a spokesperson for Cracker Jack's parent company, Frito-Lay, explained to me, "When we bought the Cracker Jack brand from Borden in 1997, we also acquired all their manufacturing and packaging equipment. They were using the blue tape strips, so that's what we use too. We tried to retain as much of the brand's character as possible." Unfortunately, many files and records documenting Cracker Jack's history were disposed of or misplaced when the brand was sold, so Frito-Lay's staff was unable to tell me when the tape strips were first used, whether their length, width, or color have evolved over the years, or much of anything else about them. Too bad.
As for Frito-Lay's stewardship of the product, it's a mixed bag. Cracker Jack boxes now claim to have "Bigger Popcorn, More Nuts!," the latter of which is clearly a lie -- if anything, the peanuts are scarcer than ever (I swear there are some boxes that a person with a peanut allergy could safely gobble down). And the free toy surprises have gotten lame beyond words. But at least they've kept the tape strips, surely one of the more classically inconspicuous design elements on the consumer landscape. (Frito-Lay, Inc., Plano, TX 75024)