Angry Juice Box

I have to admit: I noticed the new Tropicana design but didn’t think much of it. It looks simple, clean and modern, and though the distinctive and familiar orange with a straw in it is gone, I didn’t mind. In fact, the look reminded me of Target’s Market Pantry brand, which uses an extremely simple design product-wide. Yes, it’s a generic brand, but the clean Trebuchet type and white space even makes $1 cinnamon crunch cereal seem delicious and awesome. One of the major complaints, I’ve learned, about the new Tropicana packaging is its ‘generic’ look … I don’t know, I really like it.

Here’s some arguments, and remember, Tropicana is a Pepsi company, and Pepsi recently launched a new logo as well (that one I sympathize with the detractors):

Daily Heller:

It’s one thing to change the logo; it’s another to abandon the mnemonic orange with the straw in it. As package imagery goes, it was pretty smart, and decidedly memorable. Consumers are mixed (see here) but I, for one, believe that making this brand so bland (and you have to admit it’s bland, don’t you?) is a big tactical mistake …

Mark Lamster:

I’ve seen the new packaging repeatedly derided as “generic,” which sells it short. It’s a clean, modernist design that looks like it would fit right in on the shelf of a high-end grocer in London or Amsterdam. I suspect consumers will quickly adjust to its color-coded system for differentiating between juice types (some pulp, no pulp, etc.) And it’s not without a degree of wit either; the half-sphere cap—it’s an orange half!—is a nice touch.

Both Pepsi and Tropicana got makeovers courtesy of Arnell Group. Bonus: read the hilarious PDF allegedly sent to Pepsi from Arnell about the logo change here.