Dave Snowdon

It’s perhaps not the most interesting subject, but it seems to me that packaging has (mostly) got smarter over the last decade or so. I don’t mean that technology is built into the packaging itself but that it seems to have been designed more intelligently. For example, boxes that might once have been glued or stapled together now unfold out of a single piece of cardboard and require glue on one seam at most (maybe I buy too much stuff from Amazon).

Case in point, I bought some smarties(R) recently. If your as old as I am you’ll probably remember the days when smarties came in a little rolled tube with a plastic end-cap. The current smarties container is entirely cardboard though (probably cheaper and more environmentally friendly) and I thought that the way they’ve managed to replace the plastic end-cap is really quite clever.

Here’s a view of the end of today’s smarties(R) tube. Before the tube is opened for the first time perforations on the side seal it closed.

View of smarties(R) container end

Here you can see the tube opened and the perforations indicated.

Smarties container (open)

What’s really clever about this new tube though is the way that the designer’s have managed to make the end-cap "latch" shut once the tube has been opened and the perforations broken. Rather that just rely on friction to hold the tube shut after it’s been opened a small flap (indicated in red) has been included on the body of the tube.

Open smarties(R) tube with flap outlined in red

The flap is just the right size to engage with a recess formed by the folds making up the end-cap. This means that there is a perceptible "click" when the tube is closed and then opened.

Smarties(R) container showing how flap engages with lid

OK, so it may not be rocket science but it’s still kind of cool that you can make a container that latches shut out of nothing more than cardboard.