Delightfully Anachronistic Package Design: Virginia Edition!

AS YOU KNOW, due to a chemical imbalance in my brain that’s been traced to my childhood habit of sneaking into the attic, tearing off swaths of insulation and eating it like it was cotton candy, when I see a package of something – usually food (but not always), usually at a dollar store (though there are exceptions) – and it has the look of something that has existed just as it is now for the past twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, even sixty years, I get all tingly – as though the tiny Fiberglas shards permanently impaled throughout my organs have suddenly become electrified.

That is to say, it’s neat-o when you find stuff where they probably haven’t changed the design of the package for decades.

On my recent trip to Hill, Virginia, I found not one, not four, but three such items! Today we’ll look at the first one!

Mrs. Sullivan’s pies!

Since we’re in the country, I felt it appropriate to ask the pie box to pose atop a fence post in a field.

The checkerboard element on the sides, the cropped pie photo, the thick, red script of “Mrs. Sullivan’s” – it all adds up to just one thing: This package looks like something you’d find on a shelf back in oh, say, 1937. As though they haven’t changed their packaging for seventy-five years. And, Land O’ Goshen!, when you go to their website, you’ll find that that’s precisely how long they’ve been in business!

Oh, sure, they’ve added stuff – “No Trans Fat,” a website address, hats you can buy, and a heartpie shaped logo with the unfortunately spelled “I Luv Pie” motto – but the core of the pie box, the pie box core, if you will, looks like it’s three-quarters of a century old. And by Godfrey, that’s why we love it!  Or, eugh, “luv” it.

I sampled the coconut pie and the pecan pie. They were both magnificent. Don’t believe me? Want to try some of Mrs. Sullivan’s pies for yourself? Perhaps you want to buy some related pie-ma’bilia? Or download the free track “Haulin’ Pies”? Go to their website and poke around. And don’t worry about your personal information being compromised – according to carefully worded verbiage thereon, “Mrs Sullivan’s ® first priority is your online security that is why we protect you with the best secured site Certificate the web has to offer.”

I made sure to bring home a few pies, too. They don’t have Mrs. Sullivan’s pies here. I told you Los Angeles is a filthy toilet!

Whoa, Evalina, stop-a ringin’ my cellular phone! ‘Cause I’m a-haulin’ pies in Memphis, and I don’t think I’m ever comin’ back home!

Posted by Ted on September 17, 2012, 10:22 AM.