Delightfully Anachronistic Package Design: Virginia Edition! Part III!

MY fascination with delightfully anachronistic packaging is easily explained: It reminds me fondly of simpler times and days gone by. You see, I was born in 1930 and when I was in my twenties, I worked at the Finast supermarket on Main Street in Galesburg.

One day ol’ Mr. Finney had me setting up a large cardboard “Tom Corbett: Space Cadet” display for Kellogg’s Pep when the flashlight battery-driven spinning antenna on Tom’s ship, the Polaris, came in contact with my box cutter which had evidently built up quite a charge of static electricity slicing open cases of Ipana toothpaste earlier that morning.  Zzzzzap! The next thing I know here I am in the twenty-first century.

Okay, enough.

Let’s get down to business: In a store in lovely Hill, Virginia, I came across this bag of cat litter. I was of course charmed by its delightfully anachronistic package design; now you are, too. Especially once I tell you this is the last one of these stupid things for a while.

You’re saying “Come now, Ted – surely you don’t take us for fools! Judging by what we see below, that bag of cat litter is thirty years old if it’s a day! This is an ad from an old magazine you’ve scanned, is what! And now you’re going straight to hell for trying to perpetuate such a fraud on us, your trusting readers!”

No! Look closer! This cat litter does in fact exist here in 2012! The giveaway that it’s a currently available item is (of course) the bilingual cat. He’s thinking in English and Spanish! It’s cartoon mascotas like this that do the jobs American cartoon mascots are too lazy to do!

Anyway, I think you’re ready for this. You make the call: Package originally designed when? Late 1970s? Early 1980s? Whaddaya say? Come on, don’t be shy.

1981…? Really! That specific! Good. Good for you.

I’ve taught you well.

Posted by Ted on September 19, 2012, 6:00 AM.