Truth in advertising? Check out a book by Allisa Hamilton, called "Squeezed: What you don't know about Orange Juice."

The OJ in that carton might be farther away from an orange with a straw stabbed into it than you think.

Oh please. Florida's Natural brand orange juice has had the orange slice cap for ages now and I'm sure there will be some kind of trademark lawsuit against PepsiCo because of them nicking that design.

Seriously? OJ packaging?

Nothing can out-ugly Sierra Mist's new cans.

@Propaniac: About the only reason I found out about the new design is that I came in when they were still 50/50.

Still, I liked the earlier design better. Now it looks a lot like the store generic just past the minute maid.

Grovestand/high pulp all the way for me. That's how I used to drink it, right after squeezing the orange.

@Shadowman615: Well, it's a bit like wine or such, but there ARE differences. Tropicana tends to be a bit sweeter/less tart.

Growing up squeezing oranges from grandpa's back yard when I wanted some juice, I'm a bit spoiled.

I actually saw this packaging in the store yesterday for the first time. It's even more generic looking in person than I expected. Also, the way the glass of juice is placed on the side of the box makes it look like a generic rounded colorful corner shape and not a glass of OJ at all.

Packaging FAIL.

@aguacarbonica: I always looked for the orange with the straw first - especially when rushing.

@wwwhitney: THe coloring scheme was there before - but now it is MUCH smaller and very hard to distinguish between brands. 6 customers at Stop and Shop today took over 5 mins to find the type we wanted. For the first 2 weeks, I thought they eliminated the LOW ACID version, had to go to the website to figure out what happened.

The cap was only introduced in the last 2 weeks. I have a version of the new packaging with the old style cap. I will admit cap is cute.

But someone gets to put something like "leveraged new paradigms in visual branding vocabulary" on their resume, so it works out in the end.

People have to be seen to have done something in their job. Even if it is something detrimental, it's easier to spin a disaster into something good on the resume than it is to spin nothing.

This also explains every single thing wrong with the US military.

Old packaging is way more awesome. its got a lot more heart. i dont like it when they try to make stuff look artsy...its orange juice. Sell me the juice. Show me a picture of an orange with a straw in it, or a happy child drinking the juice. I dont want a stylized glass.

Hate the new packaging, I almost didn't buy it last shopping trip 'cause I thought it was the store brand. Very ugly, waste of money on designers! Ick!

Tropicana thought they were jumping on the "clean design implies it is trendy and organic, therefore people will buy it" bandwagon, and it backfired.

Namely, Tropicana has created god knows how many various types of orange juice and they are all in the same tightly packed shelving area, oftentimes misplaced by grocers. The old packaging made it VERY easy to tell what kind you wanted. If you wanted the Tropicana Pure Premium Original, you looked for the bright orange top on the carton that said NO PULP, and so on and so forth.

With the new packaging, you really have to hunt for it and it is not easy to find at a glance.

I personally think the real reason for the uproar is because they took something like "buying orange juice" that they already have needlessly complicated by offering 50 million varieties, and then further complicated it by making it difficult to tell them apart.

"its a natural"

It's a natural what? Orange juice is a natural? It reads like poorly translated copy from another language, like the instructions you get with your off-brand USB thumb drive. Thank god I don't drink Tropicana. That ad is bad enough to make me avoid their product if I did.

Pimp my orange juice box, please.

/facepalm

I still remember their old commercials where they stuck the straw into the orange to demonstrate how fresh their juice is. The straw & orange is definitely iconic for me. I associate it with the Tropicana brand.

They are reverting because customer confusion at point-of-sale resulted in decreased sales.

Nobody undoes a production change because "a fraction of a percent of the people who buy the product" don't like it.

@aguacarbonica: It's not the Tropicana label, it's identifying which variety you want - that's a lot harder.

Maybe I'm just bitter no one is hosing cash on me to do nothing.

"Old packaging brought back after consumers realize new packaging requires ability to read"

You know which orange juice I buy? The one on sale.

It was cheaper than the other brand in the orange plastic jug, (not sure what brand) so I figured it was a generic store brand. Except for a few things where brand does make a difference, I don't care if I'm drinking plain-wrap or not. Maybe they should make their name bigger and in red, something like that.

I just keep imagining how hard the marketing team that came up with this is sweating right now, if they have not already been fired.

The new package does look pretty generic. A bigger logo or more familiar/bold typeface might've helped. I can't believe this made it past the proposal stage.

@Wormfather is Wormfather: The bread with the little girl is Sunbeam

I know in the soda aisle: "White = diet" and in snacks: "Blue = Ranch" and I know to avoid both colors when in a hurry.

Customers have many reasons for buying one brand over another. Loyalty, habit, resistance to change, prestige (more on this later), price, perceived quality, tradition.

Does the idea of buying a generic or store brand mean getting less product quality or does it mean that other shoppers (and family) will view you as cheap? Spending more does mean getting more.

WOW how LOL is this?!?!....

over the weekend I went to the grocery store and went to the OJ section, I didnt want to get the publix brand as I usually do just to try something different...as my eyes were quickly browsing the "images" I remember seeing that cardboard box and thinking "hey look publix changed their carton image". It wasnt until my g/f said "how about tropicana" holding up this plain vanilla looking box which I had completely ignored due to it's packaging.

I for one dont care, but I think there are hardcore OJ drinkers out there that like looking at pretty boxes.

I bet they're doing that to pay less to create a carton with 'pretty' graphics.

Blame it on the economy I guess.

@teknowaffle: Here in the San Franciso Bay Area, a local radio station's travel division's new slogan is "Yes We Can". Their radio spot sounds just like an Obama ad.

@HRHKingFridayXX: I thought pretty much the same thing; that they were trying to compete with lower-priced house brands.

@Tim Russell: I'm with you. Also, I like to get-in-and-get-out when I go to the grocery store, so when I couldn't find my regular Tropicana OJ, I randomly picked one that was on sale then (not store brand), totally missed the new packaged Tropicana because the color of the orange on the carton looks pale and too generic - not appealing.

While I agree brand recongnition takes years to create and the new packaging made "100% Orange" appear to be the brand name of the product, this is just silly. SO much is going on these days and people had time to get all upset and write to Tropicana because of a changed package. I am willing to bet 90% of these "loyal customers" were elderly. I have done plenty of branding work and they are very vocal about any change to anything anytime.

I have no strong feelings about orange juice in general (though I drink it pretty regularly), but seeing the packaging recently made me think less of sugary orange goodness and more of something diluted and orange-flavored. It looked watered down. I can do that myself with the frozen stuff.

I actually remember being fascinated with the orange+straw as a kid, since it looked so realistic but I knew that there was no way you could just punch a straw through an orange. It's kind of captivating.

The passion for redesigning logos / packaging and going for fresh/youthful/vigorous/dynamic fails when you've got customer base who may not be interested in any of that. They want tasty, reassuring, comfortable, familiar. It's part of the morning routine, or something you drink when you're under the weather. It's not silly "mtn dew".

@Wormfather is Wormfather: The Little Debbie's Girl? I can see her going, but the wonderbread dots are pretty iconic.... people might be confused.

I use the dots as a sign for what kind of bread to avoid. So I like having them around.

@bostonguy: I think the redesign is stupid, and the attention to it is justified because in general, food prices are going up (usually accompanied by half-assed excuses) yet too many brands somehow find the money for expensive redesigns and ad campaigns - and now there's credible evidence that this one in particular was a complete flop.

I don't think Tropicana has been one of the shrink-ray products, but in general people are feeling irritated towards lame excuses for raising prices, and if they can spend money on this kind of nonsense, they should be able to make things a little less expensive.

I normally purchase Minute Maid frozen concentrate OJ and bought this Tropicana recently because I had a coupon. I did notice that the packaging looked different but I didn't have any problem finding it at the store. However, for 3 days in a row at breakfast hubby asked me, "Is this grapefruit juice?" because it tasted so bitter and AWFUL compared to what we are used to. I still have the second half-gallon that we haven't opened yet but I doubt we'll end up drinking it. Someone mentioned upthread they are using different oranges now, I wonder if that is why it tasted so bitter? Maybe Tropicana always tastes bitter and we're just not used to it. We'll stick to Minute Maid, thank you. And I do prefer the old packaging, for what it's worth. Doesn't matter if the product sucks though!

Well, actually, apparently not. Being as people complained in such volume and intensity that they are changing it back.

(I like the new packaging better, but c'est la vie.)

Things can't be that bad if this is considered a problem. Still, I seem to recall that Scott changed the packaging on their toilet paper some years ago and people were similarly dismayed. Yes, that's right - there's no longer a little ribbon printed on the wrapper of a roll of brownstreak.

All that being that being said, it's difficult to imagine that major packaging changes in general end up being worth the effort and investment.

I was confused the first time I saw the new packaging as they changed the color coding and also their wording.
Beige used to be "More Pulp" but now red is "High Pulp".
More Pulp is now High Pulp. If customers have a conditioned reflex to identify and grab your item then why mess with their heads?

This proves that most of the population consists of OJ Drinking Zombies who cant find the damned orange juice without a god damn straw in the god damned orange to guide them.

I cant wait til next month when Wonderbread off's the little girl and ditches the multi color dots. (I think I might have just combined two different brands actually, but you get the point.)

I was really surprised when I first saw it, though. And then I freaked out over the cap and decided to buy Tropicana forever.

@welsey: I aggree, I like the new design as well. I'm a big fan of minimalist designs.

@intellivised: I'm gonna give you a pass because you wernt feeling well, but I do the food shopping every week and when I saw it I said "Oh look honey tropicana has a new design."

How'd I know...because tropicana was written all over the GD package.

Why can't people distinguish between the oj?
I think the problem lies within the general population's lack of ability, to pay attention to their surroundings.

As long as the Grocery Shrink Ray doesn't do it's dirty work to it, I don't care what a product looks like on the outside.
It's not like people are collecting 2qt size cardboard orange juice cartons. Or, are they???

Funny thing is I would buy a 8 pack but it would be Ginger Ale. Never really been a cola fan.

Little tiny blue-green line that says "Acid free" turned my OJ experience into something not so fun. Sure no acid would be great, but for some reason the juice tasted way off. Ill take all the acid please, and hold the ugly hard to distinguish packaging.

I'm one of those people who will stand in the aisle comparing ingredient and nutrition panels instead of going by the aesthetics of packaging. I'd rather them spend that re-branding/re-packaging money on R&D (or God forbid, keeping their employees employed). Because (in my opinion), in the end, if the product is good/reliable/works the way it's supposed to, people will be back.

Perhaps they were offending some vocal minority with their old packaging. Citrus worshipers that were horrified by the violent image of an orange impaled by a straw who would hold hands, sing, and cry in the orange juice aisle.

They just got a ton of publicity for a tiny blip on the radar.

The first thing I said when my boyfriend brought home the new Tropicana was "Ugh, what did they do..consult Pepsi? I hate it." I'm glad enough loyal customers complained and it's changing back.

@Pizza_Club
Look at the news we watch. Americans are always talking about and complaining about stupid shit in life. If we actually paid attention to what was important then we wouldn't be in the ridiculous mess we are in now.

*I'm not discouraging fleecing of Pepsi, but I am kind of tired of ad companies getting a king's ransom for 20 minutes of Photoshop work and a report full of non-speak.

@Dreaming of Chocolate-Covered Bacon: Maybe I'm just pissed because the ad agency douches get paid way more than I do and are freaking idiots.

I believe there is a term for that...player hating.

@mcjake: and that's why it was perfect.

I would make my "expenso 5000" look just like the "generic 1000" or even cheaper so you would gravitate towards it in a pinch.

I think it looks "high end". Too flashy a label usually means "trying too hard" in my eyes at least.

I think Tropicana failed to realize their "straw in the orange" symbol is what is important, as well as the typeface of the name Tropicana. I wonder if Tropicana experimented with abstracting these symbols in some way or to change the size and position. Look what other companies such as CBS, ABC, NBC, Apple did to update their brand without abandoning it.

They're going with the emerging trend of packaging, super clean and minimalistic. The new pepsi can is just a blue can with the new pepsi logo, vector artwork is all over the place, and tropicana now took a minimalistic art style on their packaging. The straw in the orange is very 80s-90s. People want clean modern packaging now.

Have you looked at the Lucerne yogurt cups? They changed awhile back and have a more solid color look to them, too. I personally like this newer style.

@lonestarbl: Maybe what Tropicana was thinking is that their original packaging was *too* upscale, and what with the recession people were subconsciously reaching for what looks cheaper. Just like in the boom years everyone wanted to look more upscale.

Either way, I thought the new packaging looked nicer- less cluttered and more streamlined. The whole straw-in-the-orange is a little misleading, when you compare the taste of fresh squeezed to pasteurized OJ.

During this recession I've been buying more generic store-brand items - maybe Tropicana are deliberately trying to look like the cheaper stuff so people will buy it by mistake.

On the plus side, they changed their packaging but at least they didn't shrink-ray it in the process.

the carton said "tropicana" and i purchased it. it tasted the same as the previous graphic-ed product. who cares?

I'd be a lot happier if they went back to 100% Pure Florida Orange Juice

Wow my mom was complaining to me about this the other week and I just shrugged it off. I didn't think anyone would care. Yet another lesson proving that mom is always right.

@Tim Russell: I bought 2 cartons last week... thought it was S&S brand... and was very surprised that it was Tropicana.

Why would a company, that has worked so hard to develop the whole "Fresh from the Orange" branding... just up an adandon it?

Plus, I think the TROPICANA on it is somewhat of a dead giveaway.

Also, whoever designed the new package horribly underestimated how valuable the freaking orange with a straw in it is.

My instinct tells me someone came up with a kickass design that refreshed a tired, dated-looking product, while still keeping all of the brand's "aisle cred." At which point, it got systematically dismantled and neutered by a committee and hours and hours of focus groups, which ended up in an overly compromising design that makes the agency that did the work look like a bunch of overpaid pussies.

@KyleOrton: wood pulp?

I dunno, I think I'd care about my orange juice going from sweet to bitter more than I care about what is depicted on the package.

I like 12 because one 12-pack gets me through exactly two weeks, between paydays and grocery store visits. I really, really like Pepsi Max, but 8 is not enough to last me, and 18 is too much to fit in the fridge.

Guess I'll be sticking with Diet Coke.

Anyways, I voted "I don't care" because it's just packaging for orange juice. I don't drink orange juice, and all the soda I drink is store brand. I don't have any brand loyalty... except maybe to Nintendo. xD

It is so interesting that there is a major backlash against package design that, to judge by the photos, contains the same volume of product.

Where's the backlash when redesign is REDUCES the volume? Where's the backlash against the "shrink ray"?

I think Pepsico is only hurting themselves here.

Looks like it goes well with the new logos adopted by Royal Ahold (Stop & Shop, Giant) and Superfresh.

Yes, the point of a logo is supposed to be corporate identity, and most corporations can only wish they had the recognizability of the Coke script. But lately a new trend has developed where companies update their logos (for the worst, IMO) every few years, whether they need to or not. Even Holiday Inn has changed their iconic script logo for a sorry generic "H" that makes them look like a gas station.

I think it's a case of marketers trying to update things that don't need updated, or feeling the need to change something just to have a hand in the revamp and justify their positions.

Sometimes these two things are at odds with one another.

And the new packaging does look like it could be a just the Wal-Mart brand... If I wanted the Wal-Mart brand, I'd shop at Wal-Mart.

In otherwords, some Higher op did not see the new package design that some graphic designer put together until recently, and he hated it, so to save face, the blame it on "Public outcry"

That said, it really is a bad design especially when your corporate symbol does not appear on the package.

Tropicana offers 12 varieties of OJ:

* Grovestand Calcium + Vitamin D* (Lots of Pulp)
* Calcium + Vitamin D* (No Pulp)
* Grovestand* (Lots of Pulp)
* Original* (No Pulp)
* Homestyle* (Some Pulp)
* Antioxidant Advantage* (No Pulp)
* Healthy Heart with Omega-3* (No Pulp)
* Low Acid* (No Pulp)
* Healthy Kids* (No Pulp)
* Orange Strawberry Banana (No Pulp)
* Orange Tangerine (No Pulp)
* Orange Pineapple (No Pulp)

They used to have them clearly color coded and the pulp content clearly labeled. Going with the new packaging was a mistake. It's as if Snapple decided to make all their labels green regardless of the specific flavor of the contents.

and @Pizza_Club. It's not about being mad. It's about having a convenience in life removed. We all have them. I'm sure there's something minor in your life that you'd rather not be without. You may not even realize it's there as I hadn't with the OJ packaging. But of course I'm sure that everything that makes you mad is totally worth it.

As far as the package redesign, much like the new pepsi logo, some graphic designer is laughing their ass off they got paid to do the job.

@Dreaming of Chocolate-Covered Bacon: Fewer colors. Cheaper packaging.

My beef with it is that it's way too hard to see the variety and pulp in what you're reaching for. I don't WANT low acid! I LIKE the acid!

The weird thing about this? The Eggs & Juice stock guy at the local supermarket actually took my girlfriend aside a few weeks before the change saying that Tropicana was going to shoot themselves in the foot introducing "generic"-looking packaging. The guy was right!

Really, I stopped buying this brand because it was too expensive. My mom, however, would go before a firing squad before she switched.

It was on sale for $3.00 at my local Safeway. I didn't even notice they switch packaging.

@Propaniac: Oh, and yeah, I never feel totally sure that the 6 oz. boxes I'm buying are the same variety that I used to buy (the kind with calcium added). It IS too hard to distinguish. Even as I read the words on the label, I wish they would just use the blue packaging that I'm used to grabbing.

While I agree that the old packaging just plain worked, and worked well, there is some benefit to simplicity. I'm sure the company would have saved some money during the box printing process. The new box was simpler, less detailed, and had a lower resolution picture than the life like orange and straw.

Still, I voted for "this whole thing is stupid." It really is. There will ALWAYS be vocal minorities. My guess is these "customers" were the likes of Jewel and Costco who already have similar, generic cartons of their own, although the last Jewel-brand OJ I bought was in a large, plastic, orange jug...

Brand recognition takes years to develop and customers are very loyal to what they are familiar with. Why mess with it? Modifying and modernizing is one thing but the new packaging is unrecognizable as Tropicana- it can't be good for their sales.

Similar to others' reactions, the week they changed it I went to the OJ section and thought the store was totally out of Tropicana products. It took me several seconds to realize that the juice I wanted was still there. I've grown kind of used to it since, but it still looks weird; the old packaging is just too recognizable.

I do think it was a mistake to ditch the iconic straw-in-orange imagery, though.

I *had* been a loyal purchaser of Tropicana (the low-cal variety is the best tasting) but the new packaging made it absolutely impossible to find the variety I wanted. After a few minutes of fruitless searching, I just bought Minute Maid. If the Tropicana market is older buyers, they did not do adequate market research before changing the style!

All the boxes look the same, unless you look at the small tab on the top that indicates the type of juice.
It's not really a big deal, just pain attention...but it does look rather generic.

My second issue with Tropicana is the HIGH sugar contents. Your telling me I'm consuming 43 grams of sugar for Apple juice concentrate? Same thing with the grapefruit...sometimes it's just too sweet...that can't be natural.

Anyone's input?

Now what IS awful are these Tropicana ads I keep seeing everywhere in NYC with these two little girls who are missing half their teeth. Maybe cute on paper, unnerving in its execution.

Yes, not only does it scream "Here is some generic orange juice", or "Let's all try to look like an Apple-branded ijuice", but it is annoying as heck when brands switch easily identifiable, iconic logos, when you're trying to just run in and grab your groceries!

I think the new Pepsi logo is pointless and weak, too, but at least THEY kept the large swaths of color and circle that were identified with their brand. Tropicana dumped everything unique, and just left the colors orange and green, which are used on EVERY bottle of orange juice.

Also, for what it's worth, Target's Archer Farms store brand has packaging design that's comparable to any brand name, and Publix store brand packaging has won awards for their designs. I don't think calling the new design on par with a store brand is necessarily an insult.

Orange juice? Really?

Thank god, it was a pain to try to find which one is which when the only indicator was a strip 4 cm tall.

I thought my parents started buying the store brand. I opened their fridge this weekend and saw that new design and figured dad was going cheap in his old age.

But...now I know :P

In my local store, these are always packed in the back corner by eggs, cheese and milk so it's a logjam of carts and I just guess and grab to dodge the angry elderly women. And I almost always grab wrong.

I have the same problem. I can't quickly distinguish between low acid and high pulp. It's rather annoying.

Why did they even change it? It's an iconic logo, like the Coke script, although maybe not quite as recognizable. Why spend all these years getting people to learn your logo, then change it? Isn't that the point of a logo - so people almost subconsciously reach for your product versus all the others?

Maybe I'm just pissed because the ad agency douches get paid way more than I do and are freaking idiots.

I heard this story on NPR this morning and seeing the new package now it does look like a generic store brand.