#21 New & Improved

Here’s a BRAND NEW series for my mar­ket­ing friends & col­leagues, and just about any­one who remem­bers the slo­gans of yes­ter­year, many of which are still being print­ed, dis­played & broad­cast today. This slo­gan, tagline & adword series will con­tin­ue through­out the year, along with oth­er Amper­Art edi­tions each & every month.

Adding rel­e­vance to this edi­tion, Amper­Art sub­scribers (those who receive each edi­tion as it’s released, absolute­ly free — sub­scribe here) will notice a New & Improved newslet­ter design.

This edi­tion, New & Improved, was cre­at­ed to repli­cate off-​register let­ter­press print­ing that you’d see on old cere­al & sundry box­es, debossed into the soft card­board from the heavy print­ing machin­ery & ooz­ing the ink into adja­cent col­ors. When you enlarge the image (click on the thumb­nail) you’ll see the gigan­tic halftone dots (Ben­day screen, actu­al­ly) used when print­ing was a crud­er process & pho­to shop was a course you took in high school to learn how to devel­op film & make out in the darkroom.

New but NOT Improved

Not every­thing that’s new is improved, even though the obnox­ious star­burst on the label says so.

Remem­ber last year’s Amper­Art series, “My Favorite Things”? One of my favorite all-​time fla­vors is that strong & bit­ter iron tinge of Oval­tine, espe­cial­ly when crunch­ing into all the undis­solved gran­ules that float to the top after stir­ring & stir­ring & stir­ring with cold milk. Those gran­ules had deli­cious­ly con­cen­trat­ed fla­vor that explod­ed when you bit into them.

Sev­er­al years ago I noticed a brand new logo & label on some of the shelf’s Oval­tine jars, along­side the old pack­ag­ing. I was­n’t that impressed with the new look, but it did trig­ger a yearn­ing for that famil­iar fla­vor & crunch. So I bought one & could­n’t wait to get home.

New? Yes. Improved? No! No! No! The pack­ag­ing cer­tain­ly had changed, but it did not men­tion that the con­tents had also. It tast­ed flat, like plain old pow­dered choco­late, no iron bite at all, & NO CRUNCH. The pow­der com­plete­ly dis­solved in the milk. Upon clos­er inspec­tion I dis­cov­ered the “gran­ules” were not actu­al­ly com­pressed “rocks” like the old Oval­tine, but rather puffy glob­ules of the pow­dered stuff – kind of like cat lit­ter when it gets wet. Only that would taste bet­ter than this new bas­tardized pseudo-Ovaltine.

So I grabbed my jar, rushed back to the mar­ket, trad­ed in that one for one of the old mod­els, and pro­ceed­ed to pull every one of my cher­ished orig­i­nal Oval­tine jars off the shelf & pur­chased every one. There must have been 20 or so. Now I could­n’t wait to get home again to wash that hor­ri­ble “new” fla­vor out of my mouth & replace it with the Oval­tine of Old.

Guess what? Old pack­ag­ing, new prod­uct. No! No! No! I returned every jar & have not tast­ed the won­der­ful fla­vor nor felt the incred­i­ble crunch of Oval­tine ever since. I heard there’s a prod­uct in Europe that’s like my child­hood mem­o­ries, so I look for­ward to tast­ing that deli­cious­ly dis­gust­ing iron-​tinged choco­late fla­vor once again. Till then, Nestle’s Straw­ber­ry Quick…while it’s still not new & not improved.

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PRODUCTION NOTES
Original size: 20x30 inches
Programs: Illustrator, Photoshop
Fonts: Balloon, Franklin
Ampersand: Balloon

CREDITS:
Ovaltine: Facebook 1970s Group