(Roughly) Daily

Don’t feel bad if you haven’t spent much time considering cellophane. It’s deliberately transparent, after all. You’re meant to consider whatever it’s wrapping instead.

Yet, it turns out that cellophane has a story worth telling. A new research paper exposes the historical significance of the packaging material, focusing on its key role in the development of self-service merchandising systems in American grocery stores, but also revealing how cellophane manufacturers tried to control the narrative of how women buy food…

Unwrap the story at “How Cellophane Changed the Way We Shop for Food“; then read the paper on which it it based, Ai Hisano’s “Cellophane, the New Visuality, and the Creation of Self-Service Food Retailing.”

* Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Breakfast of Champions

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As we see through it, we might spare a sweet thought for Aaron “Bunny” Lapin; he died on this date in 1999.  In 1948, Lapin invented Reddi-Wip, the pioneering whipped cream dessert topping dispensed from a spray can.  First sold by milkmen in St. Louis, the product rode the post-World War Two convenience craze to national success; in 1998, it was named by Time one of the century’s “100 great consumer items”– along with the pop-top can and Spam.  Lapin became known as the Whipped Cream King; but his legacy is broader:  in 1955, he patented a special valve to control the flow of Reddi-Wip from the can, and formed The Clayton Corporation to manufacture it.  Reddi-Wip is now a Con-Agra brand; but Clayton goes strong, now also making industrial valves, closures, caulk, adhesives and foamed plastic products (like insulation and cushioning materials).

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