History’s Oddest Packaging
Packaging has always been more than just a container. It tells us about the culture, the technology, and even the eccentricities of the time. While today’s designs lean toward sleek minimalism or eco-friendly innovation, history is littered with some truly oddball packaging choices. Things that make you wonder: What were they thinking?
Let’s take a walk through time and peek at some of history’s strangest packaging inventions.
Victorian Perfume Eggs
Imagine receiving a delicate porcelain egg, painted with florals, only to crack it open and find… perfume. Yes, in the 19th century, perfumers experimented with “scented eggs” as gifts. These eggs often contained solid perfume or fragrant powders. They weren’t meant to be eaten, but rather displayed, sniffed, and sometimes even tucked into handbags as portable air fresheners. Strange, beautiful, and oddly impractical because who wants to carry around a breakable egg in their purse?
Chocolate in Medicine Tins
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, chocolate was still marketed as a “health product.” Some brands packaged it in tins eerily similar to pillboxes, complete with clinical instructions. To modern eyes, it looks like you’re dosing yourself with chocolate pills rather than enjoying a sweet treat. It was packaging that blurred the line between indulgence and prescription.
Snail Jars of Ancient Rome - Gliraria
Romans adored delicacies, and fattened snails were high on the list. To keep them alive and fresh, sellers used special clay jars with air holes. Picture a rustic terracotta pot full of squirming snails on a kitchen shelf; it’s not exactly the kind of packaging you’d want to show off at dinner. Yet for the Romans, it was perfectly normal grocery storage.
Perfumed Vinegar Bottles with Dippers
During the Renaissance, vinegar wasn’t just for cooking. People believed perfumed vinegar could ward off disease, so it was sold in ornate glass bottles with tiny dipper sticks. Buyers would dab a little under their noses to “purify the air” (miasma theory). The packaging was more like a miniature scientific instrument than a condiment bottle: functional, fashionable, and slightly bizarre.
Cigarettes in Postcard Packs
Early 20th-century tobacco companies sometimes packaged cigarettes in what looked like postcards or greeting cards. They served a dual purpose: to keep cigarettes from being crushed and to provide collectors with incentives to buy more products to complete a set of these trading cards. A clever marketing trick!
What Odd Packaging Teaches Us
These oddities may seem laughable today, but they remind us that packaging is always a reflection of its time. Whether it’s a Victorian obsession with ornamentation, a medieval reliance on natural materials, or a Roman love of fresh delicacies, the containers we use tell a cultural story.
And who knows? In 200 years, future historians might look back at our single-use plastics, QR-coded labels, or edible coffee cups and scratch their heads too.