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Snapple switches to PET, but keeps the shape, cap and 'pop'

A new PET bottle with metal closure — a U.S. first for beverages — replaces Snapple’s glass package, keeping the satisfying snap of the cap when it opens as well as other iconic features.

A critical feature of the original glass Snapple bottle that needed to be retained was the ‘pop’ sound of the metal closure.
A critical feature of the original glass Snapple bottle that needed to be retained was the ‘pop’ sound of the metal closure.

When it comes to package design, shape is one of the most important ways a company can create a distinctive and memorable brand identity. Unique label designs, graphics, and colors also add to the recognizability of the brand. And sometimes, a package offers that extra little “pop” that consumers come to love. For premium tea and juice brand Snapple, that pop is a literal one—the sound of the metal cap as it’s removed from the bottle.

Snapple is part of Plano, Texas-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group, whose brands include beverages of every stripe: carbonated soft drinks, mixers, juices, dairy drinks, water, and more. Snapple, launched in 1972 in Brooklyn, offers upwards of 30 different varieties of premium tea and juice. For its 20-, 32- and 64-oz sizes, Snapple uses a PET bottle. However the original — and most beloved — bottle is its 16-oz size, which until recently was made of glass.

Over the years, the iconic glass Snapple bottle built a strong relationship with its consumers through its heavy, premium feel, embossed logo on front and back, and metal closure that made an audible snap or pop sound when opened, ensuring consumers of the beverage’s freshness. Adding a touch of personality, in 2002 Snapple began adding numbered “Real Facts”—fun and obscure factoids—on the underside of its caps. According to Snapple’s website, it has now produced 1,504 Real Facts, the most recent being, “The longest MLB game went 26 innings.”

For years though, Snapple felt switching to a lightweight and shatterproof PET bottle for its 16-oz size would offer consumers greater convenience for on-the-go consumption. But how to recreate the package’s distinctive features, especially the pop of the metal cap, with a plastic bottle?

“The Snapple consumer is very, very protective of the bottle shape, they’re protective of the pop, and they’re protective of the under-the-cap facts,” says Patrick George, senior director of engineering for DPS. “If you don’t supply them with those three things, they’re not happy.”

To solve the technical challenges of creating a PET bottle that replicated the look and feel of the glass bottle and could be topped with a metal closure, DPS worked with longtime partner R&D/Leverage, a product design and mold manufacturer out of Kansas City, MO. After persevering for three years, DPS and R&D/Leverage presented to the market a PET bottle that is nearly indistinguishable from its glass predecessor.

Time to get it right

One of the pleasures of the package redesign project, George shares, was the freedom the DPS and R&D/Leverage team members were given to solve the problem. “Frankly, we had tried a number of times to get to the same bottle, and with most of our efforts, because of different circumstances, we ended up with design limitations brought on by timing or by the folks doing the design applying their predetermined ideas.

“For this project, we needed to be able to design a bottle that worked exactly the way we wanted it to without a lot of external influences. We wanted to go in and say, ‘This is what we want to do, now how do we get there?,’ take the handcuffs off their engineering team, and allow them to take us where we needed to go.” He says DPS chose R&D/Leverage because “from a technical standpoint, R&D/Leverage is tops,” and because they had no preconceived notions about what could or could not be done.

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