This year's recipient of PPC's coveted President's Award, which is based on criteria including structural and graphic design, production excellence, consumer marketing and package uniqueness, was presented to software publisher Image Smith of Torrance, CA, for its Yearn 2 Learn Snoopy's Geography Book Carton. Designed to look like a leatherbound library book, the carton has one rounded wall that creates the book's "spine." Wide scoring on the opposite, concave wall creates the look and feel of real pages. Embossing and gold stamping help create the image of leather binding. Provided by Ivy Hill Packaging/Warner Media Services (New York, NY) the package consists of three pieces. An outer 18-pt SBS forms the "book" cover. Glued to the inside of the bottom flap and spine is a 24-pt SBS component with tucked ends, which forms the actual carton. These two components are offset-printed in 4 colors, plus an aqueous coating; the outer cover also has gold foil stamping and embossing. Glued inside the carton is an E-flute kraft insert that adds rigidity and holds the software and manual. The pieces are shipped flat for manual assembly. Pressure-sensitive seals are applied to both end flaps and a p-s bar code label is applied to the bottom. One of eight in a series, Snoopy's Geography Book is available at software stores and toy stores nationwide. PPC also presented two Technical Innovation awards this year. Riverwood Intl. (Marietta, GA) earned one for its Vertipack® produce carton. Designed to replace more traditional produce cartons, PPC judges declared this patented carton a structurally sound, innovative means to ship, pack, stack and display produce, while using a minimal amount of material.
