Tropicana and Graham jointly developed the patent-applied-for bottle. Injection stretch/blow molded in a two-stage process, it provides a six-month shelf life.
Package differentiation and better cube efficiency are two of the major advantages that come with a rectangular, as opposed to a round, shape. The shape also makes the bottle easy to grip. And shelf impact is improved because the label can stretch across a wide flat surface instead of disappearing around a round sidewall.
Most significant, however, is that this bottle does away with the vacuum panels that ordinarily are designed into hot-fillable PET bottles to keep them from distorting as internal vacuum pressure builds during product cooling. The front and back panels provide the needed "give" as internal pressure builds.
Molded into the front of the 97-g bottle is a tornado-like shape suggestive of the brand's name. The bottle has a 43-mm neck finish and takes a compression-molded polypropylene closure with a proprietary extruded barrier liner developed by closure maker Owens-Illinois (Toledo, OH). In Rochester and Buffalo, NY, and in all markets west of Denver, a territory described by Tropicana as its "lead" market, the new container has replaced 46-oz glass entirely for Twister. Other markets, for now at least, will stick with glass.
