Paperboard carrier incorporating a removable indicia panel

Jan. 5, 1960

H. W. FORRER

2,919,829

PAPERBOARD CARRIER INCORPORATING A REMOVABLE INDICIA PANEL

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ATTORNEYS

Jan. 5, 1960 h. _{w FO}rrer 2,919,829

PAPERBOARD CARRIER INCORPORATING A REMOVABLE INDICIA PANEL

Filed May 13, 1957 . ... _x⁹ 4 Sheets-Sheet 2

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INVENTOR.

HOMER W. FORRER

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ATTORNEYS

Jan. 5, 1960 h. w. forrer 2,919,829

PAPERBOARD CARRIER INCORPORATING A REMOVABLE INDICIA PANEL

Filed May 13, 1957 4 _5heets__Shee_t 3

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INVENTOR.

HOMER W. FORRER

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ATTORN£ YS

Jan. 5, 1960 h. w. forrer 2,919,829

PAPERBOARD CARRIER INCORPORATING A REMOVABLE INDICIA PANEL

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BY

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ATTORNEYS

2,919,829

Patented Jan. 5, 1960

United States Patent Office

2,919,829

PAPERBOARD CARRIER INCORPORATING A REMOVABLE INDICIA PANEL

Homer W. Forrer, Atlanta, Ga., assignor to Mead Packaging, Inc., a corporation of Ohio

Application May 13, 1957, Serial No. 658,700

Claims. (Cl. 220—115)

This invention relates to paperboard or boxboard cartons for carrying bottles and the like, and more particularly to a carton of this sort incorporating a removable indicia panel for special use in employing the carton to merchandise articles packaged or contained therein.

Cartons of the above noted type are extensively used for multiple pack merchandising; that is, for offering several units of a given article for sale as a group, rather than displaying the articles for sale individually. The cartons employed for this purpose are characteristically printed with a distinctive trade dress, as is common with merchandise packaging in general. However, paperboard carrier cartons of the type involved here, unlike packaging cartons in general, are normally reused several times, as when bottled articles are sold therein with a contemplated credit allowance upon return of the empty bottles. In such a case, the original carton provides the most convenient means for return of the empty bottles, whereupon the carton becomes available for reloading with a new group of articles to be sold.

Such reuse of the cartons is often an important economic factor in multiple pack merchandising, and for this reason there have been substantial difficulties involved in providing satisfactorily for periodic use of special advertising themes and the like in the trade dress of the cartons, as is frequently desirable at holiday times or in connection with special sale offers or premium tieins or the like. In order to adapt the trade dress for such special sales events it has heretofore been necessary to provide a specially designed supply of the cartons which usually are not needed in a large enough quantity to absorb advantageously the special carton printing or decorating costs, and further become obsolete and unusable once the special event involved has past, so as not only to result in a substantially increased first cost for the cartons, but also to eliminate the possibility of reusing the cartons in the usual way.

According to the present invention these difficulties are eliminated by the provision of a carton structure originally incorporating a removable indicia panel that may be initially integrated in the carton structure for special trade dress purposes, but which remains readily removable to leave a standard carton structure that may then be used as if the special dress panel had never been a part thereof. For this purpose, the present invention provides the special indicia panel as an auxiliary extension of the carton bottom wall that is foldably joined along a weakened separation line at a side edge of the bottom wall to be removably secured in overlying relation at the exterior face of one of the carton side walls. With this arrangement, the indicia panel may bear a special trade dress while the remainder of the carton structure retains a standard design, so that when the special indicia panel has served its purpose and is no longer desired in the carton dress, it may be simply removed and discarded to leave a standard carton structure for normal use.

A further particularly advantageous feature of the present invention is that the above noted special indicia panel, being provided as an extension of the carton bottom wall, can be incorporated in the carton blank without 5 in any way complicating the high speed, low cost production techniques necessary to make a carton of this sort practical. A carton incorporating an indicia panel in the manner described above can, as a matter of fact, be blanked and folded to form the carton structure just as 10 efficiently and economically as if the indicia panel were not included, the only difference being to provide additionally for folding and securing the indicia panel in overlying relation at the carton side wall which can ordinarily be accomplished at the same time that the bottom 15 wall is folded into place and secured. In addition, the above noted arrangement of the special indicia panel as an extension of the bottom wall avoids any problem of registration in handling this panel, because the step of folding the bottom wall in place automatically results in 20 positioning the indicia panel accurately for overlying the side wall panel at which it is to be applied. The bottom wall extension arrangement of the indicia panel further makes it possible to form the upper portion of this panel with any special outline desired.

Also, it should be noted that with a carton blank designed for cutting from a paperboard web with minimum waste by nesting of the bottom wall panel between corresponding panels of a pair of like blanks arranged in inverted relation thereto, as pointed out further below, a 30 bottom wall extension forming an indicia panel according to the present invention can be provided while employing the same nesting arrangement for both the bottom wall and indicia panel extension, rather than for just the bottom wall panel alone. This nestable arrange35 ment further offers the advantageous possibility of applying to the paperboard web prior to blanking a decorative strip at the location of the indicia panel so that its special dress may be provided readily in this way to eliminate any necessity for differential printing of the blank and to 40 obtain more vivid and distinctive effects than are normally possible with paperboard printing.

This structural arrangement and other features of the present invention are described in further detail below in connection with the accompanying drawings, in which:

Fig. 1 is a perspective view of a bottle carton incorporating a removable indicia panel in accordance with the present invention;

Fig. 2 is a further perspective view corresponding to Fig. 1 and further indicating the manner in which the in³θ dicia may be removed when desired;

Fig. 3 is a plan view of the blank used for forming the bottle carton shown in Figs. 1 and 2;

Figs. 4 and 5 are related plan views illustrating the gg progressive steps carried out to fold the blank in Fig. 3 to form the bottle carton;

Fig. 6 is a further plan view showing the completed bottle carton in collapsed position; and

Fig. 7 is a plan view illustrating the manner in which blanks of the form shown in Fig. 3 may be intemested in inverted relation so as to be cut from a paperboard web with substantially no waste, and further illustrating the arrangement of a decorative strip applied to the paperboard web before blanking at the location of the indicia panels.

Referring first to Figs. 1, 2 and 3 of the drawing, the bottle carrier of the present invention is of the general type disclosed in U.S. Patent No. 2,537,452, issued January 9, 1951, and comprises a medial handle portion 1® formed by two pairs of handle panels 12 and 14 foldably joined at their top edges 16 and doubled in face to face

2,919,829 relation, with the outer pair of panels 14 telescoped over and secured to the inner pair of panels 12.

The bottle supporting portion of the carrier, indicated generally by the reference numeral 18, comprises a pair of side wall panels 20, 22, a pair of end wall panels 24, 26 5 foldably connected to side wall panel 20 and a pair of end walls 28, 30 foldably connected to side wall panel 22, the adjacent end wall panels 24, 28 and 26, 30 meeting at the medial handle portion 10 and being foldably secured thereto. A bottom wall 32 is foldably connected 10 to side wall panel 20 and an indicia panel 34 is foldably connected to bottom wail 32 along a weakened separation line 35, so that it may be secured to the outer face of side wall panel 22 by a pressure sensitive adhesive or the like for use in providing a distinctive special dress 15 for the carrier, as illustrated in Fig. 1, while remaining readily removable, as illustrated in Fig. 2, to leave the carrier structure in normal form for use in the regular way.

The manner in which the bottle carton of the present 20 invention is formed is illustrated in Figs. 3 through 6. Fig. 3 shows the blank used for forming the bottle carton and comprising the inner pair of handle panels 12 formed from panels 36, 38 foldably connected to each other through fold line 40 and the outer pair of handle 25 panels 14 formed from handle panels 4-2, 44 secured to each other through fold line 46. Side wall panels 20, 22 are foldably connected to the pairs of handle panels 12, 14 through partition strips 48, 50, respectively; and end wall panels 24, 26 are foldably connected to side wall 30 panel 2® through fold lines 52, 54, respectively, with end wall panels 28, 30 being foldably hinged to side wall panel 22 through fold lines 56, 58 respectively. The end wall panels 24, 26, 28 and 30 are adapted for completely closing the ends of the erected bottle carton. Bottom 35 wall 32 is folded medially along fold line 60 to form bottom wall half panels 62, 64 with half panel 62 foldably joined to side wall panel 20 through fold line 66.

Indicia panel 34 is an extension or auxiliary panel on the bottom wall 32 and is foldably connected to bottom ⁴θ wall half panel 64 along the previously mentioned weakened separation line 35.

Flaps 68 are foldably connected to each of the end wall panels 24, 26, 28 and 30 for foldably securing these panels to the handle portion 10, and the flaps 68 on end 45 walls 24, 28 are formed with notches 70 adjacent their bottom ends so as to provide a complementary notch 72 in bottom wall 32, for locking the carrier in erect position until filled with bottles. A securing flap 73 is foldably connected to side wall panel 22 through fold line 74 for securing bottom wall 32 thereto.

Figs. 4 and 5 show the manner in which the blank in Fig. 1 is folded to form the carrier in collapsed position as shown in Fig. 6; the pairs of handle panels 12, 14 being shown folded and secured in telescoped relation in ⁵⁵Fig. 4 with related inward folding of the end wall panels 24, 28 and flaps 68 on end wall panels 26, 30; and the upper portion of the carrier structure being shown doubled and secured in Fig. 5, leaving only the bottom wall panel 32 to be doubled at its medial fold line 60 for secur- θθ ing at the flap 73 for completing the normal carrier structure in the course of which completion the special indicia panel 34 is disposed and secured in overlying relation at the side wall panel 22 as illustrated in Fig. 6.

The special indicia panel 34 may be printed or decorated directly in the same manner as the rest of the blank or the desired design therefor may be preprinted on a continuous strip of paper or the like which may then be secured to the paperboard web at the location of the indicia panels 34 prior to the cutting of the blanks.

Fig. 7 illustrates the use of such a preprinted strip 76 (preprinting not shown) with a nested arrangement of blanks B corresponding in form to the blank shown in Fig. 3. By this arrangement the bottom wall panel 32 and indicia panel 34 of each blank B is nested between the corresponding panels of a pair of like blanks B, and the continuous decorative strip 76 is secured or laminated as a covering ply at the location of the internested bottom and indicia panels 32, 34 so as to be cut with these panels during the blanking operation. The internested arrangement of the blanks B makes it necessary to dispose the decorative strip 76 over the bottom wall panels 32 as well as the indicia panels 34, but this will not ordinarily be objectionable because the bottom wail is not usually decorated at all and is not normally visible so that a special covering piy thereon is not apt to make any particular difference.

The present invention has been described above for purposes of illustration only and is not intended to be limited by this description or otherwise except as defined by the appended claims.