A competition / reward for most tasteless new packaging?

[Deactivated Member]

I would boldly suggest that at the end of the year 2007, whisky enthusiasts should nominate the distillery (read:their marketing division) responsible for the most tasteless repackaging scheme of the year, amongst other such categories (most ridiculous wood finish comes to mind).

We already have two prominent candidates, these being the Morrison Bowmore, and Highland Park. Both are well respected and loved distilleries, with fabulous whiskies, but, it seems, also with marketing divisions that should be publicly flocked at sunrise.

The new bottle styles and designs are, of course, a matter of taste. Poor taste if you ask me. They reek of cheapness and lack of finesse. Certainly they will make these products stand out on shop shelves, but not in a positive way. Call me old-fashioned, but no - even the younger crowd cannot like these bottles and packages more, can they?

Perhaps this sign of times should be read as 'easy money floating around for poorly skilled product designers'. Was I a young, starving designer of such objects, I would certainly now make the pilgrimage to a few whisky companies, laugh out loudly at the bottles presented and then march straight to the manager's room ridiculing their lack of being hip, claiming that their product looks outdated, and that I could assist them in their hour of need, all for a mere £150.000 fee.

Disgust, utter disgust. If it is not broken, do not try to mend it.

PS. As for wood finish, I would 'love' to see an Edradour mezcal finish, complete with the worms - or a Bruichladdich reverse armenian brandywood finish QC (young Armenian brandy, aged in a thoroughly soaked Bruichladdich whisky quarter cask)..

[vitara7]

all we would need is bruchladdich to re-package their stuff and im sure thyed take both awards, its had to been them on sillyest wood finish

[Spirit of Islay]

Sorry Vitara7 , spotted the one to beat on the shelves of Tesco this afternoon , had to look twice just incase my eyes were playing up . It's a Famous Grouse "Bourbon Cask Finish" ! It was a 50cl bottle and the bumff on the back said "Finished in Specially selected bourbon Casks" , what the hell was it started in ? any old cask that Edrington happened to have lying around ?

Slainte
Gordon

[Mr Fjeld]

I'm not usually too concerned about bottle designs but I actually like the new Highland Park bottle. It's even an ergonomic package and looks neat.

[vitara7]

yeh gordon, i seen the famous grouse one the other day, i though, fair old price for a crappy blend.
i was up at glenturret last month and seen their using clyde coopers for their casks, they looked pretty poor to be honest. if thats whats their now putting the turret into, as you said, what they soving the other stuff into....

[vitara7]

also, i think HP buggered up, i think they should have went back towards the older style HP bottles instaed of the half dumpy half decanter bottles.

[Spirit of Islay]

I'm still undecided on the HP bottle/style , i really liked the style the HP 2000 came in . On the Same Tesco shelves they had the "Old" Bowmore 12yo packaging next to the new , i liked the old white packaging (but not necessarily the contents!!!!) but then again i really liked the Bowmore Screen printed labels (the ones straight onto the bottle , not paper) but i always remember Alistair from the Lochside pointing two thing out about them from a publican point of view.....
1) the print scraped off too easily.....
2) When the bottle got so far down you couldn't make out what it was from the other side of the bar !

I suppose you can't win on design !

Slainte
Gordon

[Wave]

Actually I could care less about a shoddy new bottle/packaging design just so long as the whisky within hasn't been mucked up as well.


Cheers!

[vitara7]

i too likes the screen printed bottles, but you cant please everyone

[Mustardhead]

I think the most tasteless packaging has to be the Glenlivet 12 box, the faux leather and suede with the magnetic catch. It really is begging for a Burberry check baseball cap

[Onefortheditch]

I like the Glenlivet 12 box.

(But I just don't know why...its awful )

[Onefortheditch]

...its awful in a likeable way ......

[Mustardhead]

...its awful in a likeable way ......

Oh I like it so much that I bought two

But it is really awful....

[vitara7]

i dont like the new glenlivet either.
to much emphasie on the box and not the whisky.

[dram_time]

I like the new HP bottles. Saying that, I did spill most of my first dram over the kitchen side, it couldn't wait to get out of the bottle. I found you need to hold it flat as it were, at least for the first few drams anyway.

Dt.

[Deactivated Member]

I also like the new HP presentation, but for me, the MAcallan re-packaging was a waste of time. I much preferred the older "Classic" presentation.

MT

[peergynt323]

I think the new Highland Park design deserves a nomination for best whisky packaging and the old design should be nominated for worst whisky packaging. What a great improvement.

[irishwhiskeychaser]

I have always prefered the older old dumpy bottles. But it does not bother me really. I bought a new version already cause I like the whikey and the bottle style does not affect my decision.

[Lawrence]

Not fond of the HP bottling.

[Deactivated Member]

The most tasteless packaging by some stretch is the WMD Series from Bruichladdich - only they would find humour in a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

[Deactivated Member]

I think the humor is in the claims of those who said the war was over WMD's. There is no reference to any war on any of those bottles, not that I recall anyway.

I have no problem with the new HP bottles. I did like the Orkney scenes, though. But judging from a few comments made here some time ago, most HP drinkers had no idea what hey were.

[irishwhiskeychaser]

Is it not

Whiskey of Mass Distinction

rather than Weapons of ....

but an obvious pun on the WMD which could easily be seen as distasteful to some.

Funnily enough I got WMD II (Yellow Submarine) for xmas

Can anybody remember what the first one was????

[kallaskander]

Hi there,

a malt called "Big Brother" after Bruichladdich found they were spied upon via their own web cams by the new US Ministery for Home Defence.
After urgent requests were mailed to Bruichladdich to repair a certain web cam it turned out that Bruichladdich was under suspicion to produce weapons of mass destruction. The US authority thought that the whisky making process was that of making poison gas or something similar.
Bruichladdich reacted with the Big Brother and called it Whisky of Mass Distinction.
The British government exchanged notes with the US over that incident.

Big Brother was not sold widely.

Greetings
kallaskander

[vitara7]

first one had a picture of a rocket on the back saying how much diffrent things were.
it was released for the supposed cia spying on bruichladdich making their whisky via their own web cams.

[irishwhiskeychaser]

Aaahhh but it is dangerous stuff indeed

[Deactivated Member]

I think the US spying on the distillery has been rather blown up (pardon the imagery), tongue-in-cheek-like. Certainly if a government agency were watching them in earnest, they'd never have let on to them that they were. A bit of typical McEwan blarney, all in fun.

Anyway, yes, the story was that the US gov't said that a distillery could easily be converted to the production of WMD's, and the bottle's label, as I recall, showed the difference between weapons of mass destruction and whisky of mass distinction, for those presumably too obtuse to figure it out for themselves.

[vitara7]

its only dangerous in the wrong hands...

[Deactivated Member]

And I'll vote for JMR, whose cartoony whisky-for-dummies theme strikes me as entirely inappropriate for a presumed adult beverage.

[TheLaddie]

Hi there,

a malt called "Big Brother" after Bruichladdich found they were spied upon via their own web cams by the new US Ministery for Home Defence.
After urgent requests were mailed to Bruichladdich to repair a certain web cam it turned out that Bruichladdich was under suspicion to produce weapons of mass destruction. The US authority thought that the whisky making process was that of making poison gas or something similar.
Bruichladdich reacted with the Big Brother and called it Whisky of Mass Distinction.
The British government exchanged notes with the US over that incident.

Big Brother was not sold widely.

Greetings
kallaskander

Hi.

I think the CIA were monitoring Bruichladdich as an easily acessible training exercise rather than the distillery being under any suspicion. Some of the processes of ditilling whisky are similar to processes used in the manufacture of various nasty substances. The newbies cut their teeth on this rather than messing up on the real thing.

The really funny thing about the Bruichladdich webcams is that Bruichladdich applied to BT for broadband cabling to the distillery and were given a ridiculously small quote by someone who failed to look up where Islay was... BT had to honour this.

[lapianoman]

I have often wondered about the "John, Mark and Robbo" line of whisky:


The labeling seems a bit too "low budget", almost a joke, which has kept me from trying one. Has anyone here tried one?

[kallaskander]

Hi there,

a bit off the topic but noteworthy.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/column ... e89082.ece

http://www.bbcworld.com/content/templat ... _pageid=17

http://www.eurolegal.org/britpages/ukscot.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... hisk27.xml

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ ... _n12716772

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/3144980.stm

I do not know whether to lough or to cry reading all that.

Greetings
kallaskander

[irishwhiskeychaser]

I have often wondered about the "John, Mark and Robbo" line of whisky:
The labeling seems a bit too "low budget", almost a joke, which has kept me from trying one. Has anyone here tried one?

I have tried the rich spicey one and eventhough it had a great nose the taste did not match even closely.