Captain Morgan bottle is a blast

[amey katkar]

The Cannon Blast specialty rum bottle packs a powerful packaging punch at retail with an impressive list of “how did they do that?” attention to detail. We take for a 360 degree spin that reveals its treasures.


A round bottle in a liquor store is startlingly different, which explains my reaction to seeing Captain Morgan’s Cannon Blast bottle in a retail display for the first time: It literally stopped me in my tracks.

And it took all of a second to get what this packaging was about: The 750mL bottle is a sphere that is decorated to resemble an authentic cannonball to the nth degree.

I’m probably not alone in taking a long look at bottled packaging that breaks through a sea of different-but-same cylindrical bottles in assorted shapes, sizes and colors.

I purchased the bottle and later reached out to the brand owner, Diageo, for official input, but the response was “While we appreciate your interest in our product, it is our policy not to provide proprietary information to external parties for private or commercial purposes.”

It seems the brand owner guards its secrets well so we must rely on that old reliable standby, personal examination.



Spin the bottle



It starts with the spheroid glass bottle, which is wrapped in a shrink film. Ironically, I will refer to this loosely as a shrink film only because I don’t know how they did it: The printed film adheres very tightly around the bottle with nary a wrinkle. Most of us in packaging can appreciate what went into getting that skin-tight fit on a sphere, which alone is pretty amazing.

But there’s more easy-found treasure in store: The jet-black shrink film has a matte finish and is textured to give it the rough surface of an authentic period cannon ball.

Impressive!

The bottle “front” has red Cannon Blast lettering that’s mirror shiny, and I mean that literally: I can see myself and some details of my surrounding reflected in the lettering. Beneath that is the playful tagline, “an intensely delicious shot.”

To the left is the familiar captain, with a leg up on a small cannon instead of the usual rum keg. This captain wears a shiny coat, so to speak, but that’s due to something I’ll reveal as a final surprise at the end of the article.


ARTICLE FROM: PACKAGINGDIGEST

[vikas]

Looks impressive. How is it doing in the market?