Showcase: Taking Tubes to the Next Level
An oval tube and a soft closed-cell foam pad combine to create the user-friendly package for HandsFree Sunscreen. Makers of beauty products and their packaging suppliers are creating hybrids that promise to elevate tubes' already high status.
By Lori Bryan, Editor Traits like portability and ease of use have made tubes a long-standing favorite with beauty product consumers. The trend is likely to continue, as cosmetic and personal care companies and their packaging suppliers transform tubes into hybrids that promise to exceed expectations.
Look—No Hands
The combination of an oval tube and a soft closed-cell foam pad has resulted in a user-friendly package for HandsFree Sunscreen by HandsFree Applicators Inc. (Fountain Valley, CA). The patented design—a hybrid of a tube and an applicator—allows end-users to apply the product without mess, fuss, or waste. Recent accolades have included the Tube Council's (Montclair, NJ) International Tube of the Year award, presented to HandsFree in April.
"Users apply the product without their hands," says Bijan Hosseini, president of HandsFree Applicators. Users squeeze the tube and dispense the product into the foam pad in a controlled flow. The product-filled pad then serves as a spreader. "The package prevents the loss of product to the hands for application elsewhere," Hosseini says. Additionally, the pad's closed-cell construction ensures that the product wipes off cleanly with each use.
The polyethylene tube, supplied by Norden AndBro Inc. (Pitman, NJ), is offset printed in four colors. The custom-molded applicator head is hot-air welded to the tube. The 35-ml applicator head accommodates 1- to 2.5-oz fills. A 50-ml applicator, scheduled to launch at HBA Global Expo this fall, will accommodate fills from 4 to 8 oz.
Other HandsFree personal care products utilizing the tube-foam package design include a self-tanner and a men's shaving product. "The scrubber on the shaving product serves as a brush," says Hosseini, "helping to bring the beard away from the skin for a cleaner shave."
In addition to putting HandsFree's own products on the map, the tube-foam design has also captured the attention of some major players, according to Hosseini. "Avon is coming on board this year" and will use HandsFree's package design for an undisclosed new product, he says.
Not a Tube, Not a Bottle
The tottle—the union of the tube and the bottle—may not be new, but beauty care companies and their packaging suppliers are constantly reinventing it. Variations in style, shape, size, and color ensure that the familiar tottle is always fresh.
Companies like Sun Laboratories (Chatsworth, CA) are using tottles to package their bath and body products. The firm's Vanilla Hand & Body Lotion, for example, comes in a sleek 9-oz tottle, which features ample printing surface on its front panel for the bold, eye-catching lettering of the product name.
Options for Topping Off
A tube is not a successful tube without the right closure. Packaging suppliers understand beauty care companies' needs for caps that are both optimally functional and aesthetically pleasing.
To meet the demand, Zeller Plastik (Libertyville, IL), the plastic closures division of Crown Cork & Seal Company, Inc., offers such options as its recently developed Water Tight tube closure. Zeller Plastik came up with the closure at the request of one of its customers, according to Zeller Plastik's marketing coordinator, Nancy Kane. "Tubes often stand on their heads in the shower, so there can be a problem if a gap exists between the tube neck and the closure," Kane says. Water can seep in and "promote mold growth," she says.
To prevent such contamination, Zeller Plastik took a 2-in.-diam closure with a 22-400 neck finish and modified it, extending the closure deck so it fit more snugly with the hinge. "We also created a cushion seal around the body of the closure so that it seals with the shoulder of the tube," says Kane.
Also available from Zeller Plastik is the Super Soft Orienting Closure. Launched earlier this year, the closure offers cosmetic and personal care companies several benefits, says Kane. "Cosmetically, the lid has a softer design, as well as a modified thumb recess with more-rounded [contours] that are better suited for the thumb." The closure's push-on style means the thumb recess is oriented to the front of all the tubes, for a seamless look on the shelf. Additionally, Kane says, "no etching on the lid means there's nothing to detract from the clear or colored polypropylene designs."
Other packaging suppliers, including Rexam Beauty & Closures (Evansville, IN), have developed senior friendly, child-resistant tube closures. This is a significant development because the Consumer Product Safety Commission's (CPSC) ruling, to take effect in October of this year, requires child-resistant packaging for all low-viscosity household products containing 10% or more hydrocarbons by weight. Rexam's one-piece Tube-Lok closure, developed for prescription and over-the-counter products that come in creams, ointments, gels, and jellies, meets CPSC requirements.
A push-and-turn mechanism on the Tube-Lok closure is designed to provide child resistance and ease of operation for adults and seniors. A plug prevents premature dispensing of product while the user removes the closure. An audible click means the user has locked the closure onto the neck of the tube.
Other companies are incorporating tottles into their cosmetics lines. Luxury products firm Yves Rocher Inc. is one such example. The company selected a 50-ml tottle for the Vitamin Enriched Tinted Moisturizer foundation in its YRIA line. The red metallic package with its two-sided gold matte finish is a custom version of the Drama tottle supplied by stock packaging specialist DieterBakicEnterprises (Munich).
"A distinct advantage of tottles is that they allow for more design creativity than tubes, whose shapes must be cylindrical or oval," says Dieter Bakic of DieterBakicEnterprises. "Tottles provide more [surface area] for decoration, and are an excellent way to express a brand's image effectively and consistently. They are neither tubes nor bottles—but they offer the best features of both," Bakic says.
DieterBakicEnterprises's tottles have "strong but flexible design features that enable smooth integration into virtually all of our packaging lines," says Bakic. "And they can be combined with a series of matching caps and pumps," he adds. Blow-molded from such plastics as polyethylene in varying densities, the tottles are customizable using different finishes.
Another packaging supplier, Cebal Americas (Norwalk, CT), offers its Tandem oval plastic tube, whose cap design can be carried over to tottles provided by Cebal's sister company, Techpack, according to Bertrand Daru, marketing manager for Cebal. The Tandem oval is made distinctive by its bicolored flip-top dispensing cap. Available in medium- and high-density polyethylene, in sizes ranging from 130 to 200 ml, Tandem can be made brand-specific with satiny coatings, multicolor offset printing, and silk-screening, to name a few options.
"Companies are establishing brand identity by moving from rounds to ovals and other shapes," says Daru. And as such, they have more room to differentiate themselves from their competition, he says. "Oval shapes increase the printing surface by 15% over traditional round tubes," says Daru.
Tube Meets Pouch
Companies seeking the convenience of a tube and the kind of high visibility typically afforded by a secondary package may wish to consider a hybrid of a tube and a pouch. Enter Softube, a package that offers just such an option.
Available in Europe, Softube is in the early marketing stages in the United States, according to Chris Dawson, vice president of sales–international products for Ever Corp. (St. Louis). Ever Corp. is working with Softube's inventor, H. Obrist & Co. AG (Reinach, Switzerland), to introduce the combination tube-and-pouch package to North America. Both firms produce collapsible aluminum tubes and aluminum cartridges for the global marketplace. The firms' primary target customer would be a manufacturer or contract packager who would benefit from owning a Softube form-fill-seal plant.
"Softube is a cross between a reclosable stand-up tube and a laminate pouch or sachet," Dawson says. "The aluminum aspect comes into play only if the customer specifies a laminate structure that includes an aluminum layer typically used for light or air barrier requirements."
The Softube package from Ever and Obrist is designed to serve as a mini billboard for manufacturers. Although cosmetic and personal care companies have yet to select Softube for their commercial products, "Obrist and Ever feel that Softube can be utilized effectively by manufacturers of a range of cosmetic and personal care products," says Dawson. Possible product applications include lotions, tanning products, topical skin treatments, body scrubs and washes, gels and mousses, hair-coloring products, toothpaste, and hand sanitizers.
"Given Softube's structural shape (essentially a rectangle) and the unlimited graphics possibilities associated with laminates and foils, the [package] acts as a mini billboard for the manufacturer," says Dawson. The pouch's wide front and back panels "allow for easy product identification" on the retail shelf, and "color options are limited only by the capabilities of the laminate manufacturer." Vibrant solid colors and high-resolution graphics are among the possibilities, he says.
Currently the closure for Softube is a twist-off cap and an accompanying tamper-evident safety ring. A flip-top version is in development.
Shape Shifting
A nontraditionally shaped tube may also be appealing to cosmetic and personal care firms wanting to attract and please savvy customers.
One such example is the Squaretube supplied by Artube (East Stroudsburg, PA). The package design brings together high visibility, which a rectangular carton or other such wide-paneled container usually affords, and the user-friendliness commonly associated with tubes. Artube's printing capabilities include gloss and matte coatings, hot-stamping, silk-screening, and labeling.
Another shapely combination is a tube realized in an oval shape, like the offerings supplied by Tubed Products Inc. (Easthampton, MA). "We offer oval tubes with dispensing and nondispensing closures in a variety of coatings and finishes," says Jim Farley, vice president of sales and marketing for Tubed Products. "What sets our oval tubes apart," Farley says, "is their particularly flat, sleek profile." The supplier does an extensive amount of oval tubes for Avon, according to Farley.
Crossbred Tubes
Hybrids of tubes and other package types, like the ones discussed in this article, promise to keep consumers' interest. And as cosmetic and personal care firms and their suppliers continue to cross tubes with other designs, more innovations benefiting beauty companies and their customers are likely to evolve.