Card – picture – or sign exhibiting – Check – label – or tag – Bottle-carried indicia
Reexamination Certificate
1997-10-10
2003-07-22
Miller, William L. (Department: 3677)
Card, picture, or sign exhibiting
Check, label, or tag
Bottle-carried indicia
C040S306000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06594927
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to novelty items added to consumer products including food or beverage containers, wrappers and other packaging.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Cereal companies have employed toys or other premiums inside boxes or containers to stimulate consumer interest in their products. Rings, toys, books, comics and the like have been included in boxes or affixed to food containers to add value to the purchase of a particular cereal or snack. Producers of other products such as packaged goods and foodstuffs sold in cans, bottles, cones, tubes, rolls, tubs or other containers have found it difficult, expensive or otherwise impractical to add a “premium play element” or collectible value to their products because there has not been an efficient and cost effective method to consistently deliver the premium to the consumer without investing in other equipment to insert the premium into or onto a package.
Cereal boxes provide a large, dry environment for reception of a toy or other premiums, while cans, tubs, bottles and other containers do not allow for the insertion of premiums because of the potential contamination and safety hazards for consumers. To place an item on a package traditionally has necessitated additional packaging equipment that may not otherwise be available to the packager. The addition of this equipment often results in the reduction of production line speed and the reconfiguration of a manufacturing or packaging line adds time and expense to the product that increases the added up-front costs associated with including the premium in the food product. Premiums are therefore unlikely to be added or to be used by a variety of manufacturers.
The backs of labels have been used to deliver coupons or special messages for consumers but they have been limited to standard printing inks and paper, with no real play or collectible value for children or adults. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,054,826 and 1,756,944 disclose the use of labels on canned goods that includes information, such as recipes printed on the inside surface of the label. U.S. Pat. No. 4,634,149 discloses a label having a game of chance positioned on the back side of a label and U.S. Pat. No. 4,336,664 discloses the incorporation of a puzzle onto a label or packaging.
The addition of each type of unique play premium to packaging wrappers creates its own unique problems since the addition of pigments, or non-traditional inks or substrates and materials on the front or back surface of a wrapper can raise the premium above the surface of the wrapper material. Wrappers are generally dispensed from magazines or trays during assembly and/or loading and the automated incorporation of the food into a wrapper or a wrapper onto a container of food or beverage generally requires that the wrapper sit flat and provide an essentially uniform thickness throughout to avoid reconfiguration of the wrapper assembly and packaging and to maintain uniformity and accuracy in the process of adding the food to the wrapper or adding the wrapper to a food or beverage container.
A variety of children play toys, activities and novelty items are known, including, but not limited to, self adhesive or remoistable adhesive stickers, activity books with a number of activities such as paintable inks, such as inks paintable with water or other safe solvents, transfers, tattoos, scratch-off type hiding activities for adults or children, glow-in-the-dark pictures, “scratch and sniff” type activity books, and the like. Despite their attraction to children and adults, these types of activities are virtually impossible to efficiently deliver as a collectible premium on many consumer products because of their cost in manufacture, the need for additional equipment to facilitate the addition of the premium to a product and the rate at which the assembly process must normally be slowed to facilitate and verify premium placement and assembly.
Traditional label or wrapper application processes often employ heat. Depending on how the wrapper is applied, high temperatures can compromise a premium that is closely associated with a wrapper. Heat, for example, can cause both pressure sensitive and remoist adhesives to melt, migrate, burn or cause equipment to jam during the packaging process. The addition of premium stickers or other novelty items to packaging would generally require the reconfiguration of the packing or labeling equipment. This added cost becomes prohibitive since the costs cannot be passed readily to the consumer. Many pre-manufactured pressure sensitive or self adhesive materials are far more expensive than traditional wrapper or label paper and the added cost of these materials, in addition to the glues, special inks, die cutting, etc., in any quantity added to food packaging becomes economically prohibitive particularly because the assembly is often performed as separate independent manufacturing steps. In addition, the self adhesive or remoistable adhesive materials do not have the same application properties as labels comprising paper. Due to their stiffness and rigidity, they require expensive resins, solvents or hot glues for application. Pre-made pressure-sensitive materials, especially films, may also conduct static electricity. Moreover, the premade films tend to curl when cut and placed in a tray or magazine thereby making it undesirable for automated labeling schemes. In addition, the stickers may be affected by the heat or cold of the cans, packages or containers as they exit the manufacturing line off of a cooker, bottling equipment, wrapper, or the like.
Stickers, for example, have been used as a play device by children for many years and they have been popular as a collectable item in many forms including a variety of stamps, reward by teachers and parents, as games, as trading items between children and to incorporate the stickers into a picture in a book or on a poster. Methods for producing multiple ply labels are known and methods for manufacturing multiple labels are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,756,944 to Gordon. This type of paper has little intrinsic value as a play piece or as a collectible item to a child or adult or as a value added item on products.
Preferred collectible stickers and other premiums must be positioned with accuracy on the label surface to fit within the confines of the overall wrapper. For example, a large area for stickers, taking up 25% or more of the label, needs to be repeatably positioned relative to the edges of the label to facilitate automation. U.S. Pat. No. 1,756,944 to Gordon does not disclose methods to provide the positioning accuracy that would permit efficient delivery of the stickers. It is also difficult to “kiss cut” or die cut only through the pressure sensitive layer of a two ply label construction (i.e. self adhesive sticker paper and release base) without cutting through the base material of a two ply construction that is flexible and pliable enough to be efficiently wrapped around a product. Previous attempts have resulted in tremendous waste and inefficiency. The rolls or webs that could possibly be used to manufacture a suitable pressure sensitive material are generally narrow, adding to the expense and inefficiency since labels are generally produced on wide web or sheet fed presses that allow for fast and efficient manufacturing.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to the addition of value to a consumer package, or portion thereof Through the addition of a play or collectible premium to the packaging. The play premiums of this invention are integrally provided as a premium on a portion of a consumer package to increase the value of the product package or advertising. The collectible premiums are positioned on at least one surface of the consumer packaging for the use and enjoyment of children or adults who purchase or consume the products in the can, bottle, wrapper, container or other package. In a preferred embodiment, the collectible or play premiums are positioned on either the front or the back face of the packagi
Geppert James A.
MagicCom
Miller William L.
LandOfFree
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