Silly British Design - Cardboard juice carton

For my first installment of Silly British Designs, I am reviewing the juice carton: a rather simple everyday item designed to provide a solid container you can use to store and pour liquids. A simple idea that has been around at least since the flask and, I imagine, longer than that. Unfortunately, a few companies seem to have oversimplified the design a bit and opted for a lift tab rather than a liquid tight screw top. Why they chose a spout design that does not adequately hold liquid at bay is beyond me.

Designing a container without a spout tight enough to stop liquids leads to obvious problems during the shaking phase of juice extraction, but less obvious are the annoyances when storing said containers. Visualize if you will, a refrigerator about half or a third the size of the one you have at home but with three shelves about 6 inches apart. This is the size of the average refrigerator here in England. Visualizing such a small box might lead to questions such as “how would you store tall items such as milk and juice?” Indeed this is a good question and is the primary reason why this choice of box design completely baffles me. The only way you can store this type of container is on its side, but of course without a liquid-tight spout the juice leaks out into the fridge leaving an orange sticky mess of sugar and water!

It’s not like the makers of these containers are unaware of the flaw in their design. The container comes with a pull tab that prevents the juice from exploding during shipment, and also doubles (I would assume) as an assurance of sorts that Ahmed (Egypt is where most of the juice comes from) has not allowed spiders and oar-bugs to infest your ambrosia. Overall, a silly design, but admittedly fun since I haven’t made a mess of my orange juice since I threw my sippy-cup on the floor of the kitchen some 22 years ago.