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Creative Cocktail Mixer Builds Distinctive Packaging Experience

There’s no denying that creative cocktails with fun and inventive recipes are on the rise – especially for at home mixing. But when sipping on a mixed drink poured on the rocks, there’s nothing more frustrating than having that drink get watered down as the ice melts.

Enter Mixicles, a frozen botanical mixer that comes in cube form, that consumers can use in their favorite drinks for a consistent flavor from start to finish. Now, before we get into the packaging, let’s learn a bit about the Mixicles backstory.

Jen Morales and Jason Stitt were co-workers before launching Mixicles, as attorneys at the same law firm, with a passion for cocktails and experimenting with new recipes. One of those recipes was Jason’s watermelon margarita, and after creating a batch, it was decided to freeze the remainder. Once frozen, the watermelon margarita cubes could be added to tequila, and an idea was born.

Since launching Mixicles in Cincinnati, the brand has blossomed into numerous flavors and are available online and in the greater Cincinnati area. But now that a new product was born, Mixicles needed a creative package to match. To get the project off the ground, Jen and Jason connected with Cog, LLC., another Cincinnati-based company, which specializes in coordinating packaging projects at all their various stages, including design and printing.

Working with the team at Cog including David Lukshus, David Brown, and Lindsey Frimming, the group landed on a folding carton design that extends the user experience way beyond the standard six-sided box. Instead, the Mixicles carton was designed so that the interlocking lid flips up from the front, revealing another interior panel, which then reveals the frozen cube trays within. Not only does this provide additional packaging real estate for Mixicles to provide product information and its visually appealing imagery, the carton was designed in such a way that it can be constructed using a single piece of paperboard.

Producing the Perfect Packaging

To produce these jobs, the team turned to Coburn Carton Solutions, a folding carton company a few hours up the road in Hayesville, Ohio. As luck would have it, when Coburn and Mixicles connected on the project, the company had recently installed a new Koenig and Bauer offset press and was able to run it on the new equipment. And in addition to the excellent printing from Coburn, the company was able to implement strike through varnish, which selectively adds a bit of shine to the carton, and was a more cost effective process compared to spot UV coating.

The final result is an incredible rainbow of folding cartons, and will undoubtedly be a big hit in the ever-expanding world of craft cocktails.

This video originally appeared on Packaging Impressions. If you’ve seen an innovative package, contact Cory Francer at cfrancer@napco.com.


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