When LypSyl, a 100-year-old Swedish lip-balm brand, debuted in the U.S., Lornamead Inc. tweaked product formulations and rolled out enticing and functional packaging.

If you were to put a face to the packaging at Costco, it may be that of Scott Carnie, General Manager of Costco Wholesale’s East Coast packaging operations in Monroe, NJ.

Thanks in part to his efforts, the company’s packaging is a spectrum of colorful formats and innovation. A key color in Costco’s packaging palette is green, as in environmentally friendly.

Costco produces many of its own packages. Three recent examples:

· Costco launched its Kirkland Signature by Borghese private-label line of cosmetics (see www.packworld.com/go/view-21016).

· In September, Costco introduced a five- product line of Lexmark print cartridges in new packaging. The carded blister pack addresses theft and is eco-friendly. The packaging is Natralock™ material from MeadWestvaco, and it reduces the amount of plastics used while also making the product accessible. The clear plastic thermoform is molded of RPET. Costco thermoforms the recycled PET using tooling it made and heat-seals the products in the folded paperboard card.

· Costco is debuting an interesting take on Microsoft Xbox 360 packaging. It’s a large package that has appeared at Sam’s, but is adapted with a new design (see photo on this screen). Two thermoforms contain the game system and components and are wrapped within an outer frame of corrugated. Polypropylene strapping holds the frame together to provide closure for the corrugated and deter theft.

- By Rick Lingle, Packaging World

The warehouse club's packaging makeover features paperboard-blister hybrids.

Distributing prescription medications in specially designed blister packages rather than in bottles may increase the likelihood that medications will be taken properly, concludes a study from Ohio State University.

The nation’s leading supplier of fresh-cut packaged onions, Gills Onions of Oxnard, CA, is changing its approach to retail packaging by offering a rigid package as an alternative to flexible-film packs.

In March 2005, in response to retailers who thought it would display better, Gills Onions released a thermoformed PET cup with heat-sealed film lidding and a snap-fit overcap.