Fun, squeezable packaging

In a back-to-the future sort of trend that might have made early astronauts groan, food is going tubular.

Pudding, peanut butter, applesauce, yogurt, seasoning sauces and more are showing up in squeezable tubes from which you can dispense the edibles without bothering to use a utensil – or in some cases, slurp straight from a single-serving pack.

Drawing special notice has been tubed Skippy peanut butter, which won the 2003 overall Tube of the Year award – yes, there is such a thing – from the Tube Council, a national packaging trade group.

A Washington company, Tree Top, has joined the minimovement with single-serving tubed applesauce. And ConAgra Foods is producing “portable pudding” in several flavors under the Hershey’s and Hunts brands.

Tubed foods are still a tiny share of products in supermarkets – so small there are no industrywide sales figures – but little by little, more of them are appearing on store shelves.

In one sense, the trend harkens to the early days of space travel, when tubed foods helped keep astronauts nourished.

Rocket forward to now, and the emphasis is more on fun and convenience than on the essentials of nourishment.

“I think it plays into society as we are today. We’re mobile,” often eating on the run, said Ben Miyares, vice president of a packaging-machinery trade organization. It’s a dining style that goes with tubed foods like peanut butter with jam.

“If you look at what Americans consume, we have become a nation of finger-food eaters,” said Miyares. What’s more, he added, Americans are always happy when they can do without can openers or other devices for opening containers.

“We don’t like to use utensils to open anything, so if a package is going to work, it’s got to be easy-opening,” which tubed foods invariably are.

Stick pack, classic tube

Most of all, tubes – especially the slender single-serving “stick pack” models – slip easily into a kid’s back pack or lunch box for a quick snack or lunch treat.

Kids clearly are targeted with those stick packs, many of which sport cartoon characters and pow! colors on the boxes they come in.

A stick pack is a long, thin, plastic/foil pouch sealed at both ends, with a tear tab for easy opening. From this, you can squeeze the contents straight into your mouth. Some of these tubes are shelf-stable for months, unrefrigerated, while others advise refrigeration (check the label).

Kid-targeted tubed puddings and applesauce have sold well, said Miyares – perhaps because kids “have fewer hang-ups” about how food should be eaten.

A Seattle mother said her young son especially likes the tubed puddings when they’re frozen.

Skippy, a division of Unilever Bestfoods, went further than most companies by coming out with both a stick pack and a “classic” tube – that is, a container much like a toothpaste tube, with one end sealed while the other has a stand-up cap and a slot for dispensing.

“Skippy was a sensation (at the tube competition),” Miyares said, largely because peanut butter is a major food consumed by millions as a source of serious nutrition. Whoever dreamed up the idea of putting this product into a backpack-ready tube was “a marketing genius,” he said.

Fans say the stick pack or the “classic” tube can encourage a kid to slap some peanut butter on some celery, a slice of apple or another healthful snack, if only because it’s so easy to do.

As some Northwest hikers and campers have discovered, tubed foods also make simple snacks on the trail or in camp.

Many are not health foods, however, and parents might want to reserve certain ones, such as the puddings, as special treats for youngsters.

‘Upside-down bottles’

More familiar than the true tubes to most consumers is a tube relative that’s sprouting all over store shelves. These are plastic squeeze bottles, which have been around for years but now have a newer twist: a large, flat cap on which the bottle stands, letting the product inside slide to the bottom, for easier dispensing. These “upside-down bottles” now hold everything from ketchup and mustard to barbecue sauce, dipping sauce, salad dressing and liquid margarine, and more are surely on the way.

The key kickoff for tubed foods in the United States came with yogurt – or more specifically, General Mills’ Go-Gurt, yogurt sold in single-serving tubes that appeared on the market in the late 1990s. It took awhile for other companies to get into the tubular swing of things, but they’re clearly doing so now.

Popular in Europe

Tubes are far more popular as food containers in Europe than in America, said Miyares. In Europe, more than 50 percent of tube packaging is used for food, versus only about 1 percent of tubes in the United States, where they more often hold lotions, creams, ointments and the like.

“Americans are funny,” he said. “They don’t necessarily accept packages that are acceptable in other parts of the world.”

Will tubes dominate future food?

Never, predicted Miyares.

“I think it will continue to enjoy its niches,” and perhaps expand to nuts and candies, he said.