Cylindrical boxes of Oats probably wastes a few cents a box, considering that warehouse, truck cargo and shelf space costs money, and the cylindrical box is an inefficient user of space. Plus, probably a higher cost of the packaging itself at the processing plant, since pallets of cylindrical boxes are harder to prepare for packing than rectangular ones…
As far as I know it’s because it makes for distinctive packaging for Quaker.
oats are heavy and a cylinder is strong.
they were in cahoots with the copper wire industry is the real reason.
This makes sense to me. Is it the same reason silos are cylindrical?
Wouldn’t a cylindrical box be more airtight than a rectangular one? I’ve never seen an inner freshness bag for oatmeal.
You ask this as the number of round-box offerings plunges. Even Quaker is using other container types for most sizes these days.
Round containers can be made leak-proof (dust and grit) more easily than folded boxes, eliminating the need for an inner liner. Oatmeal doesn’t degrade the way most cereals do with slight exposure to air and humidity, so it doesn’t need to be sealed the way crisper cereals and grains are. So: round boxes were a better choice, back when. I seem to recall them being used for a variety of such products, all powdery and prone to grit and dust leakage but not needing air-sealing.
did you just say “cylindrical BOX”?
also, ive seen them in both boxes and cylindrical packages. not durr ehy.
I buy my oats (steel-cut FTW!) in bulk and store them in a 3-quart cylindrical plastic container, mainly because I can dip into it with a measuring cup. Maybe that’s part of the reason. Or distinctive packaging is a marketing strategy.
We were here a while back:
while they are stronger as an above ground silo, one of the major reasons was freshness. silage could sit in corners and rot, wasting that material and contaminating/inoculating new material. circular could be emptied out better.
Best username / post / threadtopic combination in a while.
Oatmeal is sold in cylindrical boxes? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that here.
Possibly it’s sold that way in some areas because people have come to expect a certain packaging? Like the way teflon tape for plumbing is sold in those odd little plastic spools: people expect it to be packaged that way, and will miss ones that aren’t.
If you’re not familiar with the traditional cylindrical packaging for Quaker Oats, look at this picture from Wikipedia.
Really, you don’t have these?
A traditional wooden barrel is a cylindrical package. Quakers is simply a scaled down version of a barrel. Perhaps a tip of the hat to the past when Oats came in wooden barrel?
Since when is a cylinder “less efficient” than a box?
Why are you talking about packaging efficiency with respect to cereal boxes? Cereals have a long tradition of using a lot more packaging than needed simply so they look like they contain more product than they actually do.
One advantage to the round top is that it’s easier to scoop the oatmeal out. I can easily dip my measuring cup in to get exactly what I need. I buy steel-cut oats in a box and pour them into an old Quaker Oats cylinder for this reason.
When you try to ship a case of them. A dozen boxes can be placed in a shipping carton with no wasted space but a dozen cylinders of Quaker Oats leaves wasted space. You may notice that many juice drinks are now sold in plastic jugs that are squarer than previously. (See this photo of Naked Juice bottles as an example.)
