With the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, produce could travel all over the United States with ease. To stand out from competitors, farmers shifted from stencil-marked crates to vivid
crate labels, which were largely replaced by lower-cost cardboard boxes in the 1950s and 60s, allowing images to be printed right onto the boxes. These vivid bits of history are now
bought, sold, and traded by collectors (
related gallery).
Blue Sky Search and
California Bountiful have articles on the rise and fall of produce labels, and the subsequent collection of these art pieces.
Boston Public Library has a high-quality, larger format Flickr gallery, but the collection is limited.
Pat Jacob's Fruit Crate Labels has a collection of small images and a lot of information for collectors, and
Crate Label Museum has an extensive collection, though the images are smaller than those in the Boston Public Library's collection.
posted by filthy light thief
on Feb 7, 2012 -
19 comments
Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear. "Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination."
posted by homunculus
on Apr 3, 2008 -
77 comments
20 Biggest Record Company Screw-Ups of All Time from Blender Magazine. "They include MCA Records’ decision in 1989 to pass on a Seattle upstart band called Nirvana while also betting big on “Leather Boyz With Electric Toyz,” the debut album of a hair-metal band called Pretty Boy Floyd."
posted by plexi
on Mar 15, 2008 -
50 comments
"The iPod’s a great product. However our experience in dealing with them, as regards licensing music for iTunes, has been quite depressing."
Coldcut member and indie label
Ninja Tune co-founder Matt Black in a pixelsurgeon
interview about the new album, the relative relaxation on sample licensing, and iTunes. For another independent perspective on iTunes see
The 99c Question - addressing the pressures on iTunes from major labels to raise prices.
posted by nthdegx
on Feb 2, 2006 -
21 comments
Nice Whisk(e)y: Shame About The Size! Behold a wonderful, almost infinitely explorable repository of miniature bottles of whisk(e)y; a Japanese one-guy Smithsonian that's quite probably the only resort for those looking for labels of ancient and/or abandoned delights. American straight whiskey fanatics (like me) will be specially surprised. Worth exploring, though exploration isn't easy: it's full of unexpected riches, but never easily had. [
Previously offered in the course of a classic languagehat post.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Mar 10, 2004 -
9 comments
What's on the menu? Perhaps fat and calories.
"Five states have taken up similar bills this year, with none being passed so far." Will bills like these ever get passed? Will we ever see nutrition facts on fast food wrappers? Will consumers ever bother to read them?
posted by sharksandwich
on Jul 15, 2003 -
35 comments
Aphorisms Galore! For some reason I've never really known what an aphorism is. Actually reading
this article at Frieze, I'm not sure anyone really knows. It's supposed to be a memorable, light hearted or philosphical quote which gets the point across very quickly. But glancing through the examples, it seems to be a catch all term for anything. But people like to find labels for things which don't need labels.
posted by feelinglistless
on Apr 2, 2003 -
21 comments
Crackerpacks is a library of over 400 (excellently named) firecracker labels available
for you to enjoy.
posted by hama7
on Mar 18, 2003 -
13 comments
FDA now officially useless? Well, it's looking that way.. They are now about to allow
unverified health claims on food labels. They say this is a good thing. I wonder... What function does the FDA have now if it's not to protect the consumer from wild and potentially false claims on their food products?
posted by eas98
on Dec 27, 2002 -
13 comments
When all of the good vinyl albums have been bought from the cardboard box at the local church bazaar, Nick DiFonzio buys the rest and scans the jackets. The result?
Bizarre Record Covers. And because beauty, or the apparent lack thereof, is not only jacket deep, check out this trippy
collection of 45 rpm labels from No Relevance, and this detailed
record label discography, where you can see how record companies from the 1950s thru the 1990s kept trying to update and redefine their image by redesigning their labels.
posted by iconomy
on Jun 23, 2002 -
10 comments
DiscT@2: This revolutionary Laser Labeling System allows graphics and text to be burnt onto CD-R disc, eliminating the need for labels. Customers can put graphics, such as signatures, logos, memorandums, and photo images onto CD-R's unused area after data writing.
posted by Fofer
on Jun 16, 2002 -
11 comments
What exactly does "certified organic" mean? The Consumer's Union has whipped up this good (if incomplete) idea of a resource for people to find out exactly what those so-called "eco-labels" mean. I had heard "free-range" means almost nothing, but didn't find info here on that. But I did learn a few things about how some labels are skewed by industry. Potentially a great site if they ever get around to populating their database and lose the dumb flash stuff.
posted by brookish
on Feb 11, 2002 -
4 comments
"Today's heroes don't have to do anything; they just need to be noble victims" The people who lost their lives on September 11 -- office workers, firefighters, airline pilots -- have almost unanimously been labeled "hereos." Were they really, or were they "just" victims who tragically died while "doing their jobs"? According to this article, we should be hesitant to loosen the requirements for heroism:
"Heroes often end up as role models, a task not well suited for victims. Moreover, by lowering the bar for heroism, we cheapen the word and, in some ways, the exploits of people who have earned the right to be called that in the past. " (via
a & l daily).
posted by pardonyou?
on Jan 15, 2002 -
58 comments
Warning labels, the volume knobs on small infants, Death By Vending Machine. It's an ever-shifting line in the sand of human stupidity, a vague cultural boundary defining how much we expect our products and corporations to protect us from ourselves and how much we're willing to be answerable for our actions, a line dividing how logic-impaired we're willing to admit we sometimes are and how responsible a given corporation should be for dumping shoddy and/or dangerous products on the market without warning.
Is excessive labeling a release from liability? Is it killing off common sense or the need to have common sense?
posted by th3ph17
on Jul 18, 2001 -
52 comments
Smashing Pumpkins encourage piracy "The Smashing Pumpkins printed just 25 copies of their new album - but they've asked fans to make MP3s, please. Reportedy they're flipping the bird at their label, Virgin"
posted by dilok
on Sep 12, 2000 -
10 comments
