L'Italo-Americano

T h e r e i s a l i t t l e round tin of glue that almost any- one who attended school in Italy will recognize. It has a silver body, a blue label and a small brush tucked into the middle, and opening it releases a smell of almonds that many people remember more clearly than a n y t h i n g t h e y e v e r g l u e d together with it. Coccoina has been sold in that recogniz- able form since 1927, which is a pretty remarkable achieve- ment for a jar of stationery glue. Then again, some Italian p r o d u c t s h a v e b e c o m e s o closely associated with their packaging that the container is remembered as readily as what was inside, and some- times survives long after the contents have been used. C o c c o i n a b e g a n i n Voghera, in Lombardy, where Balma, Capoduri & C. devel- oped a white adhesive paste using ingredients including dextrin and potato starch, with its characteristic almond fragrance becoming one of the product's identifying features. Aldo Balma worked on the original formula, but the real ingenuity lay in the container, because glue at the time gen- erally required a separate applicator, which was easily misplaced or left to harden. T h e r o u n d a l u m i n u m t i n solved the problem by accom- modating its own little brush in a central compartment, so everything needed to apply the paste was kept together. It was a simple arrangement, a n d a s u c c e s s f u l o n e : although the company later introduced plastic jars, glue sticks and other formats, the original tin remained the one people associated with Coc- c o i n a , a n d i t e v e n t u a l l y earned recognition from the ADI Design Museum as an example of Italian design. Other packages became famous because they changed the way people used a prod- uct. In 1922, Luisa Spagnoli created a chocolate for Perugi- na by combining chopped h a z e l n u t s w i t h c h o c o l a t e , placing a whole hazelnut on top and covering the confec- tion in dark chocolate. The result was rather irregular, with a shape that reminded her of a clenched fist, so she called it Cazzotto, meaning punch. Giovanni Buitoni sug- g e s t e d a m o r e a p p e a l i n g name, Bacio, or kiss. Federi- co Seneca, Perugina's artistic d i r e c t o r , d e v e l o p e d t h e romantic imagery that helped make the chocolate famous, drawing inspiration f r o m F r a n c e s c o H a y e z ' s painting The Kiss. He intro- d u c e d t h e f a m i l i a r s i l v e r wrapping and blue lettering, while the little paper mes- sages, or cartigli, gave buyers something more personal to offer with their chocolates. T h e s t a r s n o w a s s o c i a t e d with the Baci wrapper arrived in stages, appearing on the messages in 1940 and on the individual wrappers in 1968. B y 1 9 2 7 , P e r u g i n a h a d already made 100 million Baci, and in 1939 the compa- ny opened a store on Fifth A v e n u e i n N e w Y o r k . A chocolate invented in Perugia had become an international gift, complete with a roman- tic message supplied by the manufacturer. T h e p r o b l e m f a c i n g Pietro Barilla after the Sec- ond World War was rather different. His family's busi- ness had begun as a bread and pasta shop in Parma in 1877, when pasta was com- monly sold loose and cus- tomers asked the shopkeeper for whatever shape and quan- tity they needed. The pasta w a s t h e n w e i g h e d a n d w r a p p e d i n b l u e f o o d paper, a familiar sight in Italian grocery stores. When Pietro traveled to the United States in 1950, he saw how supermarkets were changing shopping habits: customers selected products directly from shelves, often without speaking to anyone, which meant that the packaging had to tell them what they were buying and persuade them to choose it. Barilla hired the g r a p h i c d e s i g n e r E r b e r t o Carboni, who developed the company's visual identity and, in 1956, its famous blue pasta box. The choice of color came from the paper traditionally used by grocers, a l l o w i n g t h e c o m p a n y t o carry a familiar association i n t o a n e w w a y o f s e l l i n g pasta. Carboni's design gave Barilla a distinctive appear- ance on supermarket shelves, a n d a l t h o u g h t h e b o x changed over the following decades, the blue remained. Illustrations, product infor- mation and a transparent window were added as con- sumer expectations changed, until Barilla removed the plastic window in 2022 to make the packaging easier to recycle. For other Italian manufac- turers, the container devel- o p e d a s e c o n d p u r p o s e , b e c a u s e p e o p l e f o u n d i t attractive enough to keep after the contents were gone. Pastiglie Leone began in A l b a i n 1 8 5 7 , w h e n L u i g i Leone started producing fla- vored pastilles and candies before moving the business t o T u r i n . A m o n g h i s c u s - tomers was Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, who was particularly fond of the vio- let-flavored sweets. The com- pany eventually became a familiar Piedmontese name, but its packaging acquired g r e a t e r i m p o r t a n c e a f t e r Giselda Balla Monero took over in 1934. Known as the L e o n e s s a , o r l i o n e s s , s h e expanded the range of pack- ages and invested in advertis- ing, understanding that a decorated little box could make an inexpensive sweet much more appealing. Some- thing similar happened far- ther south, in Rossano, Cal- abria, where the Amarelli family had been producing licorice for generations. The small metal tins introduced i n 1 9 1 9 w e r e p r a c t i c a l because they protected the contents from moisture and made them easier to carry, but their attractive designs also encouraged customers to keep them. Amarelli contin- ued producing decorative tins, including reproductions of historical designs and lim- ited editions, while Leone has developed its own range of collectible boxes. In both cases, customers sometimes choose the container as care- fully as the sweets inside, and an object originally intended t o p r o t e c t a p r o d u c t h a s become something worth col- lecting. Nutella provides another example of how recognizable a food container can become. In postwar Piedmont, cocoa was scarce and expensive, while hazelnuts were plenti- f u l , s o P i e t r o F e r r e r o developed a hazelnut-and- cocoa confection called Gian- dujot in 1946. The spreadable S u p e r C r e m a f o l l o w e d i n 1951, and the familiar name Nutella arrived in 1964. A year later, Ferrero introduced the distinctive Pelikan jar for the German market, its shape inspired by a glass inkwell. Different countries eventually adopted different sizes and forms, but the glass jar, white lid and familiar label remained recognizable across markets. None of these packages r e m a i n e d c o m p l e t e l y unchanged, which is worth remembering whenever a company claims that a design survived intact for genera- tions. Materials change, pro- duction methods improve and customers develop new habits, and even the most familiar packaging has to accommodate them. Coc- coina now comes in several formats, Barilla's box has u n d e r g o n e r e p e a t e d redesigns, and Baci acquired t h e i r s t a r s l o n g a f t e r t h e chocolates were invented. Yet the earlier designs remain recognizable, particularly when the container has been kept for some entirely differ- ent purpose. There must still be Coccoina tins in Italian drawers holding paper clips or buttons, their little brush- es long gone and their own- ers in no particular hurry to throw them away. GIULIA FRANCESCHINI B e f o r e y o u r e a d t h e l a b e l : t h e I t a l i a n packaging everyone recognizes THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 16 L'Italo-Americano LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE Amarelli licorice tins are perhaps as famous as the candies they contain; inset: a classic silver and blue Coccoina jar, once a staple in every child's school bag (Original images created for L'Italo-Americano with the assistance of AI)

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