If you were not a child during the USSR era, then you definitely remember the famous tetrahedral cardboard packages with milk. People called them “triangular” and also “pyramids”.
The classic design looked like this: characteristic blue and red triangles were applied to the white packages, on the strip in the middle there was the inscription “MILK” and next to it the volume was indicated – 0.5 liters. Since the early 1960s, they have been sold literally everywhere.
But do you know why the packaging was in the shape of a tetrahedron?! Many believe that this shape made the packaging especially stable and durable. However, in reality everything is much simpler.
The fact is that the tetrahedron is the first form of cardboard packaging developed by the Swedish company Tetra Pak (hence its name). And the Soviet Union simply bought this technology.
The idea for a new packaging of milk began to be developed in 1944 – since it quickly turned sour in glass and cans, and it was not easy to transport it. And the technology was finally formalized by 1952.
The material chosen for the new packaging was cardboard, which was covered with a thin layer of polyethylene to increase the shelf life of the product.
Such an unusual form was also not chosen by chance. It was related to the intricacies of production.
A tape of thick and elastic cardboard was continuously rolled into a long tube, soldered at the very bottom. Milk was poured into it from above, and the mechanism directly stamped two hot weld seams at different angles along the liquid-filled pipe.
If they were the same and horizontal, milk cartons would look like soft bags flattened at both ends. But thanks to the special arrangement of the seams, the packs were twisted into a tetrahedron with milk inside. All that remained was to cut them off from each other along the joint, and the packaging was ready.
The USSR liked this cunning method, so already in the early 1960s the country bought the technology and several lines of equipment from Sweden. So soon universally recognizable packaging appeared in the Soviet Union, which replaced glass.
It is interesting that in Europe they abandoned tetrahedrons already in the mid-1960s in favor of parallelepipeds, which were more convenient to transport. However, in the USSR, “pyramid cards” stubbornly continued to be sold until the 1980s.
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2024-02-01 02:30:00
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