SEASONAL PACKS: Baking kits display holiday spirit

Betty Crocker has cooked up a timely product for the season: holiday baking kits in four varieties. The kits from Minneapolis, MN-based General Mills are packaged in creative and colorful boxes with precision die cuts.

Betty Crocker has cooked up a timely product for the season: holiday baking kits in four varieties. The kits from Minneapolis, MN-based General Mills are packaged in creative and colorful boxes with precision die cuts. Although introduced last year—and seasonally for Halloween—this winter's kits offer new features. Rick Lingle, Technical Editor One of the prominent additions is an angled peak, or gable, on the 9 1/2" x 11’’ x 3 3/4’’ box. Before, the top had been flat. The peak is more than ornamental: It contains die-cut holes to ease carrying the nearly 3-1/2-lb (netweight) box. Inside, a clear one-piece thermoform that encases nearly all the kit components displays the contents through the box’s die-cut front. That’s the other change, according to General Mills’ spokesperson Pam Becker: "The window is now larger so that consumers can better see the contents, and with a little more impact." One-piece thermoform The Holiday Cookie Kit shown here was purchased for $5.99 at a Chicago-area Target store. It contains two sugar cookie mix pouches, a plastic jar of frosting, candy-cane and tree-shaped cookie cutters, a tube of red decorating gel, and a bottle of sugar sprinkles. This kit’s thermoform is ingeniously molded in one piece with flaps that fold up and secure the components into place with button locks. The thermoform fits snugly inside the box. Cute microflute We speculate that the microflute corrugated box is E-flute printed in what appears to be at least five colors. The main graphic on this box is a Christmas tree, complete with a window die cut in the shape of a tree. Other boxes highlight a cupcake kit with snowman’s face—with die-cut mouth—or a cozy house with die-cut windows.