The beginning of April has been marked with the significant event at Dr. Pepper Snapple Group as the brand unveiled new 20 ounce ‘Legacy’ bottle created jointly with Leverage, Integrated Industrial Design, which represents R&D’s department specializing in the area of development of full service consumer packaging solutions.

According to the press announcement by the package design company, what started as a consumer research, has turned into efficient brand building and creation of the package featuring both visual and tactile design elements that will guarantee the retail success of the drink. It took about 28 weeks for Leverage to complete this ‘idea-to-mold’ project. Realizing the importance of both attractive visual design and shape, in course of bottle design creation, Leverage has implemented what it calls ‘tactile tactics’ to ensure the bottle feel good in the consumer’s hand.

The Legacy bottle will be used for such DPS’s flavor brands as 7UP, Sunkist soda, Canada Dry, Sun Drop, Squirt and other soft drinks that do not have their own brand-specific bottle design. Starting April 2011, drinks in the Legacy bottle will be coming to US retail stores.

Robin Utay, DPS’s Director of Packaging, said, «Our packages have to pass muster with consumers and with internal constituents—they must look good on the shelf, and they must run efficiently in all our manufacturing locations and work in vending machines. That’s why the alignment between R&D/Leverage and our teams was so important. The 20 oz. size is central to our efforts to grow our business in single-serve formats across our flavor portfolio, so it’s got to be perfect, in many ways.»