Word To Use Today: wackaging.

It all started in Wonderland.

'Drink me!' said the bottle Alice found (and, oh-so-foolishly, she did indeed drink it. Was there no Health and Safety in those days?).*

This label was, as far as I know, the first example of wackaging, which is where the packaging of a product, usually some sort of foodstuff, displays jokes and, often, a self-consciously informal way of addressing the consumer.

Oatly, which make dairy-like oat-based products, have recently been using the slogan: 

milk, but made for humans

and the other day I saw something out of the corner of my eye that said Hello! and I discovered that this is the name of a new Lindt chocolate bar.

Wackaging quite often involves messages from the foodstuff itself: keep me in the fridge! Recycle me! Try me with vodka and lime! Lick me, love me!  

Innocent drinks have been credited with beginning the current wackaging trend back in the 1990s. The company's copywriter, Lucie Bright has said 'to be honest, we were mucking about when we started...we've always talked to everyone in the same way we talk to our friends, but with fewer swear words.'

And now the idea has taken hold and many companies are trying to be funny and/or wacky to make themselves and their products look fresh and hip. (That's companies which sell things in Britain, anyway: it seems to be too silly a trend for most of the world.) There's a new tea brand, for instance, called Make mine a builder's! (builders being known in Britain for drinking strong tea).

Whether wackaging is quirkily inviting or off-puttingly annoying is a matter of debate.

But I think it's a joyful word, all the same.

Word To Use Today: wackaging. This word is a mixture of wacky and packaging. The word pack has been around since the 1200s, and wacky appeared in the 1800s meaning someone who behaves in a silly way, as if he or she has just been whacked over the head.

*Though Alice did, rather charmingly, check there wasn't a poison label first.