Scandinavium #3: Litago milk carton
{600 words, 4 figures, 4 minutes}
"Scandinavium" is a regular column where I write about the elements of daily life in Norway and broader Scandinavia.
On one Saturday, I took a long walk through the shops of Lillestrøm from the church at one end of the commercial center to the large Rema 1000 store at the opposite end of Lillestrøm station. Feeling thirsty and curious to try something new, I bought a Litago chocolate milk. It's easy to spot because of the brown cow, the contextual location in a cooler with other milk and dairy products, and the words "Original sjokolademelk" since I very quickly learned that "sjokolade" is Norwegian for "chocolate". This particular version was Rio Olympics branded; the normal version has a brown cow without the Norwegian dressings.
Chocolate milk has always been a special treat for me since my K-12 days where I drank a half-pint of it every day during lunch. Although I'm older now, this carton of 500 mL was still a lot to drink in one sitting. It also cost about 18 kroner ($2.25 USD) so I wanted to try to savor it, too.
Trying to open the carton for the first time led to a surprising amount of uneven resistance. The cap seems to catch on to something while it turns and a scraping or tearing noise can be heard. When I finally removed the cap, I noticed two things. First, there are two curved, sharkfin-like features on the underside of the cap.
The second was that there seemed to be a flap obstructing the opening to my delicious chocolate milk. Drinking with this flap in the way took a little more effort and technique than usual. It might be because I possibly didn't open it all of the way. After taking a few glugs, I closed the carton and went walking again.
Re-opening the cap for a second swig, I felt the same "catch" as the cap turned. Playing around with closing and opening the cap made me understand. On the inside of the carton screw-top, there are two triangular teeth of an internally rotating ring. When the fins of the cap "catch" these teeth, they rotate and shear the flap open. I didn't test how far it goes because I didn't want the flap to completely shear off and fall inside, but that scenario seems plausible.
Overall, it's quite an interesting design when compared to its American counterpart. American milk products usually don't come in this size in carton, but rather in PET bottles (this 500 mL carton is about a half quart, so about Nesquik-sized or 16 fl. oz.). Relative to American cartons, though, the liquid flow is more impeded by the flap, which makes drinking slower but could serve as a form of portion control (especially apparent in how wide the mouths of American bottles and cartons can be). Integrating the inner seal like this removes the small and subsequently loose plastic pull-tab in American products, which could be an environmental issue in of itself, and maybe requires less hole-cutting in the carton although it might still need perforation.
However, this design only seems to apply to the small cartons, as I later bought a 1 L carton of skim milk, which surprisingly had no inner seal at all. Since everything is based on my limited experience thus far, I can't say whether it's a design choice of a particular brand or a broader factor of American products typically traveling farther from producer to consumer (and thus needing greater preservation measures). Nevertheless, the shark-finned cap and interlocking cutting ring are the kinds of integrative, multi-functional designs that I love to marvel.
