Cold Activation Bottles

While there’s some cleverness to Coor’s new Cold Activation bottle labels, there’s something that’s also easy to make fun of. I’m not the biggest fan of Coors -> Molson-Coors -> SABMiller-Molson-Coors, so I like to make fun of them both in real life and on the internets.

The technology is nothing new. No fancy paint or chemistry. The logo on the bottle is actually covered with human taste buds. I’m not sure how they justify this with the anti-stem cell crowd, but sometimes the simplest technologies work best. Here’s how it works:

  1. The taste bud cells are white when they’re not too cold, and can otherwise taste things
  2. When the temperature drops below the tastebud’s ability to taste (when they get numb), the they change blue
  3. Viola! Your taste buds won’t notice any flavor either!

How do they get the human taste buds? The harvesting operation is quite simple. All employees have to go to the lagering tanks and stick their tongues on the pipe used for cold filtering. Since its so cold, everyone’s tongue sticks. As the employees struggle to free their tongues, a few of the taste buds are left behind. After each shift, someone from the bottling room comes through with a scraper and collects the cells for impregnating in the labels.

Have you tried saying “Activator” with your tongue stuck to a cold-filtration pipe? It sounds funny.