Warning labels, should they make you laugh?
Sheila Crosby / Graphic DesignWhile in my neighbor’s garage last week, I happened to glance down at a stack of clear storage containers and noticed this sticker on the inside of each lid…
While I realize that silly warning labels have been well documented, seeing a new one always makes me laugh. Are there people out there that would store a live baby in a clear storage container? A toddler? Maybe there are and this company felt it was their responsibility to point out the obvious dangers of doing so.
You might be thinking, well, what if a toddler is playing with the container? Yeah, OK. As a parent I get that. I want to meet the toddler that can climb in one and manage to successfully close the lid on the container they are sitting in. That would be impressive. So, I have to believe this sticker is aimed at anyone outside the container that a baby or toddler has climbed into… right?
Seeing something like this always leads me to wonder how many rounds of design iterations this sticker went through between product marketing, design and legal, not to mention other departments that would have sign off. I probably wouldn’t want to know but I would have loved to see the design brief.
Thanks for the laugh, container company.
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Sheila Crosby
How about a toddler playing with a brother or sister who was old enough to shut the lid, but not old enough to realise that it’s a really, really bad idea to do so?
(ps This is a different Sheila Crosby. I’m in Spain)
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Chad Schneider
I agree that this is a pretty funny warning sign. Maybe it isn’t designed for the toddler that climbs into the container but for the older sibling that closes the lid…
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Sheila Crosby
These are both great points. I wonder, however, how old a child would have to be before they understood what the graphic represented, let alone what suffocation meant…
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Laura
Too funny! I always enjoy reading these labels too!
Cool little story: I taught a 3 year old that the no diving sign posted every pole in my friends pool meant diving in pool head first means you could smack your head on the floor and die. The only bummer is I was with a bunch of little boys so I had to use a toy boat as a person. Wish there was a Barbie to make the visual aid simplier! He got the point. After that every 5 minutes he pointed to the sign and said “that means no diving or you could die!”
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