Yes, provided it is properly stored and the bottle is undamaged - commercially packaged lemon juice will typically carry a " Best By," "Best if Used By," "Best Before", or "Best When Used By" date but this is not a safety date, it is the manufacturer's estimate of how long the lemon juice will remain at peak quality. I keep reordering this. “However, the uniqueness of the squeeze lemon packaging set the bar very high for brands following them into court with a complaint over passing off.”. (Drew McLellan/Flickr). The Jif lemon wasn’t a real lemon, but it had marketed itself as a clever substitute for nearly 30 years by the time it faced the first true challenge to its domination. Free 2-day shipping. Uses for Lemon Juice (Which, it should be said, is better known as a peanut-butter-related brand name in the U.S.). Who had this idea, and why was it so successful? Substitute lemon juice concentrate for equal proportions in any recipe calling for lemon juice. “The purity of this idea, though, exposed the brand to imitation and costly litigation,” brand consultant Silas Amos suggested in a 2012 Marketing article. When it comes to commercially bottled lemon juice, it varies quite a lot. Promise. I usually refill the pitcher once before I start over with a new lemon. But in terms of combining novelty and function, the lemon hit all the bases—you only need a little lemon juice at a time, and it needs to be stored for long periods. “Plastics are being used more and more in household items,” the article claimed, as it showed examples of such bottles being used for window cleaners and and dampening laundry about to be ironed. $16.95. I also typically use bottled lemon juice, as my budget does not allow for fresh lemons. — Ernie @ Tedium. So, that gets us about halfway there—squeezable plastic products were about to take over the kitchen. Between his many internet side projects, he finds time to hang out with his wife Cat, who's funnier than he is. The gist of the three-part test, as formulated by Lord Oliver of Aylmerton: Reckitt & Colman easily hit all three parts of this test, and it was assisted by the fact that they held a monopoly of sorts on plastic lemons until ReaLemon came along. Be sure to check out the front page of the website, too—it's full of cool stuff. Today’s Tedium investigates. ReaLemonâs distinctive fruit-shaped 2.5 fl. In this case, drinking plain water would be more beneficial than the lemon from a squeeze bottle. In fact, the lawsuit itself was something of a Hail Mary pass to salvage some form of control over the brand’s destiny. As a result of this case, Borden wasn’t barred from making a plastic lemon that looked like a real one, but they had to put much more work into ensuring that they weren’t simply succeeding by creating marketing confusion with the Jif lemon. They are normally made from a material called, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) which comes from petroleum hydrocarbons. 4.3. They tried other devices for this idea. However, a legal document suggests they originally came from Italy in the post-World War II era. The only change I made was to take 1 cup of water and one cup of sugar and heated it to become a syrup. A video of Jif lemons being manufactured. Disclosure: From time to time, we may use affiliate links in our content—but only when it makes sense. Take the mess-work out of adding lemon flavor to your favorite dishes and drinks with ReaLemon 100% lemon juice. 6 product ratings. (OK, limes are as well, but they’re kind of a similar deal.) If another company attempts to sell a lemon in the same vein as Jif, the company’s current owner, Unilever, isn’t afforded the same kinds of protection for the brand that other kinds of products might earn. Itâs a good source of vitamin C. Citrus fruits like lemons are high in vitamin C, a primary antioxidant ⦠(For Americans and anyone else who isn’t British: Shrove Tuesday, also known as Pancake Day, is the day before Ash Wednesday. “Coldcrops, Ltd. initially passed off their lemon juice packs as the American ‘Realemon’ brand and then, ‘after an objection by the then Board of Trade,’ simply shortened the name to ‘Realem.’”. But a big reason may have something to do with the specific use case for lemon juice. For water on the go, I squeeze half of a lemon into a glass quart jar and fill with water. You can’t trademark nature, but sometimes your particular squeeze on the issue is what sets you apart. ReaLemon Lemon Juice From Concentrate is 100 percent natural-strength juice and convenient to use with no slicing or squeezing required. (Not the best email newsletter, but we try. Someone had the idea to sell lemon juice inside a squeezable container that looks exactly like a lemon, and it’s been something of a hit product ever since. oz bottle is a space-saving kitchen sidekick, ideal for adding a delicious twist of lemon to your favorite seafood and poultry recipes, plus itâs great in marinades and it brightens up both hot and cold beverages. Check out our lemon juice bottle selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our jars & containers shops. Ernie Smith is the editor of Tedium, and an active internet snarker. of lemon juice each day. Today, I want to talk about a common, but relatively obscure use for plastic: As a way to sell lemon juice. Some bottles of lemon juice are loaded with preservatives, which keep the juice fine for quite a few months. ... from-concentrate plastic squeeze bottles of citrus juice. Sorry that was confusing; we cleared that section up. As we have mentioned above, lemon juice can be obtained freshly squeezed from the fruit or bought from the store in a bottle. In fact, it actually squeezes real lemons. In other words, we literally just finished Shrove Tuesday, so no lemon-juice-seasoned pancakes for you.) Juice can replace lemon zest too, but the flavors are dissimilar. “Perhaps adding one ‘twist’ to the lemon design might have turned an obvious idea into a more distinctive (and protectable) brand?”, That made the legal case around Reckitt & Colman Ltd. v Borden Inc, decided by the House of Lords in 1990, an important part of British case law, as it created a test for proving whether a product deserved legal protection despite otherwise being generic—a concept known in British law as “passing off.”. The U.S. company Borden, which then owned the ReaLemon brand and was doing pretty well selling lemon juice to people throughout Europe, saw the success that Jif was having with its plastic lemons in the U.K., and decided that it wanted in on this market. discussing the rise of lemon-shaped plastic containers, designer named Bill Pugh deserves the credit. But there was a problem: around the same time, this other guy named Stanley Wagner came up with a very similar lemon idea, which he had briefly sold under the Realemon brand name until he had been called out for infringing an American trademark. Simply: It’s usually not a beverage on its own, but an ingredient, which makes it a perfect match for squeeze bottles. My doctor has recommended that I drink 4 oz. “It’s also interesting to note how little is made of Wagner’s obvious trademark infringement,” Beach Packaging Design pondered in its article. It shows up in all sorts of places, from laptop cases, to CDs, to bottles. All rights reserved. From a marketing perspective, the idea behind this bottle was easy to start with as a branding idea—because, effectively, Mother Nature had already done most of the branding work for them. The lemon, initially, was sold under the brand name Hax. item 7 Realemon Juice 2 Ct/48 Oz N/A N/A Lemon Juice Size OS - Realemon Juice 2 Ct/48 Oz N/A N/A Lemon Juice Size OS. Pugh was the chief plastics designer for a company named Cascelloid, which was the only company in the United Kingdom—and one of only two companies in the world at the time—that had a machine that was able to blow plastic bottles into a molded shape.