Mega Monster Energy 24 fl-oz aluminum can with screw cap

There has been a lot of activity on the aluminum front in recent years. Aluminum bottles are starting to show up as packaging for many different products ranging from beer to soft drinks, competing against PET or glass bottles, and aluminum cans.

While aluminum bottles do not offer any significant advantage over glass or PET bottles other than branding potential, they do offer significant advantages over aluminum cans.

Cans, despite having strong tactile elements regarding their opening action, are problematic packages. They have sharp edges around the lip-contact area. They do not reclose. They do not perform well either in drink-from, or in pour-from applications despite the fact that they are commonly used for both.

Nevertheless, they are popular with consumers, mainly due to their higher attractiveness due to their opening crack. Adding a reclosable opening to a can, in theory, should improve an imperfect product. Then again, how would that compare against an aluminum bottle?

Tamper Evidence

Since the cap on this package does not have a built-in tamper ring, the package has to have another mechanism as tamper evidence. For this package, it is a rather large heat-shrink film around the opening.

This makes the opening a two-step opening requiring two independent actions to open. Adding insult to injury is the fact that this enormous piece of film needs to be separately discarded once opening is complete. The size of the large film does not imply environmental friendliness either.

Additionally, the package has sub-par usability, especially for on-the-go drinks, which we assume this one is. While the larger size and reclosability may imply portioning, it is hard to imagine how this would work around the family dinner table.

Lip Contact

This package has a large opening with a well defined rounded lip-contact area. This is a great sensory-appeal feature that makes the package a better drink-from package.

Reclosability

The cap opens with a quarter turn of the cap, and also closes with a quarter turn. While this may seem like a good thing, consumers typically seek reassurance that the cap actually sealed.

Too few or too many turns both leave the consumer with questionable assurance that the resealing is complete.

Conclusions

Pros:

Nice lip contact.
Appealing large opening design.

Cons:

The package is an overkill without any significant advantage over aluminum bottles. It is so overdesigned, it can be repeatedly used to carry other products after the energy drink is consumed.
Wasteful tamper-proof design.
Not enough turns in the opening (or closing) action.
Two-step openings do not work well in on-the-go applications.
Loud bang when first opened. This is a bit of a safety concern. We suspect not having enough turns in the opening prevents bleeding off the pressure prior to full opening.

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