Intermodular interfaith

Apparently the good folks at Pyrex figured that my personal collection of over one hundred of their multi-purpose kitchenware was still less than what I ought to have, and so they took it upon themselves to send me a bit more, free of charge.

A six pack, but this is a non-profit blog, and I don't accept freebies from anyone.  So I took it over to Interfaith Caring Ministries for donation.  More about them in a near-future post. 

My husband saw this package arrive unsolicited and asked me, "Can you please blog about Toyota next?!"
:-)

This nice gesture puzzled me because I couldn't figure out what prompted it.  Sure, I wrote a blog post extolling the virtues of how a healthy eating strategy could be maximized with the help of Pyrex.  But there's nothing special about a blog post like that - lots of people do that kind of thing for sport, plug products hoping that the manufacturers will bestow upon them some kind of windfall in exchange for the free advertising.  But I'm not a monetized blog, and my traffic is very low by internet standards.  Nothing about that post warranted a de facto pay-back. 

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if perhaps I actually had nailed them on their marketing intent, such that their gift was more a cerebral kudos than a commercial acknowledgment.   

In that same blog post, I compared the Pyrex system to the way freight is handled all over the world using intermodal containers. 

I have always wondered why on earth Pyrex chose the colors that they did for their lids.  Ten years ago when I started collecting, it was mostly navy blue stuff on the market.  But the neon reddish orange came out a few years ago, along with lighter orange, green, and a lighter blue shortly thereafter.

Seriously??  Whose kitchen would this stuff color-coordinate with??  Answer: nobody's!!

There isn't a single kitchen in America that stuff would color-coordinate with in the literal sense.  There's no shopper out there to whom they could possibly appeal on esthetic grounds with this product line.  But stacked up like that, it does look a hell of lot like container boxes reinterpreted for the kitchen, does it not??

Any food, any freezer, any quantity. 

Image from DNJ Intermodal Services. 

And when people see intermodal containers, they usually see a lot of intermodal containers.  So that remains my front-running theory:  Either intentionally or unwittingly, Pyrex chose its bizarre lid colors so that people would form an unconscious association between their products and intermodal containers, of which a lot are required to get any given product management job done.  Hence a lot of Pyrex needs to be purchased to get a kitchen job done. 

It's an utterly brilliant conceptual association, when you think about it. 

And *I* clearly fell for it hook, line, and sinker, didn't I??

Screengrabbed from this Pyrex page. 

Regardless of intention or accident, it's the best product I've found for my particular job.  Hopefully the staff at Interfaith Caring Ministries will find a good use for their new pieces, and I will have a post about them shortly.