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I think you might have posted this as an example of horrendously cluttered design, but in all seriousness I’m actually sort of convinced that this is the best penetrating catalyst on the market now.

I don’t even have to do the “eye opening test” for this product to totally appeal to my inner science geek.

That stuff works awesome!

I’d buy it. Pretty convincing. Says one thing, and says it strong.

Reminds me of Mark Boulton’s ALA article about whitespace. Some products do better when they appear loud and down-market. I think this might be a good example.

What, pray tell, is a penetrating catalyst?

Wow… amongst all of the noise, a perfect signal—advertising ephemera. First off, PB Blaster is an amazing product, but don’t get it in your eyes…it’s not pleasant. I build for my profession and fix for fun. PB blaster has helped me in many a tough spots.

The packaging is horribly amazing and should never be changed—it’s engaging; it’s descriptive; it’s unique. So many strive for those characteristics but fall short.

FYI – put gasoline in a styrofoam cup and it does the same thing – its not some magical formula they have

It certainly can’t compete with the text on the bottle of Dr. Bronners.

I’ve been using PB B ’Laster for years. It’s a best kept secret. It works much better than the well known competition, WD-40 (http://www.wd40.com/files/images/1gal31675249.jpg).

Several years ago, PB Blaster tried to update the modernize this 50 year old design. Customers complained that the product did not work like it used to. They returned to this design and sales returned. It may not be “pretty”, but it is instantly recognizable in our industrial sales channel.

The most genius part is the apostrophe in B’laster—it worms its way into your mind, begging you to solve the riddle of what this could possibly contract. Big Laster? Bright Plaster?

What an awesome design, I would buy the product if I walked past it in a hardware store, and I don’t even know what it does.

Reading the label is like watching an informercial, it’s genius.

It’s Pop Art. It belongs in a museum.

@JD You beat me to the Superthrive comparison!

Looks like it was designed by an SEO consultant with poor aesthetic sense :)

“As seen on TV!”

I love it.

One of the reasons PB works great for me is that I can always pick it out of a shelf from across the garage. It definitely stands out on my aerosol can shelf.

As a non-American, there’s something that just screams “America!” about that packaging. And I mean that in the best possible way. It’s just so… American.

It’s loud, yet earnest.

(being Danish myself, I wonder if DHH has the same reaction?)

I was going to comment: “only in Ohio” (full disclosure – I live in Ohio) but, a quick visit to the Blaster Corp. website tells they recently gave away a Porsche! Now, I’m gonna have to keep an eye on their website for the next big giveaway. There’s much to be learned from this little, privately owned company.

Easy to find on the shelf, but this stuff just plain works. Better than anything on the market, and it is so established in the folklore/word-of-mouth of the mechanics’ world, packaging doesn’t matter.

Nothing works better than this stuff. The Dr. Bronner’s – style marketing is fun, but the fact is that this is the stuff you break out when you’re dealing with the really tough jobs. I still usually turn to WB-40, not because WB-40 is better but because this stuff will stain damn near anything it touches, and because it penetrates so well that even if you don’t think it’s touching something, it soon will. But if you’ve got two pieces of metal that are fused together and a bit of time with the blaster doesn’t fix it, you might as well break out the cutting torch and start over—it lives up to the label. And that’s the point, isn’t it? It’d be easy to mock the advertising if the product didn’t live up to it, but when you have a product this good, the marketing is secondary…

It’s the High Flash Point Formula.

Kinda like the HP-12C calculator, HP has been trying to get rid of it for years, it ugly and uses Reverse Polish Notation (for real) but people are obsessed with it.