Years ago, our children had great difficulty opening their favorite snack packages.

After sports practices and tournament games, when all teammates were screaming hungry and thirsty, they couldn’t break open their snack packages or twist open their water bottles. So, they turned to the grown-ups for help.  Even the adults struggled… The huskiest of the kids would grab a package or bottle to proudly open for the others. With the fervor of great strength, biting and tearing to open, the snack package would rip wide open with the contents cascading to the ground. By the end of most games, unopened, unused snack bags and water bottles were left behind. Additionally, plastic straws from juice boxes, empty bottles, caps, tear strips, and torn pouches were scattered about, blown by the wind across the field and beyond.

Bill, an inventor, kept pondering these challenges.

1. Packaging should be created for people of all abilities and ages, from youth to seniors
2. Packaging should be safe, easy to open and use.
3. Packaging should not require scissors, knives, and teeth to open.
4. Packaging should not result in litter and waste.
5. Packaging should provide a positive delight!

One afternoon, our children discovered a large sheet of plastic ‘bubble wrap. As their laughter, fun, and incessant “bubble popping” continued, Bill thought of a novel packaging solution.

He asked, “Why not embed an air bubble in the seal of flexible packages so that they are delightfully easy to open?” The idea for PopPack and the Air-Powered Package^® was born!

Cheryl, a designer, enthusiastically began to sketch out shapes for the air bubble, the seal placement, and the package forms.  Our small founding team quickly realized that we needed to work with packaging engineers to perfect the concept.  We found our first challenge-seeking innovator in Rochester (New York) who welcomed our package design challenge.

We persisted, working with many packaging engineers to further design and test the Air-Powered Package^®, as a simple and functional way of opening flexible packages with air.

What appeared to be very easy to implement instead meant years of work.  Popping a bubble of air to open a flexible package required more design, development, modification and engineering, and re-engineering. We pursued, trial after trial after trial.

For several months, we toiled late into the night. We tinkered with talented structural packaging engineers at their industrial workbenches. Patiently, we deliberated the best approaches alongside brilliant and creative packaging experts. We crafted prototypes with hand-held heat sealers and used scrap films rescued from stub rolls.  For each step, we documented the progress and carefully analyzed the failed trials and evolving results.  Progress came slowly, but we did not quit.  After many months of work, our first patent application was filed with the United States Patent Office.

Once PopPack achieved its first ‘proof of concept’, we further developed and tested new packaging forms on commercial production floors of leading global packaging machinery manufacturers in the United States.  We traveled to Europe and Japan to continue our machinery development and testing.  Fortunately, we had good success – enough to know that the idea for the Air-Powered Package^® was not only possible – but also commercially promising. It was a viable solution for the packaging industry.

For years, we circled the globe attending some of the largest packaging industry trade shows – PackExpo, Interpack, PackTech, TokyoPack, JapanPack, Packbridge, and ScanPack.  We met with major corporations, researchers, universities, scientists, leading polymer engineers and packaging experts.  PopPack’s global patent and trademark portfolio grew as we adopted and developed more novel ideas.

During several more years, we commuted to Japan each month – a package design and engineering Mecca.  We worked closely with renowned Japanese packaging engineers, in pursuit of packaging perfection.

Our PopPack team consulted with two of Japan’s largest plastic film packaging companies – Mitsui and Mitsubishi.  With many factors and ideas still to test, we had more design technology patents issued and pending.  We explored further, continuing research, testing, development, and building industry networks across Sweden, France, The Netherlands, the USA, and India.

In 2015, PopPack was honored to receive first-place awards for packaging innovation at JapanPack in Tokyo and Packbridge, in Malmö, Sweden.

During our continuing travels, we had the privilege and opportunity to openly introduce our design-tech to multinational companies and brand owners alike.  We worked with senior management teams and with the world’s leading packaging experts.  PopPack’s Air-Powered Package^® was put to the true test by focus groups, research teams, and scientists who analyzed our packaging invention in the hands of individual consumers of all ages and abilities.

We studied food waste and shelf-life preservation methods for perishable goods.  We walked through lab after lab with scientists working on bio-based polymers, recyclable films, and compostable films.  We licensed certain patents for further research and development.  Our goal was to design a universal, next-generation package that was light, durable, clean, and simple – with design-tech that was adaptable for different product uses, packaging types, shapes, and sizes.

We look back on a decade of development, prototyping, research, legal protection of global patents and trademarks, design engineering, re-design, testing, and refinement.  We are proud to finalize our commercial-ready design-tech as a “universal, all-in-one” packaging solution for both liquid and solid products.

Our design-tech is the Air-Powered Package^® with the EasyPop^® feature for packaging solids, consumer goods, liquids and beverages.

EasyPop^® makes a package clean, easy to open, safe to use, reuse, and re-close.  It is designed with a novel feature of an air bubble making it very easy to open, using only one hand.  With the pop of an air bubble, the package opens as the package seal is broken.  It’s that simple!

EasyPop®, the Air-Powered Package^® is an entirely new package design, using less plastic materials. Packages are efficient to collect, sort, and recycle. The EasyPop^® feature can work with a wide selection of films.  There are no loose parts, no caps, no fitments, and no loose strips.  It can be produced using nearly any standard commercial packaging machinery (horizontal or vertical), with only minor retrofits, using lightweight, flexible, mono-material, recyclable plastic films.

The Air-Powered Package^® with EasyPop^® applies to any shape or size flexible or semi-rigid package. It is adaptable, functional and durable for beverages, liquids, solids, powders and for containing thousands of products.

Now, as we look forward, we are enthusiastic and are well underway on customizing and commercializing our EasyPop^® design-tech package with capable commercial packaging industry partners.  Our affiliate company, Vivia Ventures B.V. in the Netherlands is commercializing EasyPop^® with packaging partners and engineering teams at its new Innovation Center in collaboration with Airofiller Equipment Solutions B.V.  Commercial packages are in production with brand owners containing liquids, flowable products, and solid consumable products.

We have our design-tech protected with 150 global patents across a wide spectrum of flexible package types suitable for encouraging sustainability and more rapid, efficient adaptation to the goals of the circular economy.

Pictured: The authors, and founders of PopPack and creators of the Air-Powered Package^® meet in their office in the Netherlands.

In the years ahead, we foresee that the Air-Powered Package^® will transform into a valuable “circular” currency, becoming “smarter and smarter”.  EasyPop^®, is designed to be universally sustainable so that packaging waste will be easily collectible recyclable, providing environmentally safe energy, or to create new high-performance durable materials, new packaging films and so much more.

We hope you will reach out to us.  Please join our journey and commitment to customize, grow and rapidly scale the Air-Powered Package^® which will we believe will deliver more sustainable and circular, high-performance, safe, and clean packaging the world over!