The collection in total has many contributors from around the globe and it's because of this that the collection has such a rich variety. There are two main curators of the collection who have the specimens documented, cleaned, archived, and preserved.
Pixy Stoneskipper
I began collecting condiment packets in November of 2003. Initially the purpose of the collection was a more practical one. I came to the conclusion that ketchup was no longer a reasonable thing to spend money on. A handful of packets here and there would do just fine. I began to pick up other condiments as well. I stopped at a variety of locations in order to gather new types of condiments. It was around this time that I discovered how many different condiment packets existed. A collector by nature, the only logical thing for me to do was attempt to get every different packet design I possibly could.
I carefully remove the contents of my packets by making an incision along one of the short seams on the back. (I prefer the righthand or bottom seam.) I rinse the inside of the packets thoroughly to ensure all sauce is expelled. (I employ a drop of dish soap for oily condiments.) I then wait until the packets are completely dry before I place them in baseball card cases to preserve them cleanly and safely for many generations.
My collection has grown quickly since its inception, largely due to generous packet donations from my family and friends. If you think you have a packet that I do not, then please consider sending it to me.
Eric "Tear Here" Thompson
In the autumn of 2007, I was in the commons at college getting some food, and the central island in the building had all the silverware, napkins, and condiments for communal access. The staff member who maintained this area must have had an aesthetic eye because the way the condiment packets were arranged were: ketchup, bbq sauce, mustard, relish, mayo, tartar sauce; a nearly complete ROYGBIV array. One day I came into the commons and noticed that the brand of mayo had changed, so that the rainbow illusion was ruined. I quickly rummaged to the bottom of the mayo packets to find the last representatives of the blue version along with a few of the others for posterity.
From that point on, I was hooked. It was always a goal of mine to find new packets of each sauce type to try to preserve the history at that point in time. It scratched the same itch as collecting baseball cards, but with a unique twist that it felt like collecting something that was underappreciated.
Packets are so ubiquitous, you can recognize them merely by their shape and by their color, I thought it was a pretty obvious thing to capture whenever I came across them, and it was mostly a free hobby. And the rest is history!
Criteria
It is important to set some guidelines and parameters when starting a collection. In the beginning, I didn't have very stringent rules regarding what I'd consider fair game, but I did adhere to a few key principles. The following rules make the collection more aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable to maintain:
1. Only squeezable "tear-off-the-corner" style packets are included. Dipping tubs, creamers, and butter tubs cannot be preserved to my liking, and are easily crushed or spilled.
2. No spices, salts, sugars, or other dry accoutrements or anything generally found in paper packaging. There are far too many different sugar packets and many other collectors are focusing their efforts on them. It is my belief that including such items harms the fundamental nature of this collection. We do sauce packets.
3. Minor design variations absolutely count as new unique packets. In fact, that's kind of the hallmark of the collection after so many years: Seeing the design iterate in abrupt ways, but more often than not, in subtle ways.
Database
The mechanisms behind this archive have been a dedicated and considered effort to document, categorize, and present condiment packets. I tried to do this in a way that keeps a historic snapshot while keeping things fun and easy to visualize. I have a background in computer science but (more importantly) an engrained instinct to catalog (some may say hoard); as such, it's been a fun exercise in finding the best and most efficient way to show off the collection.
While the heart of the database is a few simple (but thoughtfully considered) JSON files, the brain behind it is a powerful javascript library, Datatables.
This is a free-to-use tool that is highly customizable and almost endlessly adaptable if you have enough imagination. I'm by no means an expert, but the wide adoption coupled with the company's forum is a boundless source of information to craft it to fit any need. I highly recommend checking it out if you have the requirement for a way to display large datasets.
While the modern concept of web design is typically a "mobile first" approach, I designed this website with a desktop experience in mind. The nature of the collection warrants a large screen and the power of the database works best when using a dedicated computer. That said, I did my best to make everything also accessible on mobile platforms.
Instructions
The following is the tool you'll find on any sauce page. It's a bar with different filtering, sorting, and organizing widgets to help search through the collection. Click on each element to understand its full functionality
Showing ### of ### entries
View Type Toggle:
This button will cycle you through three different views of the gallery: Thumbnails, full datatable, and cards.
Color Sort:
After a bunch of trial and error, I was able to determine the average color of each packet so that it can be sorted in the table based on a blend of hue, saturation, and brightness. This isn't particularly useful with sauces that don't have a lot of representatives in their respective category, or even useful at all, but it does look impressive when you view all the packets on a single page!
Date Sort:
This button allows you to sort the packets by the year they were found in. Many older packets are guesses but close enough to give you an idea of which era they might come from.
Table Info:
A quick reference that shows how many packets are displayed on the particular page you're on. It responds to filters applied so you can see how the filters narrow down each packet type.
Clear Button:
When you apply a filter or enter a search, this button becomes active as a quick way to clear out all filters.
Search Bar:
Realtime searching of the packets on the page. You can search any keyword, many of which that are not obvious from any of the displayed data. For example, searching "bottle" will show any packet which has a bottle represented on the packet (through metadata tags I've added for each packet), so play around!
Thumbnail Size Slider:
If you find a sauce that has many representatives on a page and would like to display more on the viewing window, use this slider to shrink the packet thumbnails down to a more manageable size.
Filter Show/Hide Handle:
By default, the filters are all hidden as to give the cleanest look to the page in case you just wanted a visual experience, but clicking this button will reveal the full suite of filters. It can then be hidden when clicked again. I'm still honing in the functionality to making it swipable, as may be the tendency you have when viewing on mobile. It works, but it's touchy (pun?). Clicking anywhere off the pane will also autoclose it.
FAQ
Why?
Human beings seem to always gravitate toward order. Knolling seems to be in our DNA, seeing patterns, sorting by some easy-to-follow criteria. This just happened to be one of those things that begged for such a treatment. It's been showcased by very few people throughout Internet history, and I am striving to keep the tradition alive.
Why no full catalog of Taco Bell sayings?
By the sheer nature of the collection, you'd think that these would be a natural outgrowth. Apart from being readily documented, it seemed to be a gimmick that has now been adopted by a number of other outlets (i.e. Jack-in-the-Box, Cholula hot sauce). While it does inspire collecting, the purpose of this collection is more a design-focused snapshot than an exhaustive list of individual packets.
How many do you have?
A lot. I am slowly introducing new packets each week from my collection, partially as a way to train some consistnecy, partially because, again, I have a lot. I have probably close to 1000 that are emptied, dried, and kept in a bag until I can adequately document each one, several hundred more that need the cleaning treatment. Which is another reason this gallery is useful for me: preserving these for posterity in a cataloged and methodical way.
What's your goal?
Sharing. Documenting. Ultimately I will be donating the entirety of the collection to a museum, I think it would be absolutely stunning to see a wall in the Smithsonian with every packet on display in a ROYGBIV array.
Do you eat the sauces?
I try my very best to never waste. In general, each packet gets emptied directly onto a sandwich, but when I'm feeling inspired to put a movie on and empty 4 dozen packets at a stretch, I do rifle through my inventory and pick the older packets that probably contain sauce that has turned anyway.
Do packets ever go bad?
The sauce itself, yes. The packets themselves, yes. If you wait too long to empty a packet, the more acidic sauces will eat through and stain the outer layers. It's been my goal to put each cleaned packet into a penny sleeve and then into a baseball card top loader. I don't know that they're specifically rated for UV protection, but if they're good enough for Mickey Mantle, they're good enough for Heinz.
The color sort is cool, how did you do it?
This is actually a pretty complex and delicate process and took a deeper dive into color theory than I was expecting. Obviously you want all the reds together, all the blues together, etc, but what about the black, grey, and white packets within those hues? First I converted each average color from a RGB (Red/Green/Blue) value (using Fast Average Color) to an HSL (Hue/Saturation/Lightness) value. I could then weight each of those components more or less heavily to get a better transition between adjacent colors, heavily weighing hue first, then closely following by saturation, and lastly accounting for the lightness with a little less importance. There's no perfect way to do this that I've found and it all comes down to what looks best to the author. As I add more and more packets, I may adjust the weighting to get a better blend between the color spaces present in the collection.
Other Notable Collections
Fruitsticker.de
A site showcasing a collection of stickers found on various produce.