danemodsandy
Well-known member
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2007
- Messages
- 1,701
Christine:
That bag door design has always been a mystery to me. I cannot see how it served any functional purpose, and as a bit of styling change, it would have been expensive, requiring a complete re-tooling of the bag door die.
On the other hand, Interstate did seem willing to mess about with the styling, even when it didn't really accomplish anything. The C-2 was very sleek, with no extraneous "character lines" to spoil its superb surface development. But beginning with the C-4, a raised design of character lines was added to the sides of the canister. It still made for a handsome vacuum, but the extraordinary purity of the C-2's design was sacrificed in the process. As a journalist whose field is architecture and design, it's my opinion that the C-2 was one of the best industrial designs of the 20th century. Subsequent Compacts (and TriStars, including my own beloved CXL), are not quite so good from a design standpoint, being just that little bit over-ornamented.
Where Interstate's styling changes really get mysterious is that the Compact was sold door-to-door. It wasn't as if people had been seeing the same design in stores year-in-year-out, making it necessary to refresh the design somehow. (There was a retail version of the Compact called the Revelation, it's true). But most people's first sight of the Compact was when the salesman brought it into their house- the styling could have been brand-new or ten years old, and they wouldn't have known the difference.
That bag door design has always been a mystery to me. I cannot see how it served any functional purpose, and as a bit of styling change, it would have been expensive, requiring a complete re-tooling of the bag door die.
On the other hand, Interstate did seem willing to mess about with the styling, even when it didn't really accomplish anything. The C-2 was very sleek, with no extraneous "character lines" to spoil its superb surface development. But beginning with the C-4, a raised design of character lines was added to the sides of the canister. It still made for a handsome vacuum, but the extraordinary purity of the C-2's design was sacrificed in the process. As a journalist whose field is architecture and design, it's my opinion that the C-2 was one of the best industrial designs of the 20th century. Subsequent Compacts (and TriStars, including my own beloved CXL), are not quite so good from a design standpoint, being just that little bit over-ornamented.
Where Interstate's styling changes really get mysterious is that the Compact was sold door-to-door. It wasn't as if people had been seeing the same design in stores year-in-year-out, making it necessary to refresh the design somehow. (There was a retail version of the Compact called the Revelation, it's true). But most people's first sight of the Compact was when the salesman brought it into their house- the styling could have been brand-new or ten years old, and they wouldn't have known the difference.
