Abstract:
A beverage package that in one embodiment can be described as a musical wine bag has a sound emitting device that plays a tune when a beverage container is pressed into the beverage package. The sound emitting device is commercially available and has an integral switch that is actuated by pressing, e.g., the top and bottom of the device together. A specially designed locator positions the sound emitting device underneath it in the bottom of the beverage package and positions beverage containers so that the sound emitting device speaker is not covered. The locator is further designed to orient beverage containers into upright positions and transmit sufficient force from smaller ones sited away from the sound emitting device to actuate the device.

Description:
BACKGROUND 
     1. Technical Field 
     This invention relates to a beverage package that can produce sound effects such as songs, melodies, or another message. As an example, a wine bag has a sound emitting device located inside that plays a song when a wine bottle in the bag is pushed downward. 
     2. Background 
     Amusement devices that use a sound emitting device comprising an integrated circuit connected to a small speaker to play a short message with sound effects are well known. For example, toy ambulances that emit a siren sound along with short phrases were popular children&#39;s toys at the time this invention was made. Also, well known were birthday cards that play “Happy Birthday” when opened. 
     Combinations of sound emitting devices and packaging are also known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,137,410, issued to Sepulveda on Oct. 24, 2000, entitled “Bag with Sound Emitting Device,” discloses a festive bag having a U-shaped pair of handles that have metal plates on the inside of the handles. When the handles are separated, electrical contact between the metal plates is broken and a sound emitting device located in the interior of the bag is activated. 
     U.S. Pat. No. 5,795,209, issued to Moore on Aug. 18, 1998, entitled “Package Amusement Device and Method,” discloses a detection means, integrated with a packaging means, for detecting an interaction, e.g., touch, with the packaging means that is electrically connected to a microprocessor means that can generate a (human) sense detectible signal, e.g., sound. When the packaging means is a box, the detection means is a transducer mounted antipodal to the microprocessor means. The transducer and a battery appear to be mounted underneath the top and a microprocessor speech chip and speaker mounted in the bottom. Activation of the transducer causes the production of sound from a position away from the transducer&#39;s position. Another example is an egg shell-type package having multiple detectors. 
     In spite of considerable interest in coupling sound emitting devices with packaging, there does not seem to be any commercially available examples, at least not with packaging suitable for containing beverage bottles, such as wine and the like. Since the retail price of such packaging can be as low as a few 2001 dollars, the manufactured cost must be appreciably less than a dollar. This puts a premium on using off the shelf components requiring minimal assembly. Having a sound emitting unit connected by wires to a remote switch increases the degrees of design freedom, but in a paper bag will require tape or other attachment means to keep the wires from intruding into the carrying space of the bag. 
     SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
     Accordingly, the major objective of the invention is to provide a beverage package with a sound emitting device that can be assembled with minimal labor using a minimum number of parts that will play a tune or other sound emission when a beverage container is pressed into the package. Using wine as the beverage and a paper wine bag for illustrative examples, another objective is to position the wine bottle so that sound-emitting unit is not activated solely by the weight of a wine bottle. A further objective is to locate different size wine bottles so that the sound emitting device is not muffled. A still further objective is to avoid any permanent attachments to the wine bag so that it can be reused or the sound emitting device readily replaced. 
     These objectives are realized in a design that can use any common paper wine bag, a commercially available self-contained sound-emitting device with an integral switch, and a custom, but inexpensive plastic, or other material, locator unit. The sound emitting device is placed in the bottom of the bag (herein, the words “top” and “bottom” are used in their usual and customary sense) followed by the locator unit. The commercially available sound emitting device is contained in an approximately matchbox-size plastic box that has a speaker projecting through a spring-loaded top cover and a switch that is actuated by pushing down on the top cover in a defined manner. 
     The locator has protrusions that position the sound emitting device underneath it in a corner of the bottom of the paper bag with an aperture for the speaker. The locator has raised bottle slides with selected radii and position for the center of the radii that act as bottle positioners. The radii center is positioned on the other side of a locator center line than the speaker. As a result of the bottle locating design, large wine bottles do not cover the speaker nor actuate the switch unless pressed down. The locator is adequately stiff so that a small wine bottles located away from the sound emitting device will still activate the switch when they are pressed down. 
     Provisions are made for the sound emitting device to be demountably retained by the locator so that merchants can separately stock wine bags, locators and sound emitting devices with different outputs. 
    
    
     DESCRIPTION OF THE VARIOUS VIEWS 
     FIG. 1A shows a top view of the cover of a commercially available sound emitting device; 
     FIG. 1B shows a side view of the sound emitting device in FIG.  1 A. 
     FIG. 1B shows a side cut-away view of the sound emitting device shown in FIG.  1 B. 
     FIG. 2A shows a top view of a locator; 
     FIG. 2B shows a combined cut-away and cross-sectional view of the locator in FIG. 2A; and 
     FIG. 3 illustrates a cross-section of an assembly of a sound emitting device of FIG. 1 inside the locator of FIG. 2, both inside a beverage carrier with beverage containers disposed on the locator. 
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     FIG. 1 shows a top, side, and cross-sectional views of a commercially available sound emitting device  11  having approximate dimensions of 1.7×1.2×0.8 inches. The body of the unit has a base  13  and a cover  15  that are forced apart by springs  17 . The cover is constrained by projections  19  from the base  13  on each side (two are opposite the two shown in FIG.  1 B), each protruding into four slots  21  in the cover  15 . For later explanation, in FIG. 1B one end of the cover  15  is shown depressed as far as possible against the bottom  13  while the other end is not depressed. The cross sectional view, FIG. 1C, further shows a battery compartment  23 , a speaker  25  affixed to the cover  15  with holes in the cover  26 , an IC containing circuit board  27  affixed to the base  13 , and a switch  29  affixed to the circuit board  27  and located directly under the speaker  25 . The switch is a tactile type similar to those found under hand-held calculator keypads. Connecting wires between the battery, speaker, and circuit board are not shown. 
     A suitable commercially available unit is a model AS-2009 from Asia Electronic Industries Co., Ltd. (Unit 7, 20/F., Global Trade Ctr., 15 Wing Kin Road, Kwai Chung, Hong Kong—www.asiaindust.com.hk). Smaller units are available, but they are limited to melodies without words. 
     The sound emitting device is activated as follows. With no pressure on the cover  15 , the springs  17  separate it from the base. To play a tune, for example, the cover  15  is pushed against the base  13  forcing the speaker  25  against the switch  29 . In order to play the tune again, the switch  29  must be released and depressed. If continuously depressed, the tune plays to the end and stops. As suggested in the side view in FIG. 1B, if the cover  15  is depressed only on the end away from the speaker  25 , the switch  29  will not be activated. The speaker end or the entire cover must be depressed. 
     FIG. 2 shows a top view and a combined side and cross-sectional view of the locator unit  31 , a shell-like structure that can be produced by vacuum forming a polypropylene sheet, for example. The purpose of the locator is to locate both a sound emitting device and a beverage container within a beverage package. The locator illustrated is specially adapted for the sound emitting device illustrated in FIG. 1 and a round bottle such as a wine bottle. It has a bottle surface  33  on which is a long bottle slide  35  and a short bottle slide  37 . As shown in FIG. 2A, both bottle slides have a common radius, R 1 , centered on the center line of the short dimension of the locator but offset a distance, s, from the center of the long dimension. The sound emitting device  11  is under the area designated LOC  11 . A speaker aperture  39  is in the bottle surface  33  and there is a downward recess  41  that serves two functions as described below. From the cross sectional view, FIG. 2B, it can be seen that bottle slides  35  and  37  make a slope θ with the bottle surface  33  and have radii in the corners of R 2 . 
     Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, the sound emitting device  11  under LOC  11  has its speaker holes  26  aligned with the speaker aperture  39 . The locator shell is compliant enough so that the sound emitting device cover can be forced past the shell indents  45  that protrude under the sound emitting device cover  15  to hold the sound emitting device in place. The sound emitting device purposely protrudes a distance, d 1 , from the bottom of the locator unit. The distance, d 1 , must be large enough so that the locator  31  can cause the sound emitting device top  15  to traverse the actuation (off-to-on) region of the switch  29 . Having d 1  larger than the length of the slot  21  is not useful. Preferably, d 1  should be as small as possible to avoid excessively tilting the wine bottles. Since the springs  17  are pre-loaded with the weight of a wine bottle, they are slightly compressed and so d 1  can be smaller than the slot length. (The springs must be strong enough so that wine bottle weight alone will not activate the switch  29 .) After some experimentation with a selected sound emitting device, the minimum d 1  can be determined. 
     In a vacuum forming process, the thickness of the locator  31  depends on the starting thickness of the sheet stock and how much it is stretched over the tool. The starting thickness is designated as being a thickness, t, but the thickness of the skirts  43  can be less than half of this. (Notwithstanding that the cross-hatch illustrating section  2 B in FIG. 2B is shown as having uniform thickness. Also, t is shown as having too small a thickness.) The function of the recess  41  is to locate the sound emitting device  11  in the horizontal direction and provide two of the horizontal indents  45  for location in the vertical. However, the recess  41  adds considerable stiffening to the structure of the locator  31 . The amount of stiffening will, in general, be a function of the depth of the recess (the width is much less important), but it must clear the bottom of the locator unit by a distance, d 2 . This is so that when the locator is pressed down to activate the switch  29 , a wine bag that may be uneven does not interfere with the bottom of the recess  41 . 
     FIG. 3 illustrates the bottom portion of a cross-section of a wine bag  51  having a bottom  53 , on which is disposed the locator unit  31  enclosing a sound emitting device  11  underneath. A wine or similar bottle  55  is disposed on the locator bottle surface  33  between the bottle slides  35  and  37 . As shown, bottles  55 S and  55 L with two different diameters are illustrated corresponding approximately to a 750 ml size standard wine bottle and the same volume larger champagne bottle from a particular manufacturer. 
     Assembly and operation in a wine bag  51  is as follows. The sound emitting device  11  is placed in the locator  31  with its speaker holes  25  directly under the speaker aperture  39 . As illustrated in FIG. 2B, the sound emitting device  11  protrudes a distance, d 1 , below the locator skirts  43 . This assembly is placed in the bottom of the wine bag  51  with the sound emitting device  11  and portions of the skirts  43  resting on the bag bottom. A wine bottle  55  is placed on top of the locator unit. As shown, a large bottle  55 L would be centered between the bottle slides, but a smaller one  55 S could be located at the side furthest from the sound emitting device  11 . 
     To work properly, the static weight of the largest bottle  55 L should not be enough to activate the switch  29  in the sound emitting device. Otherwise, the unit will play once and not repeat, even if the bottle is pressed down. On the other hand, pressing down on the smallest bottle  55 S should activate the switch even if it is located furthest from the switch, as illustrated. The problem of small bottle activation cannot be solved by locating the sound emitting device  11  more centrally, because then the speaker  25  would be covered by larger bottles and muffled. 
     Because of the need to locate the speaker  25  at an extreme corner LOC  11 , the locator unit  31  must be stiff enough to depress the speaker end of the sound emitting device  11  when a small bottle  55 S is pushed down on the opposite end of the locator. Very large volume production, e.g., 100 thousand units, might justify the cost of a mold for an injection molding process. In that case, stiff plastics such as polycarbonates could be used. In the case of vacuum formed polypropylene, however, the downward recess  41  is needed for stiffness. In one experiment, the recess depth did not leave any clearance, d 2 . A bottom part was cut off to provide clearance, but this weakened the locator structure so much that pressing on a small wine bottle did not activate the sound emitting device. 
     It is important that larger bottles  55 L placed in the bag at random slide into place away from the speaker aperture  39 . This is aided by the slope θ and radii of curvature, R 1 , of the circular intersection of the bottle slide  35  and  37  slopes with the locator bottle surface  33 . The common center of curvatures of the bottle slides is offset from the locator  31  center enough so that the speaker aperture  39  remains uncovered. 
     In one experiment, instead of bottle slides, raised rings were used. This was not satisfactory because in some cases smaller bottles placed in the bag settled into a position with part of their bottom on the raised ring and part on the bottle surface  33 . It was found that using adequate radii, R 2 , at the top of the slides and an angle, θ, that was considerably less than 90 degrees caused bottles to slip off the top of the slides  33  and slide down into position. 
     After some experimentation with prototypes, it was found that the following dimensions worked reasonably well: t=0.060 in.; R 1 =1.7 in.; R 2 = ¼ in.,θ= 30 degrees; d 1 = {fraction (3/32)} in.; d2=   ⅛ in.; s= 0.25 in.; h 1 = ⅝ in.; and h2= 1 in. these should not be considered as exact values; some variation is possible, of course. For example, bottles would still be guided into position on the bottle surface  33  if the angle, θ, were somewhat larger (steeper), e.g., 45°, but the height, h 2 , were also increased. 
     Having described the preferred embodiment at the time of filing, it should be noted that the basic design can be adapted to other packages and manufacturing methods. For example, light cardboard or even cloth beverage packages are sometimes used. In this case, the locator should intersect the perimeter of the bottom of such package. 
     In addition to manufacturing the locator from plastic, sheet metal or wire frames could be used as long as stiffness and geometrical form factors are obtained. Another possibility is to use cardboard. Curved shapes can be accomplished by impregnating with wax, heating with steam, and forming on a mold in a manner similar to vacuum forming. 
     Instead of demountably retaining the sound emitting device in the locator, adhesives could be used to effect a more permanent mounting if retrofitting is not needed. 
     Commonly available wine bags have a rectangular bottom with more than adequate room in the long dimension for wine bottles. In the case of a beveraage carrier with a bottom area small enough to put space at a premium, the beverage container slide opposite the speaker aperture could be omitted and that side of the beverage carrier used for positioning. 
     Lastly, although an advantageous choice, the invention is not limited to the use of the particular commercially available sound emitting device specified herein and used for prototype development. A different form factor or switch arrangement would require obvious modifications to the locator. 
     It should be understood that this detailed description does not prevent inclusion of other equivalent embodiments within the purview of the invention that is defined by the following claims.