Background of the Invention There are well known from the prior art different constructions of packages for containing products, such as self-adhesive bandages, which are usually packaged in small boxes to be sold in different points of retail sale, in which it is desirable to have the products adequately displayed to the consumers accessing said point of sale. These packages are generally in the form of a parallelepipedic box made of cardboard and constructed in different ways, in order to function as a means for storing larger quantities of the manufactured product, as well as a means for shipping the product to the points of sale, where the product is delivered to the retailer.

In this type of construction, the retailer is forced to open the package and place each article on a display device, which may take the form of a hook. support, a shelf, or even a drawer, not only requiring a certain work from the retailer, but also the use of display devices, which very often are not available, mainly in small and medium size commercial establishments.

Some packages of this type are constructed to be superiorly opened by the retailer and placed onto a

horizontal counter or shelf, in order to function as a kind of tray for containing and displaying the products during the period of retail sale.

Nevertheless, such known parallelepipedic packages, when superiorly opened, do not form a display device that leads to an adequate visualization of the articles by the consumer. Furthermore, depending on the height at which the package is placed, the articles therein may not be visible to the retailer and mainly to the consumer, with the visual advertising of the product being limited to the messages externally applied to the package walls. The poor vision of the interior of these packages, when placed in a somewhat high position, prevents the retailer from visually and easily controlling the amount of remaining products, i. e. , the stock available to the consumers.

In order to minimize the retailer's work and the need to provide display devices in the commercial establishment, and also assure an adequate display of the product to the consumers, some display devices have been proposed, which are made as a separate part from the package received from the manufacturer, increasing the cost of the commercialization process and therefore the cost of the product. These additional displays take the form of accessories to be supplied by the manufacturer, or purchased by the trader-retailer.

Summary of the Invention The present display package has the form of a usually parallelepipedic box, having the front wall and lateral walls provided with weakened lines, which will be manually ruptured in order to detach, from the respective walls of the box, front wall portions and lateral wall portions.

The upper wall is foldable along its width, in order to define an insert, provided with a plurality of frontward facing steps and which will be fitted inside the box.

According to this construction, the box is transformed, when opened, in a display provided with a plurality of steps for displaying the articles.

Brief Description of the Drawings The invention will be described below, with reference to the attached drawings, in which: Figure 1 is a plan view of a single unfolded sheet for the formation of the present package, according to an embodiment of the invention; Figure 2 is a front lateral perspective view of the package of figure 1, prior to the rupture of the front and lateral weakened lines; Figure 3 is a perspective view of the package of figure 2, with the lateral and front wall portions being detached and illustrated in an exploded view; Figure 4 is a perspective view of the open package with the insert being mounted therewithin; Figure 5 is a cross-sectional view of the display package of figure 4; and Figures 6,7, 8 and 9 are similar views to those of figures 1, 3,4 and 5 respectively, but directed to another embodiment of the package.

Detailed Description of the Drawings As illustrated in the attached drawings, the present package is preferably formed from a single sheet of cardboard, board, or any other similar material adequate to the desired operation.

The cardboard sheet is cut and folded, in order to allow the formation of a box with a preferably parallelepipedic shape, whose height and depth are substantially smaller than the width.

It should be understood that other box shapes may also be used and constructed in different manners, according to the characteristics of the articles to be packaged.

In the illustrated embodiments, the box presents a front wall 10, a rear wall 20, an upper wall 30, a lower wall 40 and lateral walls 50, the front wall 10 being provided with a weakened front line 11, which is upwardly spaced from the lower wall 40 of the package.

As illustrated, the weakened front line 11 may have its ends limited by the lateral walls 50 of the package, and arranged in a rectilinear and parallel manner in relation to the lower front edge of the parallelepipedic box. However, it should be understood that the weakened front line 11 could present many different shapes which are adequate to the plastic form and to the specific functional characteristic desired to be obtained from the package.

The distance between the weakened front line 11 and the lower front edge 11 is dimensioned as a function of the articles to be packaged inside the box, when said package is operating as a display device on a counter or on a wall.

The ends of the weakened front line 11 are joined to the weakened lateral lines 51, which are each provided on one of the lateral walls 50. The three weakened lines, which may be contained in the same inclined plane, according to the illustrated embodiments, are manually breakable, in order to detach, from the respective walls of the box, a front wall portion lOa and lateral wall portions 50a, which are defined between the respective weakened front line 11 and weakened lateral lines 51 and the upper wall 30. In the illustrated constructions, the plane of the weakened front lines 11 and the weakened lateral lines

51 contains the upper edge of the rear wall 20 of the parallelepipedic box.

In the illustrated constructions, the lower wall 40 comprises a pair of first lower wall portions 40a, which are incorporated, by respective fold lines, to the lower edge of the front wall 10 and rear wall 20, respectively, and which, in the closed box condition, are affixed coplanar to each other, for example by an adhesive strip commonly used for closing cardboard packages. Other fixation and closing means may also be used. The lower wall 40 further comprises a pair of second lower wall portions 40b, which are incorporated, by respective fold lines, to the lower edge of the lateral walls 50 and which, in the closed box condition, are seated onto the first lower wall portions 40a, in an arrangement known in the art.

On the other hand, the upper wall 30 comprises a pair of first upper wall portions 30a and a pair of second upper wall portions 30b incorporated, by respective fold lines, to the upper edge of the front wall 10, rear wall 20 and lateral walls 50, respectively, such as described in relation to the formation of the lower wall 40. In the closed box condition, the two first upper wall portions 30a are inwardly folded, to a position mutually coplanar and generally orthogonal to the planes of the lateral walls 50. On the second upper wall portions 30b are seated the first upper wall portions 30a, which are attached to each other by an adhesive strip, for example, as described in relation to the closing operation of the lower wall 40.

The lateral walls 50 are joined to the rear wall 20 by respective fold lines 23, whereas the front wall 10 is joined, on one side, to one of the lateral walls 50, by a fold line 13 and, on the other side, to the other

lateral wall 50 by means of a flap 16, which is incorporated to one of said parts and affixed to the other, for example by gluing. In the illustrated constructions, the flap 16 is incorporated to said other lateral wall 50.

In the embodiment illustrated in figures 1-5, the second lower wall portions 40b are chamfered, according to manually breakable weakened lines 41, which are configured so that, when said second lower wall portions 40b are angularly upwardly displaced around the fold lines thereof common to the respective and adjacent lateral walls 50, and towards the latter, they present free end edges, which are defined upon rupturing the respective weakened lines 41, following the adjacent weakened line 51 of the respective lateral wall 50.

In this embodiment of figures 1-5, the junction of the two first upper wall portions 30a is made by an adhesive strip or other adequate material or process, in order to define, in this junction, a fold line 31, which allows the relative angular displacement between the two first upper wall portions 30a. In this embodiment, the fold line that joins the front wall portion 10a to the adjacent first upper wall portion 30a is a weakened fold line 12, which is manually breakable to allow the front wall portion 10a to be completely detached from the box, together with the lateral walls 50 and the respective second upper wall portions 30b thereof.

In the embodiment mentioned above, the junction of the two first upper wall portions 30a by the fold line 31 defines an insert 60, which has one of the first upper wall portions 30a joined to the upper edge of the rear wall 20 by means of a rear upper fold line 21 of the box. The insert 60 thus formed may be fitted inside

the box, after being folded along the fold line 31 and the median fold lines 32, each median fold line extending along the width of a respective first upper wall portion 30a. Thus, and as illustrated in figure 4, the insert 60 may be provided with a plurality of steps 61, which are downwardly arranged toward the lower wall 40 and the front wall 10, following the same downward direction of the weakened lateral lines 51.

In said first embodiment, the folding of the insert 60, that is, of the upper wall 30, may be achieved so that the upper step 61 is disposed below the rear upper fold line 21 of the box, as illustrated in figures 4 and 5, or so that the upper step 61 lies on the same level of said rear upper fold line 21. In this condition (not illustrated), the insert 60 will have its end portion in the form of a flap, pending from the lower step 61. In any of these arrangements of the first embodiment, the lower step 61 will remain spaced from both the front wall 10 and the lower wall 40 of the box and the upper step 61 will remain seated on the rear wall 20 of the box.

In order to adequately assemble the insert 60 in the box, a median step 61, which in the illustrated example is the lower step 61, is seated on a pair of supporting lateral flaps 45, projecting to the inside of the lateral walls 50 of the box. In the embodiment of figures 1-5, the supporting lateral flaps 45 are defined by respective breakable weakened lines provided in the second lower wall portions 40b. By rupturing said weakened lines and raising the second lower wall portions 40b against the respective lateral walls 50, the supporting lateral flaps 45 may be angularly displaced to the inside of the box, in order to receive thereon a respective step 61 of the insert

60. The supporting lateral flaps 45 may be configured so as to impart to the step 61 seated thereon, a slight downward inclination towards the rear wall 20 of the box, in order to better stabilize the articles to be placed onto said step 61.

As better illustrated in figures 1 and 5, the rear wall 20 may incorporate a median portion 28, which is surrounded by the rear upper fold line 21 of the box and by a respective weakened line 29, so as to be manually and partially detached from the rear wall 20 and angularly displaced upwardly from the box, in order to define a rear panel for carrying messages allusive to the article being displayed.

Figures 6,7, 8 and 9 illustrate a second embodiment of the invention, according to which the fold line joining the rear wall 20 to the adjacent first upper wall portion 30a is a weakened fold line 22, which is manually ruptured to separate said first upper wall portion 30a from the remaining parts that form the box. Therefore, the fold line 31 that joins the two first upper wall portions 30a is defined by an adhesive strip to be ruptured by the trader-retailer, making possible to detach said first upper wall portion 30a adjacent to the rear wall 20.

In this second embodiment, the insert 60 is defined by the front wall portion 10a and the adjacent first upper wall portion 30a, each of said two parts being provided with a median fold line 32 extending along the width of the box, for definition of the steps 61.

Due to the fact that the insert 60 is entirely detached from the box, the upper step 61 thereof will be seated on one or more supporting rear flaps 25, which are incorporated, by respective manually breakable weakened lines, to the rear wall 20 of the box, said supporting rear flaps 25 being angularly

displaced to the inside of the box, after the respective weakened lines have been ruptured.

In this second embodiment, the insert 60 has a median or lower step 61 seated onto a pair of supporting lateral flaps 55, which are incorporated by manually breakable weakened lines to the lateral wall 50 of the box, said supporting lateral flaps 55 being equally angularly displaced to the inside of the box. In the embodiment of figures 6,7, 8 and 9, the insert 60 presents a larger depth, with a front edge 63 seated against the lower wall 40, and supported against the front wall 10 by means of spacing flaps 35, which are incorporated by respective manually breakable weakened lines to the second lower wall portions 40b, in order to be angularly upwardly displaced, so as to be disposed generally orthogonally between the front wall 10 and the front edge 63 of the insert 60.

The construction described above allows the box to function as a package for storing the manufactured products that are shipped to the trader-retailer. The opening of the package, which is made by rupturing the weakened lines and detaching the wall portions, allows the upper wall and, optionally, part of the front wall to be medianly folded, according to different fold lines, and transformed in an insert, which is fitted inside the box and provided with different steps, onto which the articles are placed and displayed.