I picked up a roll packaged like this in 120 at my local camera store sometime around the end of November/Beginning of December. They claimed it had just arrived the day before. I don't normally shoot HP5 but grabbed a roll just for the interesting packaging.
Does anyone know if this is permanent or is it a limited time deal?
I like the "clean" look of Ilford packaging, but don't mind this at all. I'll certainly take it over Kodak's recent redesign, which is a little too minimalist/modern for my liking.
At the end of the day, though, I don't buy film for the packaging, I buy it for what it can do when exposed, developed, and ultimately turned into some sort of directly viewable medium(whether a file or a print). I may not like the new Kodak packaging, but as best as I can tell Tri-X is still Tri-X so I'll keep buying it for when I want things to look like they were shot on Tri-X(which is 90% of the time for me, give or take, when I'm shooting B&W). For my workflow and usual processes, most of the time I can't see a difference between HP5 and Tri-X in the end result, so if that's still the case in this packaging, I'll still keep buying HP5 as an alternative to Tri-X. I'll still keep buying FP4+ as a nice, slow(er) traditional grain film that is a viable alternative to my beloved and dwindling stash of Plus-X even if it takes a bit of work to get it to look like PX...or sometimes just appreciate FP4+ for what it is.
In all of this too, I buy Ilford/Harman products because, even if I often like the products a bit less than their closest Kodak equivalent, they've shown themselves to be "all in" on film and silver-based imaging products. They have continually produced film for decades without interupption, improved what needed to be improved but also left alone what was perfectly fine. Their QC is top notch(as much as I love supporting some of the smaller companies and "revived" companies, QC can be hit or miss) and are responsive if something does get through. Unlike one of the other big players(Fuji) they are transparent about what's going on. Thanks to the way they do special order film sizes, even if you have to wait once a year for it, the oddball sizes/formats tend to be fairly accessible without needing to order obscene amounts(as I understand it, and maybe I'm wrong, Kodak would be happy to make 2x3 or 11x14 or whatever in any emulsion they catalog, but you or your buying group had better be ready to commit to what's probably a master roll quantity). As of now, they're the only first tier brand offering B&W paper, and having come to the wet darkroom fairly late(mid-2010s), aside from some ancient Azo I use occasionally, Ilford paper is all I know. All their documentation on pretty much everything is excellent. As if that all wasn't enough, they usually beat Kodak by $1 or so a roll on directly comparable emulsions.
I say all that to say that yes I like the boxes, but even if I didn't, it would stop me from using Ilford film.