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Plastic Packages Cause Injuries, Revolt
massysett writes "Everybody has been frustrated by plastic retail packaging that's nearly impossible to open. New toys and electronic gadgets arrive encased in plastic bubbles. Manufacturers say the packages protect goods and make them look nice, but opening them can be difficult enough to cause injuries that land people in the emergency room. Manufacturers have an appropriate term for the frustration: wrap rage. One man even invented a cutter designed specifically for cracking open plastic clamshells."
Don't worry, I'm sure we'll get a dupe by then... :-P
editors: you should have waited 25 days, and accepted the story at about... oh 11:00 am on december 25th
/.'ers
then you would have gotten a buttload of seriously frustrated, angry, and demented comments in the affirmative
You must be new here... this story will get reposted multiple times before the holidays.
Just look for the "buttload" of seriously frustrated
It's not just consumer electronics and such that are overwrought with packaging. Many packaged foods are also very difficult to access. I remember when you could get into breakfast cereal just using your hands. Now you needs scissors to get into most packaged foods. Some are very difficult, and it's also possible to wreck the food or product you're trying to get to because of the packaging.
The worst packaging is for computer accessories and such. The thickness and strength of the plastic used is absolutely ridiculous. It's obvious no consumer pre-market testing ever takes place. I've seen this develop in the past 20 years and it's gotten completely out of control. I wonder how it is for the elderly and disabled to get into many household goods and such.
I've also wondered about why it has come to pass. I understand the need for keeping food fresh and products safe from damage, but I feel the current packaging "paradigm" is way out of control and needs to be reigned in.
Some other interesting things to ponder is that all this packaging is made from plastic, derived from oil, and will end up in a landfill, and take quite a few years to decompose. So in effect you have an extremely inefficient use of resources and energy to protect products and food that is also very detrimental to the environment.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I've got a three year old son. Who is into Thomas. Nothing's more frustrating than him getting a Thomas-take-along toy (the cheap plastic version of the wooden Brio trains). Those packages look like they'd be easy to open (cardboard sandwitched between plastic) until you try to use the cardboard to open the plastic- at which point you find it just tears off, with the clamshell securely in place. And then you cut away the clamshell- only to find an interior clamshell in between the vehicle and this stupid little trading card and what my kid calls a "map" that is really an advertisement for every other toy in the line ("I need a Cranky, I need a Lady, I need a Boulder Mountain Coal Mine Set"). Then you finally get through the interior clamshell only to have the kid lose the engine or car in the couch a day later.
WORST TOY EVER.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The only way to stop this is to put a ban on this. Obviously the products look shiny, but they are difficult to handle, dangerous, difficult to return and unfriendly to the environment. Most of the time I don't even see the idiotic plastic casing until after I've asked the store for the product. If you are ordering online, the chances of seeing the packaging is almost zero. So to level the playing field, this kind of packaging (where the bulk of the waste is not even in the product) should be banned. Lets see what they come up with if they cannot sell anymore in the US or in Europe. Just use a small plastic front that you can slide out between two layers of cardboard for instance, this is already much in use and works perfectly well.
trauma shears.
Should be able to pick them up for $4 or so. Get a couple. They're extremely handy.
No good for precision cutting, but perfect for cutting through tough, thick plastic, cardboard, or card stock.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Your poor knife!
Duh. You're sharpening the blade way more often than necessary, and in such a way that you're probably removing way too much material each time as well. I doubt your knife needs to be sharpened more than once every six months, if even that much. Instead, you should buy a honing steel to keep your knife edge "true". A honing steel doesn't sharpen, but it can make your knife seem sharper because it's straightening out the sharp edge that may have been blunted from previous cuttings. In most cases, a "dull" knife actually just has a blunted edge that can be restored with honing.
psst... if you learn how to sharpen that knife, or pay someone else to do it, it'll last a lot longer than "every couple of years."
The point is that you're not.
I work in a PC store and there's loads of stuff that can make a thief a quick buck in a few seconds. Ink cartidges are the biggest target, with Lexmark (Crappy cardboard rectangle) boxes being found open without contents all the time, whereas the really-tough-sealed ones aren't being nicked. Epson have a compromise, they've got the hard-squishy plastic shell (that milk bottles are made of) with a plastic film coating over the front. You need to pierce and open these (knife makes simple work) but it's not too easy to do instore.
Stores care more about stuff going missing from the shelves then it being purchased and not being opened at home. Granted this stuff is too hard to open and they need to sort it out, but slowly compromises will come.
It's all to help prevent shoplifting.
Maybe, but that's not obvious to me. Perhaps the major reasons are to assist in packing and prevent damage in transit. Small widgets are sorted and packed at high speed by machines. If you design a package that can be opened by the pretty feeble forces a human fingertip can exert, then it's not going to be able to be sorted at 80 MPH by the metal claw of a robot.
You're looking at it from the point of view of the thing sitting on the display hook in the store. But that's near the end of its life before use: it has a long history from factory floor to the store that you need to consider, and there's a good chance major aspects of the packaging are designed to meet the needs of distribution and transport.
... opening them can be difficult enough to cause injuries that land people in the emergency room.
This is what product liability legislation is about: Making companies pay for the damage their products cause, so they think twice about producing dangerous products.
A few mulitmillion dollar judgements for people who cut the nerves in their hands on the sharp edges created by opening the packaging should make some execs start balancing "inventory shrinkage" from shoplifing more sanely against bottom-line shrinkage from damage to their customers' bodies.
That should make a BIG difference in package design quite quickly.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Did you sue? I sure as hell would have. The only thing that is going to stop this madness is for everyone these things happen to sue. And don't just go for medical bills. File for unspecified punitive damages for the mental anguish you went through almost losing your [lw]ife.
With the event you described, any decent ambulance chaser would take the case and negotiate a settlement, and the business will likely settle for an amount just less than their projected cost to win at trial. The lawyer will take most of that, so you won't end up with much. Nevertheless, if this happens often enough, the corporation will learn a lesson.
As much as I hate the way this country has become one big lawsuit factory, nowadays (often silly) personal injury lawsuits are often the only way to effect change in corporate cheapness.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Has anyone noticed on kids toys (like cars, planes) that come in a box where you can push the buttons to hear the noises it makes? Try popping those puppies out of the box. Gee whizz! By the time you get all the wire wraps off of them, you've got 10 feet of wire! And whoever ties those stupid things has an evil side. They will wrap some of them clockwise, and some counterclockwise. Grrrrrrrrrrr
Not that I think Class-Actions are a good thing, but ffs I'd put my name on a class action that targetted the manufacturers of the fabrication systems that create these finger slicing packages. There has got to be a smarter, safer, and more secure way of packaging goods. It would probably cost $0.05 more per package and unless something changes they might as well pay for the 1/4 inch scar across the top of my, and every other consumer's, left index finger.
Unless you're talking about a mail-order warehouse, AFAIK, most of the transportation/sorting is done by the pallet or some other moderately large quantity bundled together. When the machine sorts a box full of boxes, no matter how flimsy the interior boxes are, unless it sticks a proboscis through the outer box or something, the inner boxes shouldn't be damaged....
There are four likely reasons: to deter shoplifting, to make the product as visible as possible, to reduce cost (cheaper to fuse plastic together than to do a box with a single clear plastic case), and to reduce returns on inexpensive goods. Every return costs the companies a chunk of change If you can't restore the factory packaging, they can make it really hard to return it unless it is defective (which most returns are not). All four of those have to do with putting real money into the manufacturer's bottom line, whether through increased sales from higher visibility or through cost cutting.
This is what razor knives are for, IMHO.
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It must be the same logic used by automobile engineers who design cars so that you have to remove the engine, radiator hoses, power steering pump, air-conditioning compressor, and exaust manifold in order to change the spark plugs.
Let's have a show of hands from all the kind folks who have attempted to open a plastic bag of spaghetti at the seams, only to have it rip down the sides sending noodles flying all over the kitchen floor. I've never understood the logic of using a glue that is stronger than the material it is intended to seal.
Or go to the dollar store and get those indestructible scissors that "As seen on TV!" can cut through a penny.
BTW, the plastic clam-shell packaging doesn't piss me off as much as DVD and CD packaging. There's nothing that starts the pounding in my head like the "Peel here" tab that can't be peeled, complete with too-strong glue that forces you to choose between cutting it along the seam with a razor blade and leaving it, or cutting it and then peeling it off from the unglued center, warping and stretching your brand new $23 DVD packaging. (Lets face facts here, I'm paying for the convenience of the packaging (which includes the DVD itself AND the case), not the movie itself, which is available for free (minus ISP costs) online).
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
I use tin snips. They work pretty well, and you can find them at any hardware store.
Very often, the "box cutters" have a setting that allows only a tiny corner of the blade to protrude. It's actually a pretty safe way to open a package. I put that in quotes because I've used them a lot, but never to cut boxes, unless these plastic things count.
14" razor-sharp Bowie-style knife works almost as well, though you have to begin with a more of a stab than a slice, since the edges are the most reinforced part of those packages.
I'm not saying this is a bad idea, because it's likely that the retailer does have a nice heavy-duty pair of scissors somewhere, but I do take issue with something.
The people working at the retailer are normal human beings that also buy things at stores. They know how horrible the packaging is, and the person that will be opening your package has absolutely nothing to do with it.
I use a good pair of regular household scissors.
No, not the kind that are stamped sheet metal that are popular now. The kind that are forged steel. Not that hard to find. And they work fine for cutting the welded seams on this sort of packaging. That's really all you need to do is cut away the welded seams. Which are right out on the edge of the packaging.
I like this form of packaging, because once you know how to open it, if you need to return an item, everything just slides back into the hard form of the package. You only cut the welds off one or at most two edges.
What about when it's not defective and you just change your mind?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
I think The kitchen shears I have, about $1, are powerful and sharp enough, and as safe. For more heavyweight use, gardening shears. Ultimately, woodworking tools. The idea that you have to use a certified "package opening tool" is just more consumerism. If you don't have any of those, at least $6 isn't extortionate.
I don't recall anyone insisting...
Just this morning I was attaching some caster wheels to some furniture, and realised a needed a longer screw attachment for my drill. I went and bought one and sure enough it was sealed up good. Took me a bit of hacking to open, and that was with my toolbox right next to me. Again, opening items like this is easy enough, opening them without damaging them is another matter.
Another one that pisses me off is when they print the instructions on the cardboard which is sandwiched between the layers of packaging, so just cutting through it with scissors means cutting through the instructions. Not that I ever read instructions. *cough*
Then there is the whole environmental thing... where does all this packaging go once the item has been unpacked!!!
Well, nationally the number is that 50% of all loss if from employee theft.
You miss my point. If you're properly staffed, then when a customer comes in, you move towards him, greet him, establish needs, present solutions, overcome objections, close, and add-on product/services. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
Doesn't anyone know how to actually SELL things in a retail environment, or has everyone resigned themselves to just dealing with stock pickers, and cashiers?
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