Sunday, March 10, 2013

Death By Packaging?

On Monday, I bought my daughter small USB-powered speakers for her computer.  She works transcribing audio tapes for academic researchers and sometimes the interviews are poorly recorded.  I phoned her today to see if the speakers were helpful.  She said that she couldn't get them out of the hard plastic packaging.  After struggling for some time, she tried to cut the plastic open with her Swiss army knife, but cut herself open instead.  She found a band-aid and wiped the blood off the plastic, but by then her hand hurt too much, so she gave up.

The spousal unit's dentist gave him a new toothpaste last week:  Colgate Sensitive Pro-Relief.  He couldn't figure out how to open it.  We took the lid off but found another lid inside.  It looked like this.

I Googled the name of the toothpaste, and "how to open tube" came up as the first suggestion.  Clearly I wasn't the only person struggling with this.  Google told me to read the instructions:
"To open this safety seal, use the top of the cap as shown in the enclosed..."
I checked the discarded box and found a set of instructions with a diagram explaining how to open the toothpaste.  The larger lid became like an Allen key and required small motor skills, patience, and finesse.  I was able to open it without injury, but why is toothpaste now tamper proof?

Are you having packaging frustrations or am I the only one?

1 comment:

  1. Have had packaging challenges for years. The funniest was an incredibly hard to open package of scissors. But it does sound like things are getting worse! Chaia

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