A number of retailers and manufacturers have a gift for holiday shoppers: product packaging that will not result in lacerations and stab wounds.
The companies, including Amazon.com, Sony, Microsoft and Best Buy, have begun to create alternatives to the infuriating plastic “clamshell” packages and cruelly complex twist ties that make products like electronics and toys almost impossible for mere mortals to open without power tools.
Impregnable packaging has incited such frustration among consumers that an industry term has been coined for it ”” “wrap rage.” It has sent about 6,000 Americans each year to emergency rooms with injuries caused by trying to pry, stab and cut open their purchases, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
“I shouldn’t have to start each Christmas morning with a needle nose pliers and wire cutters,” said Jeffrey P. Bezos, the father of four young children and founder of Amazon.com. “But that is what I do, I arm myself, and it still takes me 10 minutes to open each package.”
Wrap rage. Lol. is there anyone who can’t identify with this problem? Read it all–KSH
I can’t call it rage, but I did call a company recently to report to them that the 30 minutes that I had spent trying to extract my son’s toy from it’s packaging were not only frustrating, but I felt, dangerous because the plastic tended to shred into sharp jagged edges that threatened to lacerate my arm as I cut through it.
All in all, it was a frustrating and dangerous experience that I would sooner not repeat, and I thought that they would like that feedback. I was transferred to their legal dept. and an attorney took notes and told me that the company would actually prefer a simpler box as in the old days, but the “big box stores” require them to package this way, for loss prevention reasons, if they want shelf space in those outlets.
In the eleven years that I’ve been opening these things up for my children, this really package really did deserve the blue-ribbon for frustration and danger. After 30 minutes, I wound up with several sharp pointy plastic knives that would have been considered shanks in a prison and have to be confiscated. One of them even cut through the trash bag as I was carrying it outside.
This Christmas, I’ll know to get all the gloves, cutting tools, and safety goggles in advance before I start to open these toys, but reading this article gives me some hope at least that someone is listening.
The toy was an Air-soft B B Gun by the way, and I felt that my kids were in more danger of “putting an eye out” with the packaging than the B B Gun itself.
As an employee at a Wal-mart store, and someone who’s cut themselves on the packaging several times, we hate the packaging too, but it really is there to try and stop theft. The chips for the beepers at the doors are in the packaging, so if they get it out of the package, it’s theirs. If you can figure out a way to stop people from stuffing cd’s, cosmetics, and every other small item into their clothes and walking out the door with hundreds and thousands of $ every day from every store without all the packaging, do it and retire for the rest of your life! The first year I worked here the store lost enough to buy a house and a Lamborghini–and that’s just 1 store.
I will be so glad to see some of the awful — and incredibly wasteful — packaging go, and will certainly turn to those who are getting rid of it.
Chris H., I wonder how much money would be saved if the packaging was cut? Maybe enough to hire more help?
But Sherri, the stores don’t pay for the packaging, the manufacturers do, so any savings from simplifying the packaging would go to the makers, not the stores, so they wouldn’t have any more money to hire more help. Actually, once again, it’s a problem of morality – “thou shalt not steal” – and as we become a more “entitled” population with fewer and fewer grounded in the Scriptures, this will only get worse.
I’ve gotten to the point I use metal shears. Scissors don’t even have enough leverage.
The stores pay for the packaging when they stock their stores, don’t they?
Sherri2,
nah, it’s passed on to us, the consumers.
It will be interesting to see whether or not Bezos passes along the savings through Amazon. He’s certainly spotted a niche that could be exploited.
I read somewhere that a third of the cost of a product is the packaging which includes all of the design cost that make it stand out on a shelf. Amazon doesn’t need to make it stand out on a shelf or worry about loss prevention, so if they can keep costs down to offset shipping and still be competitive, I’d love to buy from them and simplify the process and cut back on waste.
The other fun aspect of such packaging, of course, is wrestling with the thing while a child hopped up on Christmas excitement is standing half an inch away and vibrating so hard with impatience that it would make a hummingbird envious.
While more help would help, unfortunately the “innocent until proven guilty” line has been taken so far now that if I see people stick something in their purse(and I have) if I allow them out of my sight I can’t stop them because they might have put it down when they were out of sight–and if I follow them I have to follow them the entire way around the store and wait until they go out the door to try and stop them, so 1 worker for every shopper??? In my state video cameras can’t be used automatically to prosecute either. The other alternative would be asking for a receipt from everyone at the door. Even that doesn’t stop all theft and slows customers down so much they get mad.
I hope the easier packaging does work for Amazon, even if not for us. I know Wal-mart is trying to cut down on the size of packaging as part of their “green” campaign, but I don’t think “easy open” applies to that.
It is really frustrating is to finally break into the clam shell and extract the product and then fish out a small peice of paper tucked inside, with tiny instructions that can only be read a magnifying glass.
Maybe consumer confidence will increase if Best Buy and Sony come out with better packaging.