The Oyster Awards: Worst. Packaging. Ever.

[livius drusus]

You know how some things you buy come encased in a knife/scissor/hacksaw-proof shell of plastic and by the time you're through wrangling it your hands are cracking, oozing, dripping blood? Well, Consumer Reports has created the Oyster Awards (http://consumerreports.org/cro/personal-finance/hardtoopen-packages-306/overview/index.htm) in their honor.

To determine the winners of the Consumer Reports Oyster Awards for hard-to-open packages, we began by sifting through 237 nominations from subscribers. Next, we shopped for the types of products readers mentioned most, tried to find even worse examples, and studied all the purchases in our labs. Finally, our technical experts watched a reporter open the packages, timing him and noting the obstacles he faced. The order of our choices is based on a combination of the time it took to crack the package and the potential hazard involved.

I'm delighted to see Sudafed win in the pill category (http://consumerreports.org/cro/personal-finance/hardtoopen-packages-306/the-winners/pills-in-blister-packs/index.htm). Trying to tear along the half-assed perforation, peel back one layer of foil (which inevitably shreds), then push the pill through the second layer of foil when your eyes are tearing and your nose snotty is no fun at all, let me tell you.

[maddog]

I'm delighted to see Sudafed win in the pill category (http://consumerreports.org/cro/personal-finance/hardtoopen-packages-306/the-winners/pills-in-blister-packs/index.htm). Trying to tear along the half-assed perforation, peel back one layer of foil (which inevitably shreds), then push the pill through the second layer of foil when your eyes are tearing and your nose snotty is no fun at all, let me tell you.
Thank the meth-heads for that one. I remember ... and it seems not so long ago, too ... when I could buy a bottle of 50 or 100, no problem. Those packaging obstacles have nothing to do with YOU, the normal, law-abiding consumer. It's to punish and slow down, if only momentarily, the meth-heads who need all those pseudoephedrine pills to "cook" in their meth labs. That's also why you can never find them bigger than a package of, say, 24, at the max.

#813

[wei yau]

I spent nearly 20 minutes opening the Sweet Streets Village: Care Time Hospital (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0006BAIWS/002-4636562-2034435?v=glance) for my daughter, I loathe the packing for toys.

As Consumer Reports noted, it's all about displaying the toys on shelves and catching the eyes of consumers. So, now everything is visible behind a plastic clamshell and every little piece is tied down with either tape or wire.

After opening the thing, cleaning up every little piece of wire, tape and plastic is a chore unto itself.

[Sock Puppet]

Amen, brother. I dread the gift-opening phase of the Li'l Puppet's birthday parties for that reason. Luckily, we always make sure she gets occupied with one toy at a time, and hide several of them in a closet for days, weeks, sometimes months afterward. There's only so much struggling with all of those wires and plastic bits that I can take at any one time.

[lisarea]

Ooh, we have those phones!

Ours are a different model, and the package came with four handsets instead of two, but they had the exact same packaging. IIRC, blood was spilled.

[TomJoe]

This is science related but, Luminex Corp is horrendous with the shipping of their Luminex 100 microspheres. You can buy one 2ml bottle (that's about half a teaspoon worth of liquid) and they'll ship it in a box which is 2x2x2 (that's feet) with a couple kg's of dry ice. Whether you order 1 2ml bottle, or 100 2ml bottles, the packaging is exactly the same.

[Wholly Goats]

Hey, folks... Those plastic clamshells, wire ties, plastic ties and all that stuff used to be a nuisance, until...

I started using these:

http://kk0022.forgingmarket.org.tw/nexus/upload/22/commodity/reduce/127.jpg

They're inexpensive kitchen shears. Y'know, for cutting through stuff like chicken bones. Mine are an even cheaper and crappier version than these, and they work like a charm.

http://www.renn.co.uk/first%20cut.jpg

Here's a pic from a goatherder who uses "inexpensive kitchen scissors" to trim goat hooves and horns. If they can do that, they can open your clamshells and most of the toy packaging.

The cd packaging is my bane. Damn, I hate trying to peel off the sticky label and then trying to find an opening in the shrink wrap.

[wei yau]

Yeah, I've used shears to snip the ties. Actually, I can do with a pair of scissors in most cases.

The problem is that sometimes the ties are hard to reach because they are tied internally to something or the damn ties are taped down, so you have to remove the tape in order to even reach the ties for snipping.

But, I've got to agree with Consumer Reports, those clamshells are the worst packaging.

[curses]

The cd packaging is my bane. Damn, I hate trying to peel off the sticky label and then trying to find an opening in the shrink wrap.Trick from someone who used to work in a record shop--Slide the spine of the CD against an edge, like the non-rounded edge of a desk or countertop. Don't do it too fast, and put a bit of pressure behind it. Took me a couple of tries, but it works like a charm. The only thing is if you get overzealous with it, you can crack the plastic hinge thingies at the top and bottom.

[freemonkey]

The packaging I hate most is the plastic clamshell that is roundish or ovalish, sealed on the edges and then little plastic rivety things holding the shell closed near the actual item, which is set somewhere in the middle of the package.

Not only do you need to cut all the way around the seal, you then need to pry apart the rivety things. All without cutting up the instructions, UPC, rebate form and any other vital information.

And yes, I have cut myself on this crap. Can I sue?

[Johnny Pneumatic]

What I wonder is why stuff is even packaged like that: It's not like the product is shipped via drifting in oceanic currents, so why the fuck do they come in water-tight to who knows how deep and tear-proof packages?

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

CD wrapping and stickers. :rant:

How about half the thing the universe that come in GIANT BUBBLE HARD PLASTIC SHELLS!!

[Godwhacker]

Toys tend to be the worst, especially when they use that plastic coated wire crap.

Way back when I was going to school, I used to work weekends at Wal Mart (back when they just ruled the Southern US, and had not yet taken over the planet yet) at the service desk. I remember that this poor lady returned this toy that her son really wanted. It was a Brontosaurus, with some kind of sci fi twist (had lasers mounted on it...kind of like dinosaur transformers...it was pretty hot toy line that year). She returned it because it lacked the "cockpit" for the human "pilot". She exchanged it for another one. She came back the next day...same problem. The third time, I decided to take a look for myself. Sure enough, I couldn't find the piece, either. Neither could the store manager. However, when the store manager put the dinosaur back into the box, I spotted the missing piece. It was taped to the back side of the styrofoam packaging on the opposite end of where you would open the package, in a small "indenture" in the styrofoam, covered by a large slab of packing tape. If you didn't totally take the entire Brontosaur and styrofoam encasing out of the box, and then happen to flip the dinosaur/foam casing over and see the little indention and look carefully behind the packing tape, where the "cockpit" piece was taped, you would never have found the damn thing.

I would agree with the CD wrapping thing. MTV made a great commercial out of that whole frustration a number of years back...

[Ymir's blood]

The super death bubble packaging is always irritating but the medicine packaging is worse. It isn't just Sudafed either, Claritin is like that as well. It's worse in that most of the time, the pill breaks up when you try to push it through the foil. :\

[ceptimus]

How about those little cartons of milk they give you in airplanes? At altitude, the reduced air presure causes the foil lids to inflate, so that you get a nice spray of milk over yourself or your fellow passengers as you try to peel back the lid.

Then there are those tins of meat (corned beef etc. ) that are opened using a key: even when they open properly you're left with a razor-sharp clockspring wrapped around the key that is impossible to safely dispose of; fairly often the metal strip breaks off, or tapers away to nothing before the can is fully open - I've had to resort to using a mini angle grinder power tool on occasions.

Rolls of sticky tape (sellotape) where you can't find the end of the tape, or it keeps peeling off at an angle.

Magazines and books with freebies or pricing stickers stuck all over the covers. Removing the sticky stuff then damages the cover... :(

[freemonkey]

The super death bubble packaging is always irritating but the medicine packaging is worse. It isn't just Sudafed either, Claritin is like that as well. It's worse in that most of the time, the pill breaks up when you try to push it through the foil. :\
I usually end up jamming the sharp corner of one of those things under my thumbnail. A nice, several weeks long reminder of my frustration.

[TomJoe]

Then there are those tins of meat (corned beef etc. ) that are opened using a key: even when they open properly you're left with a razor-sharp clockspring wrapped around the key that is impossible to safely dispose of; fairly often the metal strip breaks off, or tapers away to nothing before the can is fully open - I've had to resort to using a mini angle grinder power tool on occasions.


Yah ... errr ... someone actually eats that stuff?

[Ensign Steve]

The super death bubble packaging is always irritating but the medicine packaging is worse. It isn't just Sudafed either, Claritin is like that as well. It's worse in that most of the time, the pill breaks up when you try to push it through the foil. :\

I use the "Redi-Tabs" that you melt in your mouth instead of swallowing. They are super soft and they dissolve in heat and moisture, so by the time I'm done pushing the pill through the foil, I have turned it into a soggy mess like something out of a play-doh fun factory and I have to try to lick all of the medicine off my fingers, off the foil and the plastic, and out from under my nails. It's a bit of a nusiance.

I can't help anyone with the cellophane on the cd, but once you get past that layer and you still have the clear plastic sticker across the top, you just take the jewel case apart at the hinges and pull the two pieces apart. If you're really good at it, you can take out the CD, rip it, and return it "unopened". Not that I would ever do that, I'm just sayin... :innocent:

[erimir]

I hate clamshells.

They're hard to open, require you to use scissors or other sharp objects that you could potentially cut yourself on (not to mention injuring yourself on the plastic), and most of the time, even after I've done significant amounts of cutting, I still need to squeeze it out. Oh, and you're unlikely to have left any instructions or things like that undamaged.

I also dislike that the seals along the edges of DVD/video game cases. They can be hard to remove, but what annoys me more is that they leave glue on the case, and if they don't have tabs for easier removal (and even sometimes when they do), getting the seal to raise a corner so you can pull it off often involves picking at it so much that you damage the cover of the case.

I also kinda feel that children should be able to open packages of things meant for children. Back in my day, which wasn't that long ago, GI Joe and other such action figures were plastic backed with cardboard. As cardboard is pretty easy to tear, the package was easy to open, if you didn't mind damaging the back (which usually had trivia about the character). But I guess it was also easier to rip open a package and stick the toy in your pocket or something like that.

[Shake]

I'm delighted to see Sudafed win in the pill category (http://consumerreports.org/cro/personal-finance/hardtoopen-packages-306/the-winners/pills-in-blister-packs/index.htm). Trying to tear along the half-assed perforation, peel back one layer of foil (which inevitably shreds), then push the pill through the second layer of foil when your eyes are tearing and your nose snotty is no fun at all, let me tell you.
Yeah, because when you get to the "push the pill through the second layer of foil" step, the pill then sometimes gets airborne and falls either on the floor or down the sink drain. Then you have to go through the whole damn process again.

[ImGod]

I had this great pocket knife with a thin blade that would slice open plastic packaging. It had a scissors built in that would cut through the plastic and rubber bands and the twist ties holding most toys together. It had a small screwdriver for those crappy little battery compartment screws. It had a corkscrew for the wine. So, it was the perfect utensil for christmas morning.

But, I lost it.

I got a new one as a present this christmas.

But it came in a plastic package.

[Shake]

Btw, great thread, liv!

Oh, I have to echo the frustration at the packaging of kids toys nowadays. As I recall from my youth, most toys were just in a box. You opened the box and pulled out the toy, which might have had a piece or two of cardboard or styrofoam in it to help keep it from rattling, but you could be playing with it within a minute or two. Not so nowadays. Now it takes a team of two or three, of which preferably at least one holds an engineering degree, to get the toy out. It's just so overdone. Whoever thought of strapping the damn things down obviously doesn't (or didn't at the time) have kids. I mean, they obviously have no idea what it's like to have an impatient, overexcited 5-year-old on Xmas morning waiting to play with the cool new toy he/she's just unwrapped.

The inventor of the hard bubble plastic wrapper deserves to have a highly venomous snake sent to him. He'll get bit opening the box, but inside will be the antidote ... encased in the hard bubble plastic. His survival will depend on getting it open in time. :demon2:

[lisarea]

I had this great pocket knife with a thin blade that would slice open plastic packaging. It had a scissors built in that would cut through the plastic and rubber bands and the twist ties holding most toys together. It had a small screwdriver for those crappy little battery compartment screws. It had a corkscrew for the wine. So, it was the perfect utensil for christmas morning.

You need a :biker2: *

I love mine so much it's stupid.

* That's supposed to be a Leatherman.

[ImGod]

You need a :biker2: *

I love mine so much it's stupid.

* That's supposed to be a Leatherman.

I have one of those at my desk here. I stopped carrying it because I thought they would try to confiscate it at the airport. They frown on strangling airport security personnel. I've taken my computer apart to repair something using nothing but the Leatherman.

The key to a good pocket knife is a corkscrew and a bottle opener. Maybe it's telling that I've used those two more then the knife in the last few weeks.

P.S. Plastic packaging sucks.

[Shake]

Similar to the Leatherman, I've got a Gerber Multi-Tool, which has been put to good use many time for a variety of jobs.

[Ensign Steve]

put to good use many
I read that as "put to good manly use" and I thought it was appropriate. :biker2: