Simple Things: Making America More Productive, Part II
By Mark Devlin
October 22, 2009
The following is a note packaging designers and developers. Also, please understand that the commentary below is not intended for packaging equipment suppliers and manufacturers; after all, you're only providing and producing what your customers want.
Nuke the Entire World of Packaging and Start Over
It’s tough to think of anything more time wasting than trying to access a product that we just bought and paid for.
The problem here starts with stopping at the store door to have our receipt checked. Why are you wasting our time with this? Chances are really good that anyone’s who’s successfully stolen a product has discovered the ubiquitous RFID tag. It’s long gone. The thief used the very same ‘security’ tool that they use at checkouts. Where’d they get it? They stole it.
If we’re leaving a store with a huge box on a cart, you can pretty much bet that we paid for it. Hell, you just SAW us pay for it, not more than ten or twenty feet away.
Once you get it home, you take it out of the bag.
You then visually scan the package to see which way the flaps go—even those little ones with the round plastic pieces of security tape. You know, the tape that’s just about strong enough to resist slicing with a fingernail—as well as attempts to lift an edge to rip it off. So, it’s time to head for keys, a letter opener, knife, etc. just to get past this one, simple step.
Then, after moving the first secured flap, go for the real flap. One of the big ones. In some cases, fine. From there, you can actually extract the product—still within the sealed inner packaging—from the box. In other cases, expect more ripping, tearing, and cursing when opening one, single flap results in an accordioned mess of fancy-boxes gone bad.
Then, you have the product, right before you but still locked in a force field of a plastic enclosure that terrorists couldn’t get into with a roadside bomb.
Okay, let’s say scissors instead of an incendiary device. Cut-cut, snip-snip. Hard, jagged, and razor-sharp remains always manage to slice nearby flesh, sometimes requiring a trip to the emergency room with your phalange phlapping in the breeze.
Trying to sneak the product out by cutting off only one, plastic-welded edge? Sometimes it works, sometimes not. If it doesn’t, do we cut-off another edge? Hell, no. We want the prize, dammit. So, we try to rip the rest of the plastic package apart with our bare hands. That doesn’t usually go well.
The smart ones among us deftly cut-off three edges of the available four, in one shot. (But there’s that phlapping phalange problem again.)
Has anyone who designs the packaging for this stuff ever actually opened one of their own packages? This should be required, weekly activity in any boardroom of any company that sells products in welded-plastic packaging. Have paramedics at the ready.
Don’t even start on CDs and DVDs. Looks easy, right? Most even give you a tear-off tab to get through the cellophane. But that’s just taunting you. Then you have to remove one, two, or sometimes three more strips of security tape. I’ve gotten pretty good at that, without requiring a CD package slicer (which only leaves a mess of cut tape strips on the cases.) Lift a corner, work down the edge VERY carefully—the entire edge—and gingerly (along the lines of an Operation game) tear off the tape strip as a whole. Voila. Access, and a clean case.
But now, oh my God. They changed the tape to make it even more secure. There’s no possible way that any human being can remove the security tape from a Hellboy II Blu-Ray DVD package in one piece. This stuff tears into tiny, stick-to-everything-in-the-vicinity-including-the-family-pet pieces no matter how dextrous, calm, and talented you are.
Rather than just whine, I have a solution. Unless you’re selling small and fragile or high-end and electronic, put it in a Ziploc® bag. Best Buys, Walmarts—everyplace—loaded with Ziploc bags. Ziplock bags too easy to pilfer, you say? Make the bags three feet high, even if the product within is a CD. Put a bent piece of cardboard in said huge bag for your marketing stuff. Delicate? Blow some packing peanuts into the bag. Instead of an RFID tag, integrate an alarm into each bag. This could be done cheaply. No one’s going to try to violate a huge Ziploc bag if they know they’re going to set off the piercing, shrill equivalent of a smoke alarm.
Here’s another one. Greeting cards ‘talk’ and they’re cheap. So, just make the talking device louder—MUCH louder—to announce, “Yo. Storedude. I’m opening this enormous Ziploc bag and stealing its contents.”
Safety and Going Green
Ever since the Tylenol Killer, we’ve been forced as a society to endure the most mind-numbing and infuriating packaging in the history of the planet. Safety? Spare me. I’ve seen ketchup containers with safety seals under the lid, beneath perforated security cellophane. Bleach? Quite a bit more dangerous than ketchup. But, in some cases, bleach bottles have no child-proof caps, no security cellophane , no safety seal—nothing. Could someone tell me why this is so?
You know my beliefs about going green. It’s not a pretty picture.
Worse, however, are the stores that’ve gone back to paper since doing so will save the planet. Whether or not Mother Earth really cares about paper or plastic is debatable. Will paper save your sanity? No. You can’t even put things INTO these new, Earth-friendly paper bags of recycled material without tearing them. Get them into the cart? To the car? Dream on.
What happened to the strong paper bags of old? They’d hold a running engine without tearing.
The planet will survive. Give us back our plastic bags. Imagine the time saved when you don’t have to crouch-run across a parking lot to catch products that just escaped from a torn, recycled paper bag. The country would be WAY more productive. (While you’re at it, genetically engineer squared-off fresh fruits and vegetables so they won’t roll into oncoming traffic while you’re crouch-running for them. Actually, I think someone did that, but I can’t find the link at the moment. Will update as appropriate.)
Make this stuff simple. Save time. Save money. Time is money, no?
Perhaps more importantly, it's striking that every element of modern packaging exists for reasons that someone, somewhere, deems important. Ultimately, though, the most important reason for any of it is sadly ignored. That reason? The customer. You know, the person who selected, maybe researched, paid for the product.