Companies are starting to use tamper-resistant packaging that doesn’t cause wrap-rage or puncture wounds. Retailers love those maddening plastic supermax containers for the theft-deterring frustration factor, while manufacturers just want consumers to see the eye candy within. What’s the compromise?
At Logitech, which makes computer and home entertainment products including mice, keyboards and remote controls, [design expert Kerry Azelton] was encouraged to make changes in response to a variety of consumer complaints, including package-opening injuries.
His influence is most obvious in Logitech blister packs that bend at a corner to start an opening and pull apart relatively easily because the material has an outline of perforation.
[Laura Bix, an assistant professor at Michigan State University] said the biggest force driving the trend is the assertiveness of baby boomers, who are sure to demand more convenient packaging as they age.
“We’re going to see more and more people focus on this,” Bix said. “Easy-opening innovations are rare so far, but definitely increasing.”
Yes, someone think of the elderly.
Ouch! Why do they package like that? [Mercury News]
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i never understood why either retailers or companies selling products favor those terrible things because if anyone opens a returned package, even if there’s nothing wrong with it, there’s no way possible to gracefully repackage it for sale in it’s original packaging, since you’re forced to destroy it to open it.
so as a retailer, you either sell it as an “open box buy” with a large markdown (and write off profit somewhere), or you send it back to the manufacturer, who probably re-packages it as a refurb and loses money somewhere instead.
with alarm tags and all the other security measures, is shoplifting really that significant compared to dealing with the repercussions of returned opened items?
I was recently thrilled to discover the inexpensive Brother P-Touch labeler has perforated packaging that is brilliantly engineered to pop open very easily without a box cutter. Big kudos to Brother
@LATHERRINSEREPEAT:
With clear plastic packaging, you typically CAN’T actually see the product before buying it — or rather, you can see it from only the one angle from which the marketing dept. wants you to see it. They usually hide all sorts of details behind the opaque parts of the packaging, like what the power brick looks like, or the length of some cables, exactly where things hook into in the back, etc., etc.
I MUCH prefer to have a box that I can open in the store, hold the product, see ALL the parts, turn it around, etc., etc. It pisses me off to no end to be in a store and have to buy a product on faith, then open it up at home, and hope it’s exactly what I want — and trudge back to the store and wait in line to return it if it isn’t. One of the most anti-consumerist things going these days is expecting buyers to purchase something based only on a glance or ad copy, rather than full disclosure as to the nature of the product. Plastic packaging provides no advantage to buying something in a store as opposed to on-line — if I can’t actually hold the product in my hand and closely examine it, I might as well just buy it from a picture on a web page.
“the elderly” Hmph!
Watch it there, boys and girls. We’re not dead yet.
Love,
The Boomers
@guroth: Their money is apparently not where their mouth is if they pull this kind of hypocrisy. I’d rather give my money to people who act out their principles. Talk is cheap.