There’s been a major battle brewing among those of us who like to close plastic bags. Are you gonna go with a twist-tie, which can be repurposed into a cat toy, or a plastic clip of the kind often seen to close bread bags, which can be bedazzled and sold online? Your answer matters to those in the $10 billion a year business of making bag closing devices.

Businessweek points to the move by Arnold bread to replace its plastic clips with a twist-tie last summer as the tipping point for this brewing battle.

“Our research showed moving to bag ties from clips was a cost-effective way to meet consumer preferences,” says David Margulies, a spokesman for Bimbo Bakeries, the mass-market baker that owns the Arnold brand. “So we made the switch during an equipment upgrade last May.”

It sounds like people get pretty steamed up in this war over the tiny products and no one can agree if clips are better than ties or vice versa.

“We feel, based on surveys we’ve done, that the twist-tie is consumer-preferred, but of course the clip people will tell you the same thing about their product,” says a marketing specialist for a Minnesota-based firm that’s the largest twist-tie manufacturer for the U.S. bakery market. “I think the two methods will always co-exist.”

So who’s winning? There’s no data on that, it seems, and both sides are claiming victory. As such, we’d like to bring the resolution to you, our fair readers.

For more on the historic battle between the twist-tie people and the plastic clip folk, check out the source link below.

Twist-Ties vs. Plastic Clips: A $10.6 Billion Battle of Tiny Titans [Businessweek]

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