March 2007
The Oyster Awards
We thought we had seen it all last year: packaging so frustrating to open that it elicited expletive-filled outbursts from usually mild-mannered Consumer Reports testers. But in our second contest named after the tight-jawed mollusk, we’ve found worthy successors to the 2006 winners.
A sealed, hard-plastic clamshell housing a powered toothbrush takes top honors because of the tools, strength, time, and finesse required to extract the contents. Packaging for popular dolls comes in a close second because of the 50 twists, ties, and tapes that shackle the dolls to their plastic and cardboard prison.
Honorable mentions include a box of macaroni and cheese that crushed easily, a toy aircraft carrier with hard-to-liberate pieces, and plastic-encased light bulbs we were hard-pressed to extract without breaking the bulbs or slicing ourselves.
In fact, this year as last, we heard about cut and bloodied fingers, hands, and arms. And we heard from consumers with arthritis who struggled with simple tasks such as opening blister packs of pills, and those who used any implement at hand--pliers, kitchen shears, bolt-cutters, military issue can openers, hacksaws, files, teeth, and fingernails--to get the job done.
To determine this year’s winners, we asked staffers and visitors to our Web site, ConsumerReports.org, for nominees and sent two reporters and a technical expert to eyeball those products and look for other candidates. The trio returned to our Yonkers, N.Y., headquarters with 26 contenders. Three volunteers of different ages and strengths tried opening the packages with their hands, then scissors, box cutters, and if all else failed, wire cutters. Then we had a volunteer unfamiliar with the products try to open the worst of the bunch as our technical expert watched.
Despite the wealth of bad examples, there’s encouraging news. Improvements are evident in the packaging of many foods and over-the-counter drugs, and some toys. Even the dreaded clamshell is showing signs of user-friendliness. (See The good guys.)
With some types of packaging, however, we see little reason for optimism. Cereal bags still rip too readily and aren’t generally resealable; and CDs, DVDs, and video games remain shrink-wrapped and imprisoned by security seals.
Grab the ax
Why are so many packages still hard to crack? Blame crooks, in part. Manufacturers obsess about theft as never before. The National Association for Shoplifting Prevention estimates losses from pilferage at more than $25 million per day. Other reasons:
MGA Entertainment, the company that manufactures Bratz dolls, has sympathy for the customers who buy them. “We are in the process of a running change in the packaging that is certain to make the ‘ties, twists, and tape’ problem so much easier to handle,” says Reagan Holmes, the company’s public-relations coordinator. She wouldn’t divulge exactly how the company planned to revamp its packaging.
“Manufacturers get pulled in a lot of different directions,” says Laura Bix, assistant professor of packaging at Michigan State University. The public “expects prices to remain low,” she says, “but they want environmental friendliness, and they want it to be nice looking.” Retailers have expectations, too. They need to guard against pilferage yet attract buyers. “Products need to ‘pop’ off the shelf to catch the eye of even the tiniest consumers,” Bix says. “Manufacturers do make an effort to balance those different expectations.”
In the end, says Kay Cooksey, associate professor in Clemson University’s Department of Packaging Science, packaging is perceived by industry as a necessary evil, and manufacturers don’t want to spend more on it than they have to, even if it means compromising usability.
CR’s hard-to-open-packaging hall of shame welcomes new inductees
We thought we had seen it all last year: packaging so frustrating to open that it elicited expletive-filled outbursts from usually mild-mannered Consumer Reports testers. But in our second contest named after the tight-jawed mollusk, we’ve found worthy successors to the 2006 winners.
A sealed, hard-plastic clamshell housing a powered toothbrush takes top honors because of the tools, strength, time, and finesse required to extract the contents. Packaging for popular dolls comes in a close second because of the 50 twists, ties, and tapes that shackle the dolls to their plastic and cardboard prison.
Honorable mentions include a box of macaroni and cheese that crushed easily, a toy aircraft carrier with hard-to-liberate pieces, and plastic-encased light bulbs we were hard-pressed to extract without breaking the bulbs or slicing ourselves.
In fact, this year as last, we heard about cut and bloodied fingers, hands, and arms. And we heard from consumers with arthritis who struggled with simple tasks such as opening blister packs of pills, and those who used any implement at hand--pliers, kitchen shears, bolt-cutters, military issue can openers, hacksaws, files, teeth, and fingernails--to get the job done.
To determine this year’s winners, we asked staffers and visitors to our Web site, ConsumerReports.org, for nominees and sent two reporters and a technical expert to eyeball those products and look for other candidates. The trio returned to our Yonkers, N.Y., headquarters with 26 contenders. Three volunteers of different ages and strengths tried opening the packages with their hands, then scissors, box cutters, and if all else failed, wire cutters. Then we had a volunteer unfamiliar with the products try to open the worst of the bunch as our technical expert watched.
Despite the wealth of bad examples, there’s encouraging news. Improvements are evident in the packaging of many foods and over-the-counter drugs, and some toys. Even the dreaded clamshell is showing signs of user-friendliness. (See The good guys.)
With some types of packaging, however, we see little reason for optimism. Cereal bags still rip too readily and aren’t generally resealable; and CDs, DVDs, and video games remain shrink-wrapped and imprisoned by security seals.
Grab the ax
Why are so many packages still hard to crack? Blame crooks, in part. Manufacturers obsess about theft as never before. The National Association for Shoplifting Prevention estimates losses from pilferage at more than $25 million per day. Other reasons:
- Federal safety laws require seals that will show evidence of tampering, and child-safety caps on most over-the-counter remedies, though that often makes them adultproof.
- Products from abroad must be packed securely enough to withstand a long, bouncy voyage aboard a cargo ship.
- With toys, it’s no longer enough to picture what’s inside. Children and parents like to interact with the toy or at least see all the pieces before buying.
MGA Entertainment, the company that manufactures Bratz dolls, has sympathy for the customers who buy them. “We are in the process of a running change in the packaging that is certain to make the ‘ties, twists, and tape’ problem so much easier to handle,” says Reagan Holmes, the company’s public-relations coordinator. She wouldn’t divulge exactly how the company planned to revamp its packaging.
“Manufacturers get pulled in a lot of different directions,” says Laura Bix, assistant professor of packaging at Michigan State University. The public “expects prices to remain low,” she says, “but they want environmental friendliness, and they want it to be nice looking.” Retailers have expectations, too. They need to guard against pilferage yet attract buyers. “Products need to ‘pop’ off the shelf to catch the eye of even the tiniest consumers,” Bix says. “Manufacturers do make an effort to balance those different expectations.”
In the end, says Kay Cooksey, associate professor in Clemson University’s Department of Packaging Science, packaging is perceived by industry as a necessary evil, and manufacturers don’t want to spend more on it than they have to, even if it means compromising usability.
