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I was commenting to an audience a few nights
ago about the joys of technological advance. About how, if you’d told someone twenty years ago that using a little cordless hand-held instrument you could be almost
anywhere and chat, send pics or data across the world – they’d have thought you were nuts. The idea that we see live satellite images as part of our weather updates on
TV is taken for granted. That we use ground-penetrating radar to reveal mineral deposits. That a cochlear implant lets a previously deaf person ‘hear’ electronically.
That a microchip lets someone ‘see’ again. All this, yet we can’t produce simple packaging openable by regular human fingers.
In just the last week, I’ve
encountered the following: An Ouma buttermilk rusk box that had to be torn open, because the seams on the re-closable (yeh, right) box refused to yield to either
coercion or abuse. Ditto almost always for the Kellogg’s Cornflakes box. And while on the subject of cornflakes, it’s very tiresome having to keep a little plastic
clip holding the inner bag closed. For a few cents extra, surely we could evolve to a re-sealable inner bag to retain crispness?
Of course crispness or
freshness can be taken to extremes. My favourite brand of Golden Cloud muffin mix disappeared from supermarket shelves for weeks on end, only to re-surface in truly
horrible ox-blood packaging. In a clear attempt at better shelf-life or freshness, a plastic laminate packaging paper has been used - along with indestructible glue.
So if you ever intended using just half the pack, you’d have to store the contents in another container, so extreme is the mutilation. Don’t even talk about opening a
Jungle Oats box. A hand grenade is the only solution, and there’s no prospect of a ‘re-seal.’
My favourite IT man gave me a delightful mini optical mouse this
last week. Fortunately, I was saved the angst of accessing it because he had a carpet knife at hand. A day later I bought a memory expansion card for my pocket PC. It
took the guy in the store several Kamikaze slashes with a potent-looking penknife before the blister pack yielded its prey. Once opened, most rigid plastic containers
can be used to sheer sheep, so lethal are the cut edges.
Being an early adopter of technology, innovation or food stuffs has its downside. Because the packaging
gets test-driven on you. Sometimes I think the packaging people booby-trap tried and tested old friends just to keep you on your toes. To whit, Dewfresh longlife 2%
fat milk. The milk’s not the problem. It’s the bleeding Tetrapak. When you pop up the little reclosable plastic cap, underneath lurks a smirking little foil strip that
seals the milk from the outside world. First of all the bit you have to grip would be fine if you were Snow White or one of her tiny-digited companions. When you do
manage to grab it, you discover it’s trapped under the plastic surround. So it breaks off – leaving you to stab a hole with kitchen scissors. Defeating the whole
design purpose.
If Environment Minister Valli Moosa is worried about light-weight plastic carry bags – he hasn’t yet struck electronics packaging. The
biodegradability of some of these techno wonders must be dozens, if not hundreds of years. I can just see some alien one day scratching his head and contemplating the
discarded packaging from my mini optical mouse.
Airline snack packs can only ever be opened with your teeth. The shrink-wrapped cheese portion though, deserves
the ‘killer-application’ award for indestructibility. It remains inaccessible to all but rodents or women with wonder-nails. Tried finding the ‘start’ sheet on a loo
roll, paper towel or roll of plastic packing tape recently? It will lead to patience, insanity or sainthood.
On a serious note, how come we’re so high tech in many
arenas and yet a simple thing like user-friendly packaging eludes manufacturers? Is it because consumers don’t complain about it? I’ve never written to do so. Maybe
nobody else does either. In which case, brand managers might well think their product packaging is state of the art and designed to present the product to best
advantage. Dunno. But it would be really nice if someone started paying attention to ease of access, along with aesthetics. Since packaging is often an expensive
element in getting product to market, you’d think it would receive a little more attention from the marketing department. Maybe at the next Board meeting, FMCG company
directors should be asked to open packs of their own product?
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