I want to say one word to you...Plastics

I used to think that there was a special circle of hell reserved solely for the inventor of the packaging for music CDs—and apparently I’m not the only one. I imagined a mountain of new CDs from which the inventor must forever open new CDs, with the mountain never reducing in its supply.

Well, I now believe that this circle holds an even bigger mountain for an even bigger sinner, and the inexhaustible supply this mountain spews forth contains plastic molding packaging that contains mundane consumer goods. Not expensive consumer electronics but ordinary items that used to come in ordinary cardboard and easily-opened packaging. You know, packaging that didn’t require the use of a blow-torch, surgical laser or chainsaw to open. An didn’t produce bloodied stumps where fingers one protruded after trying to open by hand.

While this packaging is normally only annoying and inconvenient at home, I’ve now discovered that it can actually keep you from accessing the item that you’ve purchased if you are traveling, when you don’t normally have mini-jaws-of-life tools handy.

Two months ago I realized that I had forgotten to bring my razor on a business trip. Good thing there’s a Target nearby, I foolishly thought. By the end of the night, my fingers were sliced and blood lay on the hotel’s linoleum floor as I finally overcame the seemingly indestructible packaging that surrounded the cheap non-electric razor that I bought. No, the cuts didn’t come from the enclosed blades—Gillette engineers are going to heaven, not the inventor of the now-ubiquitous plastic packaging in which more and more items are being sold.

JUMP CUT: TODAY

INT. ROOM — NIGHT

The scene: a nondescript hotel room which one wouldn’t want to see under a black light.

A red-faced man stabs at a package, the veins popping on his neck. He holds in one hand a slim transparent yet indestructible plastic package containing A PEN, and stabs at the package with his other hand holding the hotel’s feeble BALLPOINT PEN.

PSYCHOTIC TRAVELER

Aaaaarrrrggghhhh!

Yes, I bought a pen tonight at Office Depot, only to find out that I COULDN’T GET TO THE PEN BECAUSE SOMEONE HAD APPARENTLY SEALED IT TO SURVIVE A THOUSAND-YEAR BURIAL ALONGSIDE SOME MODERN-DAY TUTANKHAMEN.

The photo to the right shows the hideous remains of my conquered enemy. This time, I survived opening the package without leaving bloodstains to worry the hotel’s maid. But what in the gods’ names (to reference BSG) was such protective packaging doing on a cheap pen in Office Depot? I would advise others to avoid my perils by traveling wherever they go with scissors, but I know that one can’t travel very far these days carrying such tools of modern-day survival if one doesn't check one's bags.

Comments

[Gordon]

I just bought a new MP3 player (a Transcend T. Sonic 520 2G with FM radio and recording function: excellent, by the way). I had the same problem as you described above Brent! Very tough packaging that required my sticking a pen into a gap and busting the thing open by twisting it. The edges could quite easily cause a very serious cut. I do remember that the last Mach III razor box was particularly dangerous considering my hands were wet and covered in soapy foam. Scarily dangerous.

[bwedwards]

Sorry to hear that you have the same experience, Gordon. This madness has got to stop, consumers demand it (I think)!