John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Impenetrable Packaging

Impenetrable Packaging: There’s got to be a better way.

A few years back the “He Man” serving was all the marketing rage. Restaurants would offer up 20% more food than people could eat and charge 40% more and get away with it because of the “perceived value.”

Today the problem is with packages that cannot be opened by mere mortals. If you are a bodybuilder or keep a chain saw in your car, no need to keep reading. This doesn’t apply to you.

For the rest of us, though, I don’t get this need of putting items we purchase in packages we can’t open.

Is it to create a “perceived value add” bc we have to work so hard to open our new product that we are supposed to feel even more excited than we would have been to start using it?

It can’t be to prevent store theft. If so, only easily lifted store items would be encased in a impenetrable packaging –not everything in retail stores.

Yesterday, after wrestling for nearly 10 minutes with an ear bud package, I finally successfully tore it open. I looked around to see if others were watching. I felt like Arthur successfully withdrawing the embedded Excalibur sword from the giant stone.

I felt I should be knighted or at least applauded.

And I didn’t feel a “value add.”

I did feel several abrasions on my hands and fingers. Which I hope I’m not being charged extra for. And I didn’t bother trying to buy band-aids. That would be another battle to open that package.