Monday, November 3, 2008

Wrap Rage?

I was just perusing my favorite website to shop at ....Amazon of course, and on their main page they have this article about the packaging of products. As you fully understand, because the manufacturers of toys are relatives of Houdini, they like to make it as difficult and frustrating as possible to get the intended item out. So much so, that they have named this frustration "Wrap Rage". Yes, it has an official term. Seems like everything has a diagnoses these days....

Anyway, even though I thought it was kind of silly that they coined a new phrase for the frustration we all feel (especially parents of small children) when trying to extrude a small toy from an ungodly amount of hermetically sealed plastic, metal twisty ties (twisted 47 times), and zip ties (12 of them on all body parts, corners, etc), it is SOOOOOO true. The amount of packaging material that goes to waste on toys is obnoxious. And trying to get some toys out of their packing is like trying to get gracefully put on a full body shaper/squeezer inner.
Other companies (probably sister companies of the toy companies) have started marketing "Wrap Rage Cures"...which are essentially heavy duty scissors to combat against the packaging.

Great Britain did a study and found that 67,000 people reported injuries from opening packing.

Thankfully, Amazon is a smart company.
"Amazon is working with leading manufacturers to deliver products inside smaller, easy-to-open, recyclable cardboard boxes with less packaging material (and no frustrating plastic clamshells or wire ties"

I haven't seen a company do something that made this much sense in a long time. So refreshing that they are using common sense to help make their customers experience more pleasant, even though these are not their products. Way to go Amazon, WAY TO GO!!!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Great topic - I just went through this battle last night. The injury stats are not surprising!

Tiffany said...

I'm right here with ya. I'm in the process of sorting out Tristan's infant toys and buying some "bigger boy" toys and it is a miracle I can get them undone. Pliers, wire cutters, scissors...heck, maybe a sledgehammer????