I thought you might like this from the Times the other day:

SAN FRANCISCO:  A number of retailers and manufacturers have a gift for holiday shoppers: product packaging that will not result in lacerations and stab wounds.

Fisher-Price's Amazing Animals and other toys are going to Amazon.com in cardboard boxes, not clamshell packages.

"I shouldn't have to start each Christmas morning with a needle nose pliers and wire cutters," said Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon.

The companies, including Amazon.com, Sony, Microsoft and Best Buy, have begun to create alternatives to the infuriating plastic clamshell packages and cruelly complex twist ties that make products like electronics and toys almost impossible for mere mortals to open without power tools.

Impregnable packaging has incited such frustration among consumers that an industry term has been coined for it: "wrap rage." It has sent about 6,000 Americans each year to emergency rooms with injuries caused by trying to pry, stab and cut open their purchases, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

This month, Mr. Bezos pledged to lead the charge into a new era of nonhostile containers.

In Amazon's frustration-free packaging initiative involving Mattel, its subsidiary Fisher-Price, Microsoft and Transcend, an electronics maker, the companies will ship some of their best-selling products to Amazon in cardboard boxes that don't fight back. Mr. Bezos hopes to sell all of Amazon's products in such environmentally benign, consumer-friendly packaging” a goal he said would take years to achieve. "Everyone is excited about this project here, he said. "Everyone had their own war stories."

Such a campaign is relatively easy for Amazon, of course, because it does not need to worry about how products appear as they dangle from pegs on store shelves, or whether items will disappear inside shoppers' jacket pockets.

But even offline companies that do have those concerns are joining the movement. Microsoft recently unveiled an unusual container for the Explorer computer mice it sells at Best Buy. The mouse looks typically imprisoned in its package at first glance. But the container actually has a plastic zipper on each side "inspired by the packaging of food items, Microsoft said ” with blue arrows that guide buyers into easily unlocking their purchase.

Sony, meanwhile, has started an ambitious internal project it optimistically calls "death of the clamshell."The electronics giant is developing three packaging prototypes it plans to test in the coming months at Best Buy and Wal-Mart Stores. One uses an adhesive that is easy to pry open but makes a loud Velcro-like noise, intended to deter thieves.

Sony has even taken its anticlamshell campaign to its rank and file. At its annual sales and marketing meeting in April, held in Palm Desert, Calif., the company showed 1,200 employees a humorous video of four consumers struggling to open Sony products. One of them resorted to a hacksaw, another used his teeth and a third cut his finger.

"None of us intentionally tried to make this a hassle for consumers,"  said Mike Fasulo, chief marketing officer for Sony.

In fact, companies like Sony resorted to hermetically sealed packaging with the best of intentions. A decade ago, as toys and consumer electronics items grew more complex, retailers decided they needed to attract shoppers by showing off items on shelves in clear plastic, instead of opaque boxes.

To do so while protecting the items, they decided to seal the hinges of containers with tough epoxy that would resist shoplifting, or what retailers call: "shrinkage."

Most shoppers know what happened next. There are the injuries, of course. And tool makers found a thriving market for blade-bristling implements to defeat the clamshell, with names like the Plastic Surgeon and the Package Shark.

For the last few years, Consumer Reports has published an annual Oyster Awards for the clamshell packages that are most frustrating to open. Last year's winner: an Oral-B sonic toothbrush kit from Procter & Gamble and the Bratz Sisterz dolls from MGA Entertainment, which took an adult tester eight and a half minutes to open.

For consumers like Lisa Martin, a mother of two from Chicago, such packaging means exhausting birthday mornings as her young children wonder impatiently why a cluster of adults are stabbing at their new presents with knives and scissors.

"I understand antitheft. But when you get home and it takes two days to get your purchase open, it kind of defeats the purpose," said Ms. Martin, who was so enthusiastic about Amazon's "frustration-free" initiative, she offered in her blog to "make out" with the company.

But Ms. Martin and like-minded consumers should not pucker up quite yet. In a sign that there remains a long way to go before the last clamshell is pried open, TracFone Wireless, a mobile phone company, sent an unusual gift this fall to Radio Shack outlets that carry its products.

Each store has received a small box-cutter with the TracFone logo that Radio Shack sales staff can use to help open packages for shoppers.
"Rather than send coffee cups, we decided to send them something that helps them do their jobs better," said Derek Hewitt, senior vice president for marketing at TracFone, adding that his company has already made the transition to easier to open packages. "We know how frustrating it is at Christmas to open these packages."

Charlie

Charlie wrote on Nov 19^th, 2008 at 9:37am:

Fisher-Price's Amazing Animals and other toys are going to Amazon.com in cardboard boxes, not clamshell packages. "I shouldn't have to start each Christmas morning with a needle nose pliers and wire cutters,"

Yes.  Enjoying Christmas and birthdays with my brother's three little ones I usually went aside to enjoy the imaginative playworld with them and their new assorted playthings.  But after ten minutes a courier was sent summoning over my experienced toy-opening engineer brother to get inside human-resistant plastic shells to locate and disarm the hidden fastening wires or discover the binding attachments requiring intricate surgical methods.
  It'll be good again to incorporate a frequently more lasting play interest -- the cardboard box.

LOL, Kevin, your posts are a joy to read.  Weird.  But a joy non-the-less.    [smiley=crackup.gif]

You can't believe how good I've gotten at opening those clamshells over the years.  

Sometimes the pressure of young eyes staring greedily, waiting for the package to yield it's brigltly colored contents can be a bit rough on the nerves.  And then, when you finally extricate the toy from its plastic prison, you turn triumphantly expecting applause only to find the child has moved on to easier prey.

Practice makes perfect!!!

-Dennis- (Grizzled vetran of many Christmas morning clamshell wars)

I just use those kitchen shears with the springs on them.  Works great! :)

and omg, a box cutter?  Has anyone tried opening a clamshell with a box cutter?  Better have the gauze and a thick towel on hand. :o

Leave it to some computer aged a%%hole to take away one of the most cherished tradition in our family, the trip to urgent care for stitches. Why not just take away my Christmas Carols, the tree, stockings, sheesh...in this age of change is nothing sacred anymore???

Guiseppi

Guiseppi wrote on Nov 19^th, 2008 at 2:15pm:

Leave it to some computer aged a%%hole to take away one of the most cherished tradition in our family, the trip to urgent care for stitches. Why not just take away my Christmas Carols, the tree, stockings, sheesh...in this age of change is nothing sacred anymore??? Guiseppi

*Snicker*

Paul98 wrote on Nov 19^th, 2008 at 2:46pm:

I have many a poke and slash with the plastic .... -P.

You might want to think before posting Paul... just sayin'.....

Yeah...........what kind of plastic thing do you use to poke with?

How on earth would plastic poke plastic anyway?  Wouldn't that be a freak of nature? :-?

For all those of us "arthritically" afflicted - I say THANK YOU to those who've finally gotten the message that those PLASTIC things are a mess and should be destroyed!

Plastic Bubbles today -- Child proof Caps tomorrow!!!!

Hugs BD

It's not just the effort Barb. I take "blood thinners." I bleed at a harsh look.

Charlie