I Bought It ... Why Can't I Have It?
Friday, October 19, 2007 at 10:20PM Yesterday as I drove home from Aiken, before I met the lady who thought my bumper was two different colors (purple with green polka dots, from the look on her face), while never taking my eyes from the road or my left hand from the wheel, my right hand began rooting around in my purse for a stick of gum. I always have several packs of Ice Breakers Cool Mint on hand, both at home and away. Usually there is an open pack lurking in one of the pouches built into the lining of my handbag. My groping fingers identified a few packs but, as fate would have it, neither of them had been opened. So I activated my blinking hazard lights, pulled over to the side of the road, popped the trunk, got out, opened the wheel well, located a crowbar, and proceeded to pry open the pack of gum.
Well, I guess you know that everything after "neither of them had been opened" is a little bit of an exaggeration, but have you ever tried to operate an automobile at seventy-eight miles an hour and open a pack of Ice Breakers at the same time? Perhaps I should explain. The nice folks in the Gum Package Design Department at Hershey Foods, which makes Ice Breakers, have thoughtfully put a little "tab" ... (code for "paper padlock") ... near the "top" of the pack of gum, but then -- no doubt during a brainstorming session so intense and protracted that they had to call for Chinese takeout -- they inexplicably decided to glue the little tab down so that, even cleverly employing fingernails and teeth and any other sharp object at hand, the consumer finds it all but impossible to lift the tab and free the tiny red ribbon that, once pulled, starts the process that (ideally) releases the top of the pack so you can actually get to the gum. That you bought. So you could chew it. In the first place.
The brilliant and innovative folks at Ice Breakers, possibly channeling the Marquis de Sade, not satisfied with the havoc they had already wrought by gluing down the tab so you can't open the package without first opening a toolbox, apparently decided to advance this exercise in futility one step further. The happy result of their diligence is that once you have frustrated yourself to the point of despair getting the pack open, for some (I'm sure very good) reason, the first stick of gum you try to extract has itself been glued to the package. No kidding! No matter which outside stick you choose, after you've bent it out slightly, when you grasp it and pull, nothing happens. Well, occasionally the top eighth of it pulls off, leaving what's left of the stick embedded securely in the package. I have actually been known to use scissors to cut the whole package open so that I can get to that one piece of gum and chew it.
Why, you might ask, don't I simply choose one of the other four sticks -- since they are in fact all alike -- pull it out, and commence chomping it, sans the puerile drama? Surely all the sticks can't be glued to the bottom of the pack? Well, that's a good question, but maybe it's because I have the strange idea that once I've purchased the pack of gum, I ought to be able to pull out any stick I want, at random, without requiring dynamite to blast it from the package. It is a matter of principle! Perhaps I am being unreasonable; perhaps not. Let me chew on that awhile.
Reader Comments (2)
I spent fifteen minutes yesterday trying to remove an ink cartridge from it's plastic enclosure. Even after cutting the initial plastic cover off, there was another, tougher one, underneath. The shackled one was called, sneered in contempt at my female inadequacies and retired two minutes later with a cut finger and several curses. Brute force eventually released the cartridge from its prison and printing began, but I was exhausted from the effort and the shackled one was further frustrated in trying to open the packet of plasters to cover his (miniscule) cut.
Are package designers distant relatives of the Marquis de Sade?
I really think they might be! LOL!