I was in our Marketing Director's office today when she got a package.  It was a couple of new video cameras to record our station events with.

The cameras were really cool except for one thing:  The packages they came in.

She used scissors, fingers, pulled, squeezed, pried, and what seemed like ten minutes later finally got into it to get the camera out.  It was one of those relatively new plastic shell like packages that a lot of things are coming in now.

I had the same problem opening a package of batteries a few weeks ago.  I wasn't near a pair of scissors and I used ripping, pulling, teeth, fingers, banging, I even farted on it and it still took about five minutes to get into it and nearly an act of God.

I remember when I was a kid how shocked my mom was when they introduced child proof caps on pills.  She was so upset because she didn't think she could open the bottle when she needed an aspirin.  At first she asked me to open the bottle every time she wanted one and eventually she got the hang of the push down and turn motion the bottle required for opening.  And I was the kid that the package was designed to keep out!

Now packaging is getting ridiculous.

I can only imagine what the suits at various product manufacturing companies must be thinking when they sit in a conference room and decide that packaging has been way too easy to open for it's customers.  "Gee, we should heat seal these hard plastic packages so that it's impossible for the average person to open.  Wouldn't that drive our sales way up?"

Plus, in this age of "going green", wouldn't it make more sense to use LESS packaging?  Plastic is made from petroleum products.  OIL!  Maybe that's the secret behind the record breaking crude oil prices.  It's all the extra plastic that stuff we buy now is encased in that the Incredible Hulk would find impossible to rip open.  Maybe the police should stop using kevlar vests and use packaging plastic instead.  It's so thick now it must be bullet proof.

Maybe if we get a little extra money in our budget around the radio station we'll purchase a chain saw.  We'll need it to open packages.  But I can only imagine what kind of package the chain saw would come in.  Probably something that would require us to drop it off of the roof of the radio station to open.