Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Plastic milk cartons with a sealed spout supposedly removable by pulling a tiny loop of plastic affixed to the seal.

What happens 50% of the time is that no matter how careful you are the loop of plastic snaps before the spout seal even begins to tear open.

You then have to find some tool to remove it (without consequently losing the seal into the milk).

They make a gadget specifically for opening those evil clamshell things... http://www.myopenx.com/

Ironically, when they first started selling the gadget it came in a clamshell! Apparently they've switched to easy-open packaging now.

Pity you don't have Google ads. My entry on the blister pack opener still draws crowds.

I'm going to mix good and bad packaging reviews here, for a little emotional balance.

BAD:

1. Wine bottles with corks (although enthusiasts may have their reasons for this, even the plastic corks are a self-indulgent anachronism - we should not need specialty tools to open a container of an everyday staple) (yes, wine is an everyday staple for me since Trader Joe's opened in Manhattan)

2. The new-fangled plastic/paper cartons of wine/soymilk/etc. (the spouts don't pour very well at all, especially on the larger containers of e.g. soymilk, if the container is full; also, the packaging is touted as "environmentally friendly", but I suspect it's no better than using recyclable glass)

GOOD:

1. Wine bottles with screw-tops (if you can get over the feeling that you're drinking Night Train, you'll realize they're superior in every way to corks)

I disliked the recording industry even before I knew about their copyright stances. The plastic sticker on the top edge of CD's that is almost impossible to remove unless you take the CD case apart seems utterly unnecessary--it would best be applied to the more easily-removed shrinkwrap than to the jewel case. The only thing that this awful piece of packaging has going for it is that it seems to have displace the execrable "bones"--the little silver things that held the jewel case closed, and though tiny, were even more difficult to remove. If you wanted to get them completely gone, you need some kind of organic solvent.

Socks.

I bought a pack of five pairs of sports socks. When opening the pack at home out came several pieces of plastic and metal bits that even after collecting and throwing all of them, some still were found afterwards.

junk mail. why do we subsidize polluting?

RH Philips has a good screw top wine. They have this big statement against cork rot and traditional cork usage.

I hate those CD casings that always break in several places:
1) First the lid breaks, so you can't close it
2) then break the little pegs that are supposed to fit into the hole in the CD
3) ... and finally the loose parts scrape up the CD and ruin it.
Argh.

And oh yeah, corks suck too.