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Packaging: Bad design begets more design

By Rain Noe - November 17, 2008

in Object Culture

While consumer companies were inflicting bad packaging upon us, a new category of tools developed to get the darn things open. These will probably remain on store shelves until the new wave of packaging emerges. Let's have a look at what's out there:

The Ultimate Package Opener has a short 2mm blade that extends and cuts into packaging when the button is pressed.

Zibra's Open It is the Swiss Army Knife of package opening, with shear-like clipper jaws, a boxcutter extension and even a screwdriver to open battery covers.

The KwikCut works something like an old-school can opener: you puncture the edge of your packaging and slide the tool around it, slicing off the bonded rim.

The Pyranna aims for safety by keeping your fingers well away from its cutting wheels, which are sandwiched between two halves of a plastic handle.

The OpenX, another package-opening multi-tool, is designed to get through not only plastic packaging and cartons, but bottle seals and those pesky foil seals on the tops of pill bottles, making it senior-friendly.

The Plastic Surgeon is a cross between a scalpel and a can opener, and apparently is designed to appeal to the would-be surgeon in all of us.

Lastly, the Package Shark Pro offers no description as to how it actually works, but it does appear to consist of two pieces, and it's got that "As Seen on TV" branding, which means quality.

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Edgar

16 years ago

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It would be simple to design an easier to open package. There are reasons why clamshell packaging is widely used, and it is not just cost. It provides an incredible amount of protection for the product without much material. It also makes theft of the product off the store shelf much harder. I would suggest that there is much more criteria for well designed packaging than just making it easy to open.
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jdt

16 years ago

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The best part is that most of these package openers come in hard-to-open packages...
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jaime

16 years ago

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i can imagine those packed on a hard-to-open packaging. Oh the irony!
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connje

16 years ago

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Here is another can opener style that i have tried.
http://www.zipitopener.com/
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JGhani

16 years ago

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The ultimate solution to the hard-to-open package is designing an easy-to-open package that would also be easy-on-environment. How about that?
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JStone

16 years ago

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The "Zibra's Open It" is seriously dangerous - try using the handle lock (or what most people would think is the handle lock) and you will stab/slice yourself with a small blade instead. Ouch, I'm not sure how that design got past the foam models.
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