Open at your own risk

Ripping into a CD or another new product can frustrate, enrage and even wound, so why does some packaging seem as if it's designed specifically to keep you out? By Gary Strauss USA TODAY

Why is stuff so hard to open?

San Diego Padres pitching ace Adam Eaton threw himself a curve trying to figure that out after he jabbed himself with a pocketknife prying open a box of DVDs.

''They're in those plastic packages that no one can get open,'' says Eaton, who missed a next-day start after needing two stitches to close a wound near his bellybutton.

Eaton's recent mishap strikes a nerve among consumers exasperated over shrink-wrapped CDs, tightly fused bags of potato chips, kids' dolls and scores of other products that require advanced engineering degrees or brute force to open easily and fuss-free.

''I've chipped a tooth, broken fingernails and cursed a blue streak trying to open things,'' says Anne Seymour, a crime-victims advocate from Washington, D.C. ''The idea should be to let the customer open your product and enjoy it.''

Packing technology has ushered in scores of easy-open products. But others are actually becoming harder to open. Those wider-mouth soft-drink and beer cans? Great for marketers because consumers can chug faster and, consequently, more often. But they are harder to pop open because there's a wider metal piece to push into the lid, industry experts say.

Toys now come heavily wired, stapled and glued to packaging, mainly to deter thievery and in-store sampling. ''I open hundreds of toys a year,'' says Toy Report editor and industry analyst Chris Byrne, who notes that some manufacturers now include small tools to pry out toys. ''Don't you just want to swear when you take a Barbie out of the box?''

And the simple stuff, like cereal boxes? ''Getting through the waxy paper is something else,'' says Utah resident Chuck Bennett, a regional manager for Iron-A-Way, an ironing board maker. ''You grab it in exactly the right place with two hands and grunt. But the bags are so thick and have so much glue, you tear it the wrong way.''

Federal safety laws require tamper-proof seals and child-safety caps on over-the-counter medications, but that makes many adult-proof, too. Scores of other items, from salad dressings to mayonnaise, also come safety sealed -- vexing both to elderly and young consumers. Can there be that much theft or surreptitious in-store sampling going on? asks Julian Moon, a perplexed Atlanta-based telecommunications consultant.

Openability a low priority

Marketers don't like to change packaging unless there's a cost benefit. Those plastic bags found in produce aisles are universally hard to use. Sonoco Products, a major consumer products packaging supplier, makes bags that open as they're pulled off a rack. But many U.S. customers, unlike European and Asian counterparts, are reluctant to pay fractionally higher costs, CEO Harris DeLoach says.

Not that packaging issues are taken lightly. PepsiCo briefly sold soft drinks in cans that had tiny slits on the pull tabs. They tended to catch mustache hairs, including those of Scott Buchanan, PepsiCo's head of global can procurement. ''We finally went to the tooling guys and told them to get rid of it,'' he says.

Yet being consumer friendly, especially in an intensely competitive retail environment, typically means packaging design meant to maximize eye appeal. Snackmaker Beer Nuts, for example, is freshening the look of its decade-old packaging. New, easier-opening bags? No way. ''Your package is your billboard,'' says marketing chief Cindy Shirk. ''Our biggest priorities are getting consumers to buy our product and shelf life. The last thing we're trying to sell is how to open it.''

There's a tiny tear-open notch on bags of Beer Nuts -- a feature on many products aimed at helping the directionally challenged. Most Beer Nuts consumers, who Shirk describes as beer-loving, 25- to 45-year-old male sports fans, don't see it. ''Maybe we should put teeth marks on the side of the packaging, instead of 'open here,' '' Shirk muses.

Broken teeth, stab wounds

Don't mention that to Newton, Mass., dentist Richard Price. ''I can't count the times someone's come in with a broken filling or tooth. Bottle caps, those plastic price tag things, you name it,'' says Price, practicing since 1971. He admits to biting cellophane wrapping off videotape boxes. ''When in doubt, you reach for the handiest tool. Unfortunately, it's usually on the other side of your lips,'' he says.

Unsurprisingly, package-related wounds like Eaton's are fairly common. Richard O'Brien, an emergency physician at Moses Taylor Hospital in Scranton, Pa., estimates he has treated 3,000 patients for package-related injuries, about 200 a year, since 1985. Widespread: cuts to the hand holding whatever is being pried open.

Bakersfield, Calif., resident Owen Kearns once needed stitches to close a gash on his hand from a box cutter, which he used to open office supplies. ''Shrink-wrap just drives me nuts,'' says Kearns, a NASCAR official. He now carries a Swiss Army knife that has a scissors attachment, a gift from his mother-in-law.

Sometimes, it's not just the product, but where it's opened. Seasoned travelers routinely complain of impossible-to-open airline snacks.

''I cannot even begin to tell you how many bags of peanuts and pretzels I've helped senior citizens and kids open,'' says Joe Harvey, a software consultant from New Orleans. ''It's an air pressure thing.''

Plenty of earthbound consumers have trouble with soft-plastic packaging laminated to cardboard, known as blister packs. ''It's not necessary to wrap toothbrushes in packages as if they're radioactive waste,'' says Tess Graham, a Memphis-based software consultant.

Graham, 32, brushes several times daily and purchases about 30 toothbrushes a year. (Stop snickering. She's never had a cavity.) ''I keep a knife on a key chain that I don't trot out for anything else,'' she says.

What about tightly sealed containers? In industry parlance, the amount of hand strength required to tackle, say, lug-seal pickle jars is known as torque removal. Most food containers are tightly sealed for product freshness and to maximize shelf life, says Darla Williamson, president of the Closure Manufacturers Association. (No, we're not making this up.) The CMA is a trade group that includes manufacturers of metal bottle caps, plastic twist-offs and assorted other container seals. Williamson keeps a collection of large rubber bands around the kitchen to use as grippers on hard-to-open lids.

Yet even seemingly simple stuff, such as cardboard milk cartons, pose problems. ''You fold up the sides and try to pull it out, the paper carton usually shreds, leaving a ragged hole that pours milk everywhere,'' says Dick Ploen, a sales marketing analyst based in Griswold, Conn.

Blaming consumers

Marketers aren't entirely to blame. An increasingly Type-A culture living at broadband speed expects immediate gratification. Along with fast cars and fast food, most want to open their stuff fast. ''We're a tear-away society,'' notes Ohio State University consumer behaviorist Roger Blackwell, co-author of the just-released Customers Rule! Why the E-Commerce Honeymoon is Over. ''We're so time impoverished that there's no way most of us can perfect techniques to open packages without tearing the whole thing.''

Even those meticulous at opening stuff are often flummoxed. ''I'm kind of anal, so I don't rip things apart. But those hard plastic, clamshell-type packages which computer games and other stuff come in are frustrating, especially when one of the children wants it open before they get home,'' says Karin Thrift, corporate accounts manager based in Austin, Texas, for Clif Bar, an energy and health supplement.

Robert Ruch has similar troubles opening clamshell packaging for portable CD players and headphones. ''I know it's to lessen shoplifting, but they're too tough to rip open with your hands,'' says Ruch, a Richmond, Va.-based technical service manager for industrial coatings-maker ICI Paints.

''Companies want it that way,'' says Brian Merrills, CEO of Merrills Packaging, a major clamshell manufacturer based in Burlingame, Calif.

Does anyone express annoyance when they learn what he does? ''Not yet,'' Merrills says with a nervous laugh.

Making changes

Ease of opening has been an issue at H.J. Heinz since the mid-1990s, says Mike McMahon, senior manager of research and development. Heinz launched plastic pouch versions of its Starkist tuna last October. They have already captured about 5% of the $2 billion tuna market, he says. And peelable, easy-to-open liners are now part of Heinz's Ore-Ida frozen potato line.

To eliminate maddening bag tears, snack giant Frito-Lay initiated a bagging process several years ago that cut the amount of force needed to open bags by 70%, says Jay Gehring, Frito-Lay's director of packaging technology.

A can you can open

User-friendly beverage cans could soon be widespread. Crown Cork & Seal's SuperEnd can, being test-marketed by PepsiCo, has an easy-open tab. Slight ''doming'' in the SuperEnd's lid causes the pull tab to rise slightly, providing better leverage, says Dan Abramowicz, head of corporate technologies. The SuperEnd, already used by Canadian brewer Labatt and private label beverage maker Cott, is cheaper than other wide-mouth cans because it contains less aluminum.

Marketers hoping to keep and attract older consumers will have to focus on easy-open packaging, says Lynn Dornblaser, editor of Mintel's Global New Products Database. ''As the population gets older, people who have a choice will buy what's easier to use and open,'' she says.

And while easier-to-open products may become more important for consumers and marketers, so are easier-to-close packages.

''One of the things our customers continue to ask is, 'Wouldn't it be great if you could close a can?' '' Abramowicz says.

Which raises another perplexing question. Why is stuff so hard to close?