One of my bugbears is dysfunctional packaging (in the UK), which appears to be a large percentage of it.

For some reason (and I have no idea what has changed to initiate it) certain packaging has become almost impregnable to the average unadorned human being (hands, teeth, feet etc). Flimsy plastic wrapping is now something a superhero could be proud to use in their fight against crime. Try opening for example a plastic bag of sugar, herbs, nuts or anything other than certain snack foods (a few of which are still designed to be opened with just our hands) and you will need tools; a knife or a pair of scissors, a hedge trimmer maybe. Because if you manage to open them by hand and don't give yourself a hernia in the process, then the bag will split (presumably in order to punish your precocity) and the contents will spill all over the place, often dramatically. A result I call CSE (contents spewing everywhere).

Ok fine I have scissors in the kitchen, so I use them. But the way the bag has been designed - folded and glued - means that it is not possible to do a clean cut straight across or even a clean straight cut of a corner, unless you are a origami expert twice removed (some dishwasher salt bag designers please take note). So the top or corner is now zigzagged shaped, which means that pouring anything out of it involves, yes you guessed it, 'contents spewing everywhere' again. Ok, so I quite like the bottom of my dishwasher covered in salt crystals ... looks kinda festive don'tya think?

Or ... bags of sugar which are so full that to cut below the top glue line means (unless you have a steady hand, good eyesight and are really careful) 'contents spewing ... ' yeah I think you get what I mean. Then they add insult to injury and include that useless large piece of sticky tape, which is <sarcasm type="extreme">really handy</sarcasm> for you to stick down the top after opening, even though the bag is so full that it bursts open a few nanoseconds later; then when the bag becomes more comfortably empty the tape loses its stickiness anyway.

I am beginning to think that packaging designers are just taking the proverbial ... Ok maybe a tad paranoid, but I wouldn't be writing this if it was just an occasional occurrence; because just lately it appears to be that too many packaging items have some sort of dysfunction. It's a trend of sorts. I'm sure that there are all kinds of security, health & safety and other reasons that it happens - but it still annoys the heck out of me, because it just feels gratuitous or badly thought out.

Anyway here's just a few initial items on my personal aggravation list:

• Juice cartons, you know the hard to open, cardboard/foil/plastic/whatever combination cartons which are practicably unrecyclable and will only pour anything if allowed to gurgle-slop and then more often than not 'spew contents everywhere'. I've lost count of the amount of times the plastic ring-pull security seal thingy has snapped off, so that you cannot open them without some kind of electrical equipment and a sort of grim determination.
• Sugar, herbs, nuts for cooking etc or anything that has that horrible stiff plastic wrapping and is glued up the whazzoo (in order I presume to stop people opening them in the store, wandering around whilst snacking out and perhaps doing a little shopping in the meantime). Thus trying to open them by hand (as previously mentioned) almost always results in CSE (contents spewing everywhere) in your kitchen and possible starvation if you are in the 'field' caught short without a Swiss knife, machete or ice pick to hand.
• Wine bottles with foil tops, that have no tab to help peal them off, although it is one way to spend an almost Zen-like and rather thoughtful afternoon pealing off the foil top, micromillimeter by micromillimeter. Just keep a packet of plasters handy (... if you can open them that is ... sob).
• Milk bottles (plastic), those with foil security tops that occasionally are overglued and just will not come off, resulting in ... once you do get them off and before calling emergency to treat your dislocated shoulder, more blooming CSE!
• Teabag boxes, with that flimsy plastic outer covering that is fiddly to open and peal off ... piece by piece by ... and then you have to 'unseal' the cardboard box underneath anyway (whereby you learn that paper/cardboard is actually strongest at the perforations). But I guess the plastic outer cover stops damage to the teabags when the packets fall in water; which could be handy if you keep them say in the shower stall instead of the cupboard, or the delivery lorry drivers forget to batten the hatches in a rainstorm, or a 100ft tidal wave ...
• Crackers, you know the 'fragile' ones that come in micron thin plastic wrapping which affords zero protection against percussion damage. In fact my guess is that this wrapping creates a minus protection factor (anti-packaging!) ... in other words crackers in this stuff are more likely to be damaged than if they were completely loose. Then they have that <sarcasm type="major">handy</sarcasm> tab you pull to guillotine the top off ... which works only when the moon is full and you aren't in any kind of hurry.
• Any kind of packaging which is that spongy, soft plastic wrap (the type that your bread comes in), or other types of flimsy plastic that you screw up and put in the bin ... but then quietly unwraps itself over the next few minutes to a size that is actually larger than it was beforehand; thus defying several laws of physics in the process. This causes an inverse square mass issue inside your bin, necessitating the use of heavy items in order to weigh down the plastic 'explosion' and make room for anything else.
• Margarine tub lids, a fiddle to get off, almost impossible to put back on, without specialist equipment, so that they 'click' properly. Which means you make a grab for the marge in the fridge and the loose lid flips off ... you lose your grip (in more ways than one I might add) and the tub somersaults impressively into the air ... it lands on the floor with a splat (and we all know which way round it lands) and results in another major CSE event.
• That stupid, useless and aggravating push-lock-plastic-strip thingy (don't know the official name ... don't care). On certain packaging you have a plastic strip on the inside of the opened edge, which when pressed together grips and seals the package opening (hahahahahah - if only) like a zip.  As you can guess by my maniacal laughter they just hardly ever and I mean ever work, ever, ever, ever! Arggghhhhhhh ... [takes deep breath] ...

There are more examples I'm sure, but I think I've just blocked them from memory.

So [another deep breath] every time I see a <sarcasm type="global" class="of its own">handy</sarcasm> 'pull here to open' message or tab on any type of packaging: I grit my teeth, gird my loins (at least I think I do as, like Terry Pratchett's Rev Oats, I'm not entirely sure how you do that) and make a mental note of where the knives/scissors/chain saw ... tissues/soap/biohazard suit are located ... I'll let you know how I get on.

Su