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'Wrap rage' may become a thing of packaging past

Some retailers promising easy-to-open containers

Retailers and manufacturers have a gift for holiday shoppers: product packaging that won't result in lacerations and stab wounds.

Plastic "clamshell" packages are well-represented at a Circuit City in New York. News Service

The companies, including Amazon.com, Sony, Microsoft and Best Buy, have begun to create alternatives to the infuriating plastic “clamshell” packages and complicated twist ties that make products such as electronics and toys almost impossible for mere mortals to open without power tools.

Impregnable packaging has incited such frustration among consumers that an industry term has been coined for it – “wrap rage.” It has sent about 6,000 Americans each year to emergency rooms with injuries caused by trying to pry, stab and cut open their purchases, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

“I shouldn't have to start each Christmas morning with a needle-nose pliers and wire cutters,” said Jeff Bezos, the father of four young children and founder of Amazon.com. “But that is what I do: I arm myself, and it still takes me 10 minutes to open each package.”

This month, Bezos pledged to lead the charge into a new era of nonhostile containers. In Amazon's “frustration-free packaging” initiative involving Mattel, its subsidiary Fisher-Price, Microsoft and Transcend, an electronics maker, the companies will ship some of their best-selling products directly to Amazon in cardboard boxes that don't fight back.

Bezos hopes to sell all of Amazon's products in such environmentally benign, consumer-friendly packaging – a goal he said would take years to achieve. “Everyone is excited about this project here,” he said. “Everyone had their own war stories.”

Such a campaign is relatively easy for Amazon, of course, because it doesn't need to worry about how products appear as they dangle from pegs on store shelves, or whether items will disappear inside shoppers' jacket pockets.

But even offline companies that do have those concerns are joining the movement. Microsoft recently unveiled an unusual container for the Explorer computer mouse it sells at Best Buy. The mouse looks typically imprisoned in its package at first glance. But the container has a plastic zipper on each side – inspired by the packaging of food items, Microsoft said – with blue arrows that guide buyers into easily unlocking their purchase.

Sony, meanwhile, has started an ambitious internal project it optimistically calls “death of the clamshell.” The electronics giant is developing three packaging prototypes it plans to test in the coming months at Best Buy and Wal-Mart Stores. One uses an adhesive that is easy to pry open but makes a loud Velcro-like noise intended to deter thieves.

Sony has even taken its anti-clamshell campaign to its rank and file. At its annual sales and marketing meeting in April, held in Palm Desert, the company showed 1,200 employees a humorous video of four consumers struggling to open Sony products. One of them resorted to a hacksaw, another used his teeth and a third cut his finger.

“None of us intentionally tried to make this a hassle for consumers,” said Mike Fasulo, chief marketing officer for Sony.

Companies such as Sony resorted to hermetically sealed packaging with the best of intentions. A decade ago, as toys and consumer electronics items grew more complex, retailers decided they needed to attract shoppers by showing off items on shelves in clear plastic, instead of opaque boxes.

To do so while protecting the items, they decided to seal the hinges of containers with tough epoxy that would resist shoplifting, or what retailers call “shrinkage.”

Most shoppers know what happened next. There are the injuries, of course. And tool makers found a thriving market for blade-bristling implements to defeat the clamshell, with names like the Plastic Surgeon and the Package Shark.

For the past few years, Consumer Reports has published an annual Oyster Awards for the clamshell packages that are most frustrating to open. Last year's winners: an Oral-B sonic toothbrush kit from Procter & Gamble and the Bratz Sisterz dolls from MGA Entertainment, which took an adult tester 8½ minutes to open.

For consumers such as Lisa Martin, a mother of two from Chicago, the packaging means exhausting birthday mornings as her young children wonder impatiently why a cluster of adults are stabbing at their new presents with knives and scissors.

“I understand anti-theft. But when you get home and it takes two days to get your purchase open, it kind of defeats the purpose,” said Martin, who was so enthusiastic about Amazon's “frustration-free” initiative she offered in her blog to “make out” with the company.

But Martin and like-minded consumers should not pucker up quite yet. In a sign that there remains a long way to go before the last clamshell is pried open, TracFone Wireless, a mobile phone company, sent an unusual gift this fall to Radio Shack outlets that carry its products.

Each store has received a small box-cutter with the TracFone logo that Radio Shack sales staff can use to help open packages for shoppers.

“Rather than send coffee cups, we decided to send them something that helps them do their jobs better,” said Derek Hewitt, senior vice president for marketing at TracFone, adding that his company has already made the transition to easier-to-open packages. “We know how frustrating it is at Christmas to open these packages.”

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