There is a term for anger provoked by difficult-to-open packaging: Wrap Rage

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Originally published at: There is a term for anger provoked by difficult-to-open packaging: Wrap Rage | Boing Boing

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No cardboard was hurt during this video…

package-open-box

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Good to know there’s a term. Knives in my house are used more often on poorly-perforated packages than for chopping veggies. :scissors: seem to work best on items encased in hard plastic, because avoiding injuring my hands is more important that whatever’s in the box.

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A phenomenon so scary that there’s an 80s Scottish Comedy-Folk song about it.

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I now keep a pair of scissors in my glove compartment specifically to open clamshell packaging. Too many times have I been in a situation where I’m away from home with no cutting tools, and end up hurting myself trying to open up something in clamshell packaging.

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and I thought wrap rage was about unwittingly listening to a singer rhyming about their crypto .

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this is why I consider sharpening my canine teeth and looking like vampire… but I’m setting the thought aside till covid passes.

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We keep a pair of scissors near the downstairs entry door (not far from the recycle bin). Inbound stuff get deboxed right in the foyer, packaging and excess is recycled immediately nearby, and new toys are then carried upstairs to play with.

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I ordered a pair of scissors online five-ish years ago.
Needless to say, they arrived in hard-cased, shrink-wrapped industrial plastic.
If only I had a pair of scissors…

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Yeah, that plastic clamshell packaging is the worst. Hard to get into and easy to get scratched up in the process of opening.

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My grandfather was a postmaster. His Christmas gifts were . . . infamous. He’d reinforce the original item box with fiberglass reinforced tape, wrap that in waterproof heavy brown wrapping paper, seal that up all around with more fiberglass reinforced tape, double-reinforce the corners, put on another layer of brown paper, wrap that with a brown packing tape he got from work, then tie the whole thing up in heavy jute cordage. Then one year he discovered stretch-wrap plastic, and put in layers of that into the mix.

I note that when he retired from the Post Office, he stopped doing this, and instead used UPS.

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Even opened boxes get further abused.

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I’m adding this to my canned response repertoire: “You know, there’s a term for anger provoked by X–it’s called ‘X Rage’”

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Clam shell packaging is my nemesis and deserving of all the anger I can muster.

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Reminds me of the “One Foot In The Grave” episode where alongside whatever the plot was, Victor spends almost the entire episode picking at a packed of biscuits trying to open them. IIRC at the end he gets hold of the tab and the biscuits explode everywhere.

“I don’t belieeeeeve it!!!”

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That’s rap wrage.

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In a freak accident, Eaton stabbed himself in the abdomen while opening a DVD package in 2001 and was scratched from his start the next day. “Yeah, I stabbed myself. At Christmas, my grandfather gave me a pocket knife with a two-inch blade. It was the first time I used it. [The package] was tough to go through, then, all of a sudden, it went through like butter. A two-inch blade only went in halfway, so I was pretty quick. You have to have a little fat, too [points to his belly], or I could’ve really hurt myself.”

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Totally justified rage. I’ve sliced open the skin on my hands and fingers countless times on those stupid plastic clamshells.

And for what? A trailer hitch ball that would have been better preserved wrapped in oiled paper and placed in a cardboard box? Better yet, a cardboard tray? A toy that could have been held in cardboard display packaging by a twist tie or a knotted string? A computer bauble that cost less to make than the clamshell it’s sold in?

So much waste for something we all hate - how did we get here?

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after near 40 years in (paper) package printing, manufacture and design, all i can say is…
I honestly don’t know wtf happened that made everyone jump to plastic clam shell packaging. our company went from die cutting and gluing millions of boxes to die cutting the flimsy paper inserts to go inside clam shells.
it can’t be cheaper, ffs, and short runs must be terribly expensive.

glad to be retired from all that!

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I get similar feelings when dealing with a pile of hangars. THEY ARE THE WORST… and yet useful for hanging up clothes.