Worst part of Christmas is opening the packages ?

[Hum]

There's a part of Christmas morning that Tiffany Seay dreads: getting everything out of its packaging. The twisties. The tape. The hard plastic ties, like handcuffs for dolls. The itty-bitty screwdrivers.

"It takes at least 40 minutes to get all the packaging off all the toys," fumes the Fort Washington mother of two and government analyst. "I have a 2-year-old and he's like, Mommeeeee!"

In an effort to keep toys intact and music players from being pilfered, the consumer products industry has moved en masse into a style of wrapping that's more prison than package. The hard plastic clamshell container, with its fused seams, is so impenetrable it has even spawned its own safecracking tools: razor-sharp gadgets designed to slash through all that stuff.

Manufacturers say molded packaging protects goods on the long journey from Asia. Retailers say the heat-sealed edges keep shoppers from opening them in stores. And products certainly look picture-perfect in that clear plastic bubble.

"But once you've gotten it home," said JoAnn Hines, a Georgia-based packaging consultant to manufacturers, "then it's open at your peril."

The vitriol these packages inspire is so rampant the industry has a name for it: wrap rage. Georgia Taylor of Woodbridge has it.

"I hate it. I hate it," the IRS manager says of the ubiquitous plastic clamshell, resistant to scissors, razor blades and loud swearing. "Sometimes you stop and feel that plastic and if it's the really hard kind, you think, 'Do I really want to bother with this?' "

Manufacturers can no longer ignore the soaring consumer complaints. The result, packaging experts say, is that this will be one of the last holiday seasons that require a box cutter.

"They realize it's a problem," said Jim Silver, editor of Toy Wishes magazine. "Over the next two years, they want to transform what the packaging is because they want to make it easier to open."

But just as people hit the outlet mall at midnight on Black Friday, then complain the holiday season is too materialistic, the always conflicted U.S. consumer feels two ways about packaging, said the design critic and author Thomas Hine.

"You want the virgin product -- the product that's untouched by human hands," Hine said. "Yet when you get it home, the very thing that kept the product pristine is what's keeping you from actually experiencing it. We want it both ways."

"The backing and cover are preferably formed of a plastic . . . that is difficult to puncture, cut or tear," it reads. "The seal between the backing and cover is preferably difficult to compromise, so that human hands have great difficulty separating the backing and cover."

Then consider the patent granted a year later, to Thomas Perlmutter, for the brutally sharp OpenX tool, designed for clamshell-cracking. He's put about a million into those frustrated human hands, and demand rises sharply around the holidays, he said. Another opener called KwikCut is sold in the Home Improvements catalogue.

Consumers are also agitating for fewer of those time-consuming twisties, plastic cuffs and taped-down cardboard reinforcements that keep toys, in particular, imprisoned with no chance of escape. Silver, of Toy Wishes, said toy executives are evaluating those, too, asking consumer-friendly questions such as, " 'Why do we need 10 when four will do?' " he said.

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[Slimy]

Quit whining. Face it, you just wish you could sue them for selling you a product that broke because of crappy packaging.

[User6060]

Quit whining. Face it, you just wish you could sue them for selling you a product that broke because of crappy packaging.

seriously! life is a lot harder than opening packaging.

they made the packaging in that way for good reasons, not to deter you from using the thing you bought.

[Hum]

:crazy: I have cut myself on some of the packaging -- so, yeah -- they go too far 'protecting' the product.

[Des429]

is this seriously a thread right now? i saw this on good morning america the other day and i was laughing the entire time at how stupid it all sounded.

[AxelStone]

People whine to much. STFU, I'd rather than than feel like a criminal every time I walk out of a store. Like Walmart for instance, I ignore those stupid "greeters" that ask for my reciept. Screw you greeter, I have it in my mouth (litterally usually cuz I'm putting up my change or fetching keys) if you want it so bad you can pull it from my mouth.

[ambiance]

Sweet! Now it will be easier to steal things.

[Churma]

I'm broke so I won't be opening any packages this year except for bills. I just payed my property taxes $7500 :x

[strekship]

Some people whine about everything.