Opinion: Rusty Saber tries to penetrate product packaging

It has been awhile since the Rusty Saber has ranted. Stand by, here it comes.

The way some merchandise is packaged gets me all riled up.

So much is a waste of resources destined for a landfill near you. Paper, plastic, Styrofoam and whatever aren’t that cheap. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this stuff must affect prices.

Fast food restaurants are notorious for overdoing it with wrapping. Mounds of paper, cardboard boxes, plastic gizmos and Styrofoam all hit the trash leaving a comparatively small amount of food. Take-home orders come with even more potential trash.

Truth be told, fast-food restaurant production of useless wrapping pales in irksomeness when compared to products stuck in cardboard and encased in hard-as-steel clear plastic.

The most formidable Rusty Saber rant is caused by the irritating assignment of trying to capture the item inside all that protection. I will get to that later.

The packaging makes items appear to be larger than they actually are. Although a lot of the space in the package is nothing but air, the seed is planted that bigger is better, and hence, more valuable.

The worst offenders offering the small item in the large package are the ones who balance the placement of the item with what turns out to be an empty box. It’s nothing but filler to make it look bigger.

Some might imagine a surprise inside the box, like a free prize in a box of Cracker Jack. Something for nothing has great appeal.

Unfortunately, there’s no prize.

In the spirit of research, I did some snooping around in stores to get a feel for this sort of packaging. I found the number and types to be endless. Small cellular telephones and cameras can be found stuck in large squares of cardboard and sealed in clear plastic. Show me a small gadget, and I’ll show you a gadget whose price is higher than it should be because of the packaging. I saw a Halloween toy for a small child that was probably worth less than its hard plastic package.

Disposable razors, toys, flashlights, tools and playing cards are among a huge quantity of items all protected by packaging designed to withstand a direct attack by a herd of buffalo.

To me, the most unnecessary plastic treatment is for over-the-counter medicine. Here are pills, already protected by hard plastic bottles, anchored in cardboard, covered by more hard plastic. Assuming you have a chainsaw to rip open the package, you are surrounded by lot of useless torn cardboard and plastic. Seems to me to be a waste.

Think opening a childproof bottle is as enjoyable as root canal? Well, that’s a piece of cake compared to opening the packages the pills come in – unless, of course, the abovementioned chainsaw is handy.

Among my experiences with plastic wrappings, the most humbling involved a pair of kitchen shears. Humbling because I thought the shears might be tough enough to cut through packages like the one holding the shears captive.

To test the theory, I needed to open the package.

After a mighty tussle involving several weapons, I managed, with a large knife, to cut a hole in a corner of the steel-like plastic – just large enough to insert two fingers.

The rest was a test of strength between man and plastic.

Alas, the new shears weren’t up to the task.

I can’t end without one last rant; this one about shrink-wrapped packages. Although neither expensive nor wasteful of natural resources, unwrapping can be harmful to your mental health. For instance, opening a new shrink-wrapped CD is dangerous. You can’t attack it with a butcher knife (satisfying though the mental image might be). No. You must stick with it and firmly vow not to be outsmarted by a slip of cellophane.

Keep at it. If you are like me, you will either peel it off or throw away the CD.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.