When I moved into my student hovel last year, my dad decided that I should have some basic tools to be able to fix the random problems that crop up from time to time, (basic things like some screwdrives, pair of pliers, nothing overly specialised or dangerous). Well, all I can say is that I am glad I opened the packaging at home, since I needed to get out my dad’s toolbox to open the packaging. It’s an interesting concept when you need to have the item inside the packaging in order to get at it. It isn’t even as if there is a risk of someone tampering with these items, so why do they have to be sealed up as if they contain the smallpox virus?
Yeah, but that actually makes some sense. Packages of dog food and dog treats should be hard to open, else dogs would rip them open themselves and stuff themselves. Dogs are notoriously poor at using scissors.
When I was younger and poorer and didn’t care what food tasted like, I used to sometimes have a “Slim Jim” meat snack knock-off for lunch. That packaging was impossible to open without using your teeth. The downside was that it was almost certain that you’d end up eating some of the plastic packaging, but that was mitigated somewhat because the plastic actually tasted better than the product.
Oh, no, Bob did not forget to add the string; he omitted it intentionally. It’s just like those flavoring packets that come with rice, where it says “tear at notch”, but there’s no notch. These factory people are minimum wage, in a job that would bore them to tears were it not for the humor they find in thinking about us, at home, trying to open a package that would have been easy to open, had they actually put in the string or the notch. They sit around on their lunch breaks, probably with spy cameras implanted in our kitchens, laughing madly at us trying to open these packages! It’s an evil plot, I tell you!
Worse than this are the sinus tablets I had recently, where there was a little notch in the foil that you have to tear before you can remove the pill from its individual little casing. Problem is, the notch doesn’t go all the way to the edge of the packaging, so you can’t fuckin’ tear it! You must use scissors. I actually snipped the end off of my pill this way, then had throw the pill away, because it was a time-released thingy, and once the coating is messed with, it won’t time-release!! All of this while I couldn’t breathe through my nose, and my nose and eyes all dripping like faucets! Gah!
Wait… repressed memory surfacing… memory of ick!
Ring-pull lids on cans should never, ever be used on tins of cat food! Ever!
Fatcat’s buddy, Oldcat, was very sick and was temporarily on a special diet. The tins came in cans with a ring-pull lid. You know where you bend back the ring, thus punturing the one edge to get things started, then you pull with your finger and the lid peels back into a curvey roll.
But at the end, as you peel off the last bit, the rolled metal has developed a spring-like coil effect. So when the last little bit of lid finally breaks free – PATWOINK! – it kinda snaps at you and flings bits of whatever goo may be adhering to the lid.
Since you’re pulling towards yourself (as well as following the general rules of “grapefruit physics” wherein the squirt never fail to hit you in the eye), you will get goo flung right at your face!
I got the stinkiest prescription cat food flung at my face, onto my lips.
GAAAHCK! retch GAAAAAHK!
Once upon a time, I was really excited about the fact that some manufacturers had begun to put zip-lock fasterners on their bags so that you could re-seal them.
Until the 10th time I tried to open a package of cheese, and it opened- the zip-lock locked, but one of the ‘locking tracks’ completely detached from the interior of the package. So then, I had to take the cheese out and put it in a new, fresh bag.
sigh
I won’t get started on the fact that I have yet to be able to open a bag of cereal wthout it tearing right down the middle, top to bottom.
EPIPHANY
Let´s make the CD cases out of the plastic used for the package and vice versa! 
I´m sure the new cases would be bulletproof.
I want to complain, too! It is not food, but it is bad packaging none the less.
The packaging on children’s toys these days is the most time consuming, horrendous packaging there is. Toys now come in cardboard that has been coated with indestructible plastic, but the walls of the cardboard are missing so the product can be displayed and touched. That isn’t that bad. You can get some scissors to cut the cardboard. What you find out when you get past the cardboard is that no less than 14 industrial strength twist ties have been woven through and around this toy. And no, these can’t be your garden variety garbage twist tie, these are wire ties that will give you carpal tunnel to untwist, that will slice an artery in half a second if you should slip, that are strong enough to use to tow a truck out of a ditch if you wound them together. Once you get all these ties off, then you still have to find a screw driver to unscrew the toy from a plastic base (most often seen with toy vehicles). Note that these screws are about 1/100" of an inch in diameter and 4" deep in a well that is also 1/100" in diameter. Try finding the screw driver around the house that has a head that small with a shaft that long!
Now try undoing all that with an impatient 4 year old on Christmas morning.
“You can buy our products, but don’t use them!”
I’ve got a coupla beefs:
Zip top bags that are made of such flimsy packaging that when you attempt to open the ziploc - the zip stays closed but the plastic above the sip rips off in your hands. 
Jars that refuse to open. Products containing pickle seem to be the worst offenders. I can count on a major struggle any time I’m opening the relish jar for the first time.
Any small item packaged in that plastic clamshell-o-doom that I think some of you have referred to. If I impale myself trying to get your product out of it’s box, it’s a little overkill.
Oh, and the plastic bag that’s inside the cereal box??? Love it when it splits open down the side when I’m trying to open it up. Cereal all over between the box and the bag. :mad:
hehehehehe 
I’m so glad I’m not alone in this.
How about those juice cartons, that say “push” and when you push, your finger gets stuck inside.
Agreeing on the video-tapes. Nothing will open them, except brutal force. And you end up with a tape with scratches all over them.
Tea-bags in three seperate packages? I’ll have water instead.
On CD packaging–
I bought a CD in a locally owned music store and the salesman casually asked if I wanted him to take it out of the package for me. I looked at him in stunned disbelief and nodded my head hopefully (being afraid to use my voice for fear of breaking the spell). He went zip-zap with a little doo-hicky and the outer wrapping feel off, and then, yes, then he proceded to take off the sticky strip on the top of the case itself! As he handed me a completely unwrapped CD, ready to be played, I almost went to my knees to worship him.
Next time I went to that store, it was out of business, done in by Sam Goody.
seething I… haaaate… that.
Only I usually try to open ziploc bags by pulling on the “body” of the bag, so the plastic tears just under the zip.
And so… I never by ziploc bags. Fancy that!
Condom packaging was obviously invented by Catholics. By the time you’ve wrestled your way through the plastic opened the box and then tried to find the correst way to NOT rip the condom with the foil wrapping, you’re either too exhausted for sex, or you’re beginning to think babies wouldn’t be so difficult to deal with in comparison.
I’m glad to see the designers of chastity belts have not gone unemployed in our modern age.
One of my greatest talents is that I can unrap new CD’s using only my hands. Even the sticky strip at the top.
And I don’t even have long fingernails.
Ever notice how, once you got all the outer wrapping off of the CD case, the CD itself seems to be stuck to the inside of the case with Krazy Glue? I mean, you practically have to bend the CD in two to get it out. Unless you know this professional secret…put your thumb on the little plasic thingy in the middle of the case and give it a good push. And the CD should pop right out!
Y’know, reading all you people’s posts makes me realize how easy I’ve got it.
You see, my hobby workbench is right adjacent to the kitchen.
My hobby workbench includes a variety of picks, X-Acto knives, scissors, and the aforementioned jeweler’s wireclippers.
Yes, toys these days are held into the package with about six million little near-indestructible twist-ties. When a child is dancing around in anticipation, trying to undo them all can be a nightmare… unless you have a tiny pair of bolt-cutters handy. Then you simply go down the length of the toy, snipping each little twisty, until the thing is free of its packaging. Total time, four or five seconds – a timely matter, even for a child.
Of course, I had to play this game a few times before I figured it out.
X-Acto knives are pretty much essential for careful and proper opening of CDs, DVDs, and other products with weird, human-proof wrapping.
And I don’t even buy products with “resealable packaging” anymore. The last time I saw “resealable packaging” that worked, it was on a pack of Keebler cookies in 1975. Every ziploc innovation that’s come along since, you have to tear through in order to get to the food product in the first place…
I would like to know what kind of adhesvie that mfgs. use for stick-on labels…nothing I know of will get them off! I once boucht a small formica-top table, and it had a label on it. I tried alcohol, kerosene, soap, etc.NOTHING would take the damd glue off!
The make is still there, 20+years later!
I had a doohickey for taking the shrinkwrap off CDs, but I didn’t like it. It nicked the plastic on the CD case. Instead, I run my giant mutant thumbnail along the left edge of the case (between the spine and the lid) to puncture the shrinkwrap, and then unhinge the lid to take the sticky off.
DVDs, though, drive me batty. There’s no good place to puncture the shrinkwrap, and once you have that off there are three plastic stickers sealing the edges of the case. Normally stickers aren’t hard to take off, but in this case the stickers are stuck onto the soft clear plastic of the case, so half the time I gouge my thumbnail into that plastic rather than just getting the sticker off. (Giant mutant thumbnails are a mixed blessing)
To get sticky adhesive residue off, I generally use scotch tape, repeatedly sticking and unsticking it. It’s sort of fun, in a Rainman sort of way. I’ve heard that leaving a glop of peanut butter on it for three hours will take it off too, though. Might not be very convenient in some cases.
I hate the sturdy plastic clamshells that are around stuff like printer cartridges. If they just welded the plastic at a few points, that’d make sense, but they seem to want to weld it shut as close to the product as possible, so there’s no way to just cut around the item and free it. Argh!
Try opening one of those Re-zip-able plastic foil bags of treats (Cheerio nuts and bolts type thing) QUIETly, in a movie theater.
I brought a bag of those with us to the movies the other night, and thought that would be a good snack. We can’t get caught with smuggled-in treats, because hubby works at the theatre.
I feel for the “open here notch” and try to pull it open. It rips off a small fragment and I am still unable to open it enough to get treats out. I try ripping. I try poking at it. I cannot open the part above the ziplock closure at all. All the while paranoid hubby is going Shhhhhhhh!
Finally, during a battle scene, I stab the bag open with my car keys. Of course now I have bbq cheerios in the bottom of my purse…
I think the two worst ones are those sardine cans that you are supposed to open with a key by rolling the lid back. Never works. Corned-beef cans , also opened with a key, that produce razor sharp edges that Gillette would be proud of.