Nerds Candy -- Box Weirdness

Factual Questions
1

Ok… You all are familiar with Wonka’s “Nerds” candy, right? The little tart rock things. Each package has 2 sides, one for each flavor.

You open the box by sliding these little flaps outward at the top. These flaps pull back and expose a hole whence the nerds emerge.

Alrighty. Now my question.

For as long as I can remember, each side’s flap thing has been shaped differently. One side pulls back and the part against the side of the box (the part that flips out, pulling the slidy part back) is rectangular. The other side is not (the part that pulls back is cut differently). If you are looking at the thin sides of the box, standing right side up, the pull-out parts look like:

On this side, the pull out part isn’t cut, it is the same width as the thin side of the box:



 ____
|    |
|    |
|    |

And on the opposite side, it is cut like this:



 ____
|    /
|   /
|  /

This is exaggerated for effect, but you get the point. Take a look at a nerds box if you need to… Its hard to describe here on this post. Does anyone know why these are different?

And a second question: If you are looking down onto the top of the nerds box, it looks roughly like this (assume the flaps are open, i just didn’t draw them):



 ____________________________________
| __________________________________ |
|      ____        |      ____       |
|      ____|       |     |____       |
| _________________|________________ |
|____________________________________|

Now, see those little parts in the middle that look like tabs? Like little bullets facing one another? What are those for? (Its possible they face outwards, I don’t remember.)

I know this is really random, but its been bugging me forever. Plus I spent a lot of time doing this artwork (ha) so you can feel free to compliment my wonderful ascii drawings. :smiley:

-S

2

Oops Im a bonehead.

I meant “Assume the flaps are closed”, i.e. covering the holes (in the second part). However, the thing you have to remove to get the box open is gone.

-S

3

Not having eaten Nerds or seen the box for a long time, I can’t speak authoritatively, but I would guess that the asymmetry is due to the fact that the box is glued together at only one edge, and they might have to do things differently on that side of the box to deal with the seam.

4

Yeah, I’d say that too, except for the fact that the parts I’m talking about are just cuts in the box. Looking at this box I have handy here, I can’t see how the seams changed the cut, all they had to do was cut straight down instead of sideways. On the straight side, yeah it’s probably the seam. But on the other, why’s it canted off like that?

My fiancee suggests that it may be so that the blind can tell the difference between flavors. Hmmm.

I wrote to Wonka candies to see what they say. I can tell interest is not exactly booming on this subject so I’ll just shut up now. :slight_smile:

-S