This is just one in a long line of items I’ve bought recently whose packaging has driven me absolutely insane. Is the only way to open this kind of shit to take a knife or pair of shears to it? Why the hell is anything packaged this way? What’s the point?
Deter theft? No. If I’m a thief, I’m just going to take the goddamn thing and open it later. To protect the device inside? Maybe, but then why not add a little perforated strip that’s easy to tear off, just to make it easier to open?
I don’t even want to think about the environmental pollution that must be caused by the manufacturing of all this unnecessary, thick, heavy plastic packaging. It’s bullshit. And it’s unbelievably goddamn frustrating. Why? WHY?
Good luck hiding it. If the binoculars were out of that packaging, you could slip them into a jacket pocket and nobody would ever be able to tell. But with that big wide flat area surrounding it, it gets a lot more awkward to stow it somewhere it won’t be noticed. If it were easy to open, the shoplifter could open it with a minimum of fuss without being noticed. But since you have to tear the packaging apart, any shoplifter doing that is going to raise an unholy racket.
Clamshell packaging is irritating as hell, but that is the reason. It makes it more difficult, though obviously not impossible, to shoplift small items.
Yea, its a theft deterrent. The packaging is a lot bigger then the product, so a lot harder to conceal in a jacket. And its a lot harder to claim you brought something in with you if your caught with an item still in its packaging.
But yea, its also a decent deterrent to those of us who legitimately buy a product and just want to open the damn thing. And to the more clumsy amongst us, also something of a laceration hazard. I still haven’t found a good way to open them. Even with scissors it takes a non-trivial effort.
What Bosstone said. Plus: it makes it easy to see the item inside, is tamper resistant, water resistant, and protects against damage during shipping. The one packaging style works in different types of displays (hanging, standing, scattered in a bin). The alternatives have some of those benefits but not all.
Not sure about manufacturing, but disposal is not an environmental pollution. At least, not here in Minneapolis. Our non-recycled garbage goes to an incinerator, and plastic like this (coming from oil) burns very well. The energy from that is recovered and used to heat downtown buildings.
They make products for those. Take your pick, I don’t know which style works the best. I have seen more products shying away from these packages, lately.
My brother, who works in a supermarket, says most thefts in his store occur from people removing items from the packaging to make them easier to conceal. Add +1 to the people saying “it’s to deter theft.”
i suppose it’s an improvement over the cardboard-backed blister package which is also difficult to split if you want to be neat about it. i thought that was the thing. it takes time to open if you want to preserve it, easy to cut with scissors.
At the big-box store I worked at the thieves would steal a pair of heavy scissors, then use said scissors to open the packages and steal the other items.
You’d think the store would be smart enough to stop stocking those heavy scissors. How much profit could they make selling those, compared to the loss from thieves using them to steal more expensive items?
Well, obviously it doesn’t make things unstealable. Still, having to go get scissors, and then stand there for the few seconds and cut through the packaging is more risky then just picking it up and slipping it in your jacket. And alot of shoplifting is a crime of opportunity, if you make it even marginally more difficult/risky, you can prevent a lot of it.