Toy Packaging From Hell

This blog has been imported from my previous site because I think it’s worth repeating.  I’m a grandma who buy toys.  I guess that’s just part of the grandma definition.  It’s true that kids learn early that if mom and dad say it’s not necessary, chances are Grandma will think it is.  Of COURSE this child should have Dr. Barbie and the Barbie Veterinarian. Little girls need to know they can do and be anything.   And the one who has a hair-clip and accessories shop?  Well, that’s for the sake of comparrison.  I like toys that don’t do too much on their own and require a lot of manipulation and imagination, thus providing hours of fun.  Right now it’s a favourite game to have Barbie and her friends sit at the kitchen table and eat ice cream sundaes and take calls on their cell phones, while discussing what they’re going to do at their jobs today.  A dog needs an operation to fix a broken leg.  A baby needs a hearing implant. We’re almost sold out of butterfly barettes.  Let’s get to work!  We’ll come back for lunch and talk some more!

It’s unfortunate that the preparation for this kind of play is seething frustration on grandma’s part, fueled by the ordeal of extracting these toys from their packaging.  Everything is frozen in place, immobilized by wire, tape, thread, glue, cardboard spacers and clear elastic bands.  Even Barbie’s hair has a hard plastic strip sewn right onto it.  Sometimes there’s thread right through her skull.  Ouch.  Her neck, waist, arms and ankles are held fast by thick wire that is twisted behind the backdrop many, many, many times.  It takes half an hour to free her.  Then it takes another half hour to snip thread and elastic and hack away at hard clear plastic that encases every single solitary itty bitty thing that comes with her.  By the time you’re finished, you’re ready for a nap, a tetnus shot and stitches, wondering how this can possibly be good business practice, to antagonize your customers to the point of throwing a very un-grandma like temper tantrum.  The doll and her stuff take up a square foot of space on the coffee table and you have a garbage bag full of packaging.  Then you have to get down on your hands and knees and pick all those little bits of wire and plastic out of the carpet before the cat swallows them. 

So I did a bit of research to find out WHY toy companies like to torture old people.   

Actually, the manufacturers don’t much like the packaging, either. For one thing, it’s not good business to antagonize your customers. For another, when you manufacture $20 billion worth of toys every year, the cost of wire and plastic binding adds up.  If a living, breathing child can be safely transported in a five-point restraint car seat, say peeved moms and dads, why does a doll need 20?
One problem is, parents are crooks. Or at least, some of them are.
For certain moms and dads, business analysts say, discovering that their daughter’s My Pretty Pony is missing her comb or their son’s Take-Along Tool Kit has lost its wrench doesn’t mean buying a whole new toy. It means going back to the store and trying to pilfer the missing part from a new box. So, manufacturers have turned to impenetrable packaging as part of their defense.
Another problem is that these days, most toys aren’t being shipped from plants in Ohio, New York or Michigan. More likely they’re coming from Guangdong or Jiangsu provinces, in China. Sixty percent of U.S. toys are made there, and another 25 percent come from countries such as Vietnam and Thailand. That means toys are traveling halfway around the globe and being dropped, spun, shaken and tipped all along the way.
A toy has to survive that passage — not only intact, but without so much as shifting in its package.
Even after a toy arrives in the store, safe and whole, its packaging still has work to do. It has to provide what’s called “shelf shout.” That is, the packaging has to help the toy serve as its own, in-store advertising.  It has to be tamper-proof, sealed and safe.  AND….companies must meet shipping and security regulations set by distributors and governments.

HA!!  I KNEW IT!!  It’s just one more thing we can blame on the government.  Anyway.  Once I get all these bandaids off my fingers I’m going to invent a sort of swiss army knife type of tool and maybe call it the Toy Extricator.  It will have special attachments for untwisting wires, magically disolving tape, ripping out stitches and shredding hard plastic into harmless little bits.  And just to make it hard for all those dishonest parents who might try to steal it for instore use, it will come packaged in a hard plastic bubble wired to cardboard with all the various flip out parts held tightly in place with clear elastic reinforced with glue!!!