Broccoli. Spinach. Potato chips. Brown sugar. Cereal.
What do they all have in common? Well, let me tell you. As the world has entered the 21st century, and the packaging of almost every product you can imagine has improved, these have somehow slipped through the cracks.
Okay, so maybe I’m a little spoiled. But these are dinosaurs in their own time.
I will also speculate that the people in charge of these decisions are not women. Or men who cook.
The broccoli and spinach packages haven’t changed since I was a little girl, and that was a LONG time ago. Oh, they replaced the green and white wrapper with a fancy silver one about ten years ago, but the white box inside is still the same.
You grab it out of the freezer and it sticks to your fingers. Then you try to unwrap the outer paper in some orderly fashion, but it’s impossible. It always takes about ten little tears, or maybe you can do it in three really angry rips if you’re in a hurry.
Now you’re down to the box. Be careful. It is possessed. If it doesn’t want to open, it won’t. If it’s having a bad day, it will stick it’s little corners into the spinach so that when you finally get it off, little pieces will be frozen in with the spinach. Even if it’s having a good day, it will make a mess on your counter.
I think if I were married to the Green Giant, I would have made him come up with a better box by now.
Potato chip bags are almost as bad. You tug and pull and rip, and finally it opens — all the way down the seam. If you’re lucky, they don’t spill all over the floor.
I don’t know about ya’ll, but our family rarely eats a whole bag at one time. And I swear they make them so they will go stale before they’re used up so you will have to go buy some more. If you are lucky and get them open without ripping the seam, then keeping them closed up until you use them again is a trick.
Oh, I’ve tried clothespins and chip clips, but with the world full of zip-lock bags, why don’t they put a zipper-thing at the top of chip bags? Even a bag of cotton balls I bought recently had a recloseable bag … and you know, I’ve never had a problem with my cotton balls going bad …
Cereal boxes used to have their paper liners glued to the sides of the box. Nine times out of ten, if you messed with the bag at all, it ripped a big hole in the side.
So they’ve “improved” them. Now we have plastic bags that (if you can open them) won’t fold down tight after you open them. That’s not an improvement … that’s trading one problem for another. Ditto on not eating a whole box of cereal in one sitting. Ditto on I think I could figure out a better one.
And brown sugar. It’s got to be the messiest stuff in the world. You can still buy the 100-year old boxes, or the “new” plastic bags. With either one, if you have to reach in to scoop some out, you wind up with more sticky stuff on your hands than you do in your spoon.
A friend of mine wrote one of the sugar companies twenty years ago and suggested they sell brown sugar in sticks, like sticks of butter. If a recipe called for half a cup, you’d use half a stick, etc. It was a brilliant idea.
“They” never responded. “They” filed it away with all the other brilliant ideas. “They” continued to put it in boxes.
“They” was not a woman, was they?
