We’ve all experienced it, the anger and frustration that ensues when we try to open one of those clamshell packages that contain whatever new geegaw we picked up.  You can’t open it with your bare hands.  Normal office scissors are ineffective.  If you’re lucky you can puncture that plastic armor with your pocketknife, and if you’re lucky you won’t cut yourself with the blade or with the packaging itself.

The term for these feelings is wrap rage.  Consumer Reports officially recognized the phenomenon in 2006 when it created the Oyster Awards for products that are particularly hard to open.

It’s so comforting to know that I’m not alone.  A YouTube search for “wrap rage” results in almost 100 hits, including local television news stories, product demonstrations, and parodies of all sorts.  It’s the product demonstrations that amuse me more than anything else.  Some resourceful entrepreneurs who experienced wrap rage themselves decided to make a buck.  There are dozens of different devices designed to simplify the process of opening the clamshells.  Millions of units have been sold.

Amusingly, some of those devices are themselves distributed in clamshell packages, resulting in something of a chicken-and-egg problem.

The reason for this type of packaging is apparently theft deterrence.  If things are that hard to open, it’s unlikely that a thief will be able to remove small items from oversized packages and slip them into a purse or pocket.  I suppose it works, but at what cost?  Large retailers like Target and Wal-Mart are willing to annoy and inconvenience their customers with these packages rather than come up with a less intrusive way to deter shoplifting.

I have to admit that I’m surprised by the almost complete lack of outcry by the environmental movement regarding these packages.  Small items, especially, are often surrounded by many times their weight in protective plastic–plastic that more often than not ends up in landfills because even dedicated recyclers often don’t know whether the clamshell packaging is recyclable.  Environmentalist groups boycotted Big Macs back when they came in Styrofoam containers.  But clamshell packages?  I hear crickets.

I’m also surprised that, as much as people complain about these packages (and I don’t know anybody who extols their virtues), there hasn’t been a huge revolt by consumers.  Why aren’t there more people (or more vocal people) agitating for the abolition of this unfriendly, environmentally harmful, and dangerous to open packaging?  Again with the crickets.

After fighting one time too many with opening an armor plastic package to get at something that I found wasn’t worth all the effort, I will now make a concerted effort to avoid those packages whenever possible.  I’m done risking life and limb to open things.  If retailers want to sell me stuff, they’ll have to make it convenient for me to buy and to open.