Don't Forget the Batteries...And The Wire Cutters?!?!

For generations, when it came time for children to open their presents, there were two phrases on boxes containing toys that struck fear in the hearts of parents worldwide: "Batteries Not Included" and "Some Assembly Required." Most of us remember being children and having our parents struggle with putting together the greatest toy ever, while we quickly got bored by the assembly process and proceeded to content ourselves with playing with the box or the wrapping paper.

Today, many of the electronic toys have a demo mode so that you can test it out in the store beforehand, which requires that the toy come with batteries (though there's no guarantees on how long these batteries last)! This advancement in toy packaging has helped keep children from being disappointed that they can't play with their great new toy until after batteries have been bought-and, of course, no stores are open on Christmas Day...

However, there's a trend in toy packaging that has led me to develop a deep hatred for the packaging engineers who develop the packaging for many of today's toys. In fact, I'm convinced that these particular packaging engineers are sadists. You parents who've been there know what I'm talking about. Those awful plastic-coated twist-ties are looped through a toy a dozen times over and held onto its cardboard backing tighter than money in Fort Knox. I understand making packaging secure, but what's the point of this nuclear packaging? I'm guessing that it was developed either as a theft deterrent or to discourage people from attempting to return gently used toys as new by making it impossible to replace the toys into their original packaging. Whatever the reason, I find this abominable packaging the bane of parents everywhere. Millennia from now, when the archaeologists of the future dig into the ruins of the late 20th and early 21st century, I imagine that they will discover Twinkies and these twist-ties still holding toys captive in their confounded packaging.

A few months ago, my daughter Anna had her 2nd birthday party. After the party was over, we settled down and had Anna open her presents. Almost all of the presents were sealed and secured into their packaging with these plastic coated twist-ties. Most of the items were secured with one or two twist-ties per anchor point. For example for a doll, there would be one twist-tie around the neck, one around each wrist, one around the mid-section, one around each leg and also one around each ankle. Then there's one wire twist-tie to secure each of the accessories that came with the doll. There's also the matter of the twist-ties being twisted tighter than a hangman's noose. I have calluses on my index finger and thumb from all the untwisting and untying I had to do that day!

But, that's not all! That following week, Anna picked out a lovely Disney Princess electronic keyboard that we bought with a gift card. She was so excited to see it in the box, and both of my girls got to play with it in demo mode while at the store (there's a clever hole cut into the plastic to allow them to press a button to hear the music it plays). So we bought it and took it home. Then came the ordeal of taking the keyboard out of the box. Believe me, there were moments that I was tempted to just cut the top off the box and leave the rest of the box attached because it was so difficult to remove the packaging!

Let me try to describe this packaging to you. First there is the outer box. It's only lightly taped, so removing it was mercifully not difficult. However, there's the inner packaging. The keyboard and all the other items were secured to the cardboard inner box with about a hundred of the ubiquitous plastic-coated twist-ties. However, in order to even reach the twist-ties, I needed to traverse a maze of cardboard that was taped over all of the twist-ties. It was no easy task to figure out just how to get through the clever cardboard packaging to even see the jumble of twist-ties. At this point, Anna was trying to still push the demo button and dancing to the music, so I let her amuse herself in between my valiant efforts to reveal the twist-ties. Then, slowly, one by one, I tried to untwist the twist-ties from the box. Now, most toys might have multiple twist-ties, but only one per anchor point. I really hit the bonus with this Disney keyboard, because each anchor point had TRIPLE twist-ties! And they were twisted so tightly together and wound around OTHER anchor points as well! This made the untwisting efforts excruciatingly tedious and painful (remember my calluses? Blisters were threatening to form at the sides of my fingers and thumb from all these attempts at untwisting the wires).

By now, Anna had bored of the two demo versions of the songs, and went off and amused herself with some empty plastic bowls and was happily playing. In the meantime, I was cursing the packaging and had worked up a sweat. (I wonder how many calories I burned while undoing the packaging encasing the keyboard)! At long last, I gave up and went in search of wire cutters. FINALLY, twenty minutes, approximately one hundred twist-ties and one wire cutter later, I had succeeded in freeing the keyboard! Yippee!

Hey, Look, Girls!...girls? Hello?...anyone...?...

...Bueller?...Bueller...?