Modern packaging.

[AlanHo]

I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the way things are packaged.

For example - my favourite shampoo (yes I still have some hair) used to come in a squat plastic bottle with a flip top. It has now been changed to a tall thin elegant plastic container with a profiled base so small that you need to be a juggler to balance it on a bathroom shelf. It just falls over.

Similarly - I use liquid hand soap in the kitchen and on the sinks in the bathrooms. Again - this used to come in a very practical squat pump action bottle which has now been replaced by an artistic flat circular shaped container with a tiny base area - again - it looks pretty but is totally impractical for everyday use. It just falls over.

I have written to both manufacturers to complain and have so far only received a response from the shampoo manufacturer. In a letter that is splattered with technical gobbledegook about shelf face length and product footprint etc they blame the supermarkets. They claim that the supermarkets want tall thin packages to display more units per square foot of shelf. I can see their point - but why not have more shelves to display products half the height but squat and nice and stable. In addition - the amount of plastic required would be reduced - a small squat package has less surface area than a tall thin one of equal volume.

Having got that off my chest I think I need to just buy a bar of soap for both purposes and say goodbye to tall thin impractical containers.

There are many other examples of impractical packaging - doubtless some other grumpy old members will think of them.

[andsome]

Biscuits in a plastic divider insert, inside a plastic sleeve inside a very difficult to tear outer.

[catgate]

There is another equally silly, and apparently unimportant, matter with this package design nonsense, and that is the volume of air transported round the world/country inside cardboard shipping cases containing these peculiar creations.