Agh failed tear lines. This is why we have three pairs of kitchen shears hanging off our knife racks: in case one pair is in the dishwasher and another pair has disappeared into some other part of the house for some eminently reasonable reason.
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Products which can be stored if you don’t use all at once but which are wrapped in a cellophane-type wrap which tears the minute you open it. Yes, you move the product to another container but I would like to be able to simply store in the original. A bag of crisps might be a case in point. Also, some of the unleavened breads.
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Like most dried pasta?
We buy Australian made Guzzi’s which is packed in cardboard boxes so no problems.
Pasta isnt a worry for me, it goes in an airtight glass jar (old Moccona jars are great.)
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We do not have any worries with crisp packets or anything similar, excepting those made with old school cellophane-like material that is brittle and rips. Our crisps are usually Tyrells and Tostitos but we buy what is on sale.
Gripstics are brilliant for sealing/storing things in bags. The original is fractionally larger diameter than the generics but the generics are much cheaper and easier to find/buy, esp on ebay. We have many of each and never had a failure of either original or generic.
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The inner lining of most containers. I can’t prise them open. When the lid is secure why the lid lining? We didn’t die before these nuisances were introduced.
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I presume you mean the security seals, that sometimes are plastic wraps on the outside, and other times foil or plastic seals under the cap.
Both came about because miscreants (actually very bad persons) were adulterating and poisoning food products on shop shelves. Some were poisoned and died when it first started decades ago, others became ill. If the security seal is broken before you break it, the message is don’t use the product and if noticed in the shop, call attention to the staff.
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Bought a bottle of chinese sauce. Over the screwtop, was shrink wrap plastic. Getting that off required a sharp pointy knife, and lots of perserverence to get it all off.
Under the screwtop, was a plastic seal with a flimsy little pull ring. Again the sharp pointly knife and of course the ring pull broke off. Pry away the plastic seal eventually and ready to go.
Had enough. Pizza time instead of stir fry.
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Thank you. They could make it less impossible to open. I end up having to use scissors.
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The child safe medicine containers are a global bane for us older or physically challenged folks. As for myself I second the comments about ‘tear here’ not tearing, what could and should be perforated to assist removal isn’t, and so on.
They could and should up their game but I suspect their lawyers have put the fear of liability into them should any seal fail for any reason so it is not a priority to ‘do it well’ just to ‘do it’.
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Another annoying thing are the plastic caps on 2 litre milk, juice and vinegar plastic bottles which have a perforated collar at the base of the cap which is supposed to stay on the bottle.
Howvever, many times the perforation refuses to break and the entire cap eventually comes off.
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I would like to nominate the flavour sachets that come in the asian spicy varieties of instant noodle soups.
Inside are the little sealed sachets with three different ingredients such as flavouring, soy, and chilly. There is no way to access all three without making a mess. Even pushing all the contents down to one end and then cutting across the other end results in the scissors being messy, and then as you try to squeeze out the last of the ingredients it ends up on your fingers.
I have tried quite a few brands and varieties, and all are frustratingly messy.
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Ha! At long last I can regale someone with a collection of woes in regard to food packaging I have encountered over the years. It all goes back to that time when I was young and my Grandmother was offered a “Mintie” to chew on. She took the wrapper off and placed the sweet in her mouth where it stayed for over two hours before she finally became exasperated and said to her daughter “Jean, I can’t get any taste out of this at all!” An investigation revealed that said sweet had yet another wrapper wound around it. It was white - the same colour as the sweet. She hadn’t actually got her gnashers on to the sweet itself! How smart! How infuriating!
I am amazed though at the lengths manufacturers go to in order to annoy us or just make life plain difficult. Biscuits once used to be sold in a big tin, or loosely at the grocer’s who would put them in a paper bag - and charge less for the broken ones. They now come in a thin plastic container which is wrapped up in cellophane made out of a substance resembling cast iron and which cannot be undone unless one attacks it with a carving knife. Having done so, one is lucky if the biscuits have not fallen on the floor or worse - in the sink full of water. Sometimes one is lucky and ends up with only three or four broken biscuits in the meagre ration allowed of about ten. (It is good that the manufacturers are also looking after our diets by forcing us to eat less).
Then there are the products which come in a plastic container sealed with a plastic film across the top which is meant to simply tear off. It never does. One may get a bit of it off, then another bit, and in the process of trying to remove the rest, get some of the product all over your nice clean white shirt. This sort of thing goes on in aeroplanes too when you have to try and work out how to open a ridiculously small and intricate milk container or one containing tomato sauce. I daresay it keeps the air hostesses amused - and laundries and dry cleaners in business.
Is it me, or do other people find that the ring pull on tin cans just comes off when pulled instead of taking the whole lid with it? One then has to resort to a rummage through the drawers to try and find the tried and tested can opener.
Do pills come into the food category as well - seeing as one has to swallow them? Once one only had to battle with trying to get the cotton wool out of the top of a bottle, but now some idiot with nothing better to do has invented a thing called a “blister pack”. It is supposed to be easy. One just presses lightly and a pill comes out into one’s hand. Wrong. Press the surface and the next thing you know you are chasing a pill that has rolled out and on to the floor. You then spend the next ten minutes trying to find it before the dog gets hold of it.
Why too is it that some packages contain individually wrapped items? You have to do two lots of unwrapping - and it is so wasteful. (The amount of garbage I have to put out!)
Finally, I really enjoy paying for air. It’s supposed to be one of the few things in this life which is free - but no, manufacturers seem to package it up and sell it to us. They are able to get away with it because their actual product is contained in about one fifth of the total space of an enormous package designed to make a shopper think they are getting good value.
I could go on with the reasons why some very fruity language can be heard emitting from my abode on occasion and why at times I feel as though two men in white coats will be summoned to take a sobbing wreck off to the lunatic asylum.
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Quite a lot of people injure themselves whilst trying to open packaging, and not just for food products. Such as stab and cut wounds from knives and scissors. So it is not just the nuisance factor, but also a safety issue.
And older people lacking in hand strength are particularly affected by not being able to open some packaging.
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A pair of scissors does the trick.
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Not too bad with caplets but try getting panadol tablets out of their blister packs.
Just another dis-service from GSK.
My favorite in this group is the ring pull can, where the ring pulls right off the can and you have to scramble around in the drawers, trying to find a can opener. It usually happens with little tins of tuna or medium kidney beans. Clearly the ring isn’t for opening the can, but is a pre-dinner activity to develop fine motor skills, or the first part of a treasure hunt.
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Another one are the glass bottles with aluminium caps like Schweppes 300ml drinks where the perforations refuse to break and the caps just continually turn without opening.
One has to resort to a small utility knife to cut the tabs one by one whilst trying to not injure oneself…
Tassal Smoked Salmon - Salt Reduced 90g
I love a bit of smoked salmon on top of a bit of avo on bread for breakfast. I have high BP so need to reduce salt intake. Thankfully Tassal make a 50% salt reduced product. It has just 484mg of sodium/100g. Unfortunately, it’s sold only in 90g packets. I mean, who in the history of the world has ever gone into a fishmongers and bought 90g of anything? 
Anyway, my beef is with the packaging. It’s good that Tassal has put much effort in achieving food security but the packets are almost impossible to get into. One has to tear the packets open from the top corners. I’m no weakling but I find it quite difficult. With greasy fingers it’s impossible.
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