Amazon.com is doing its part to reduce wrap-rage.

What’s wrap-rage, you may ask?

You may not have heard the phrase, but you have certainly experienced it. Think of the last time you bought a memory card for anything. The product itself is tiny, but the last one I purchased came in a triple-layer hard plastic clamshell that was all but impossible to crack without power tools. DVDs are a pain too, but you truly have not experienced wrap-rage until you’ve tried to unbox a child’s toy.

Wrap rage is very dangerous. In 2001, there were 204,000 injuries attributed to product packaging. That’s more than double the number attributed to skateboards. Consumer Reports even issues “Oyster Awards” for the most fiendishly designed packaging. During one recent test, a Barbie doll took 15 minutes and 10 seconds to extricate from its Inferno-like rings of protection.

Amazon.com is helping reduce wrap-rage at the source by introducing  “frustration-free packaging.” While the product list is still quite limited, it does include memory cards and many of the more diabolically-mummified Fisher-Price toys. Gone are the plastic clamshells, wire twist ties and miles of tape. In their place is a simple cardboard box mailed in a simple envelope. Huge added bonus: much less plastic in the waste stream.

Thought for the day: Can people easily reach the information on your site, or is it caught in the electronic version of the plastic clamshell—visible, but teasingly just out of reach?

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Content, Editorial, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.