Published Oct 1, 2003

Thank you for taking the time to protect me by placing plastic safety seals around the caps of your tasty condiment. I appreciate your desire to protect me from dastardly individuals who furtively place poison in your bottles as they sit on the grocery store shelves.

However, from extensive experience using your condiments in my cooking, I think I can offer a bit of advice on better designing your safety seals. To wit:

Those un-perforated plastic rings are the worst. Yes, you know who you are, certain manufacturers! How am I supposed to open this thing? I don’t want to hack at the edge of my bottle with a knife until I open up the seal or, alternatively, cut my hand to shreds

Of course, it’s entirely possible to screw up the perforating part as well. See, when you perforate plastic, it’s important that the holes you punch in it go all the way through. Even if they do go through, they might not help. Those perforations with many tiny holes work well. The ones with the big honking holes that are widely-spaced don’t help me so much because the plastic between the holes is still pretty tough and doesn’t want to tear. Oh, and if you choose the cheapest plastic possible, then, regardless of how nice the holes are, the plastic is still crappy and will rip every which way when you pull on it, regardless of any perforation. Then I have to tear at it until it’s just past the cap, and there’s nothing worse than having a torn safety seal around the bottle’s neck. Looks so low-class!

Once you’ve made the perforation, it would help if you put a little mark on the plastic to show me where it is, especially if you use a transparent safety seal. Otherwise, I’ll just turn your bottle around and around, examining it closely, vainly hoping that it has a perforated somewhere.

Alternatively, you could just do like the soda people and use a perforated plastic cap that fits over a little lip. I’m just sayin’.

2 Comments

JoAnna M. | October 4, 2003 1:03 PM

Maybe, just MAYBE, they’re out to get you, Wade…. They want you to BUY their products, they don’t want you to actually USE them.

I’ve always thought that the protective seals on pill bottles they’ve got nowadays are maddening.

I’ve decided that I should open them when i get them home…because, if you wait until you’ve already got a headache, imagine how bad it will be after you have to struggle and fight to get through the 8 layers of consumer protection to get to the contents that pill bottle!