My breakfast struggle with packaging and small print continues! This time, in the unlikely form of a small bottle of lemon juice. Surely that can’t defeat me? All I want is a warm honey and lemon drink to soothe my sore throat. It’s a brand new bottle of Jif Lemon Juice and like everything these days the top has been hermetically sealed with heat shrunk plastic that will ensure the contents will last for a thousand years. Not even a safe cracker could get the top off !
Not to be beaten and armed with my newly acquired trusty friend, the magnifying glass, I start to read the small print as carefully as if I was about to defuse a bomb.
Around the top it says “twist off the top in direction of arrows and pull back ring tab”. Just two small problems – 1) I can’t see the yellow arrows on the yellow top and 2) where on earth is the ring tab? When I was younger, I could take tops off beer bottles with my teeth, but the few I have left are too precious to risk on a mere bottle of lemon juice. Undaunted, I’m off to find the tool box – where the b****y **ll are the pliers! Now nothing will stop me!!! In their vice-like grip, the top screws off in no time at all (always forgetting the 10 minutes it took me to find the pliers).
Oh! And there is the ring tab carefully hidden inside the top, like a present inside a Christmas cracker. What a pity “Lemon Jif” didn’t include a “bang” inside the bottle as well, then they could have frightened me as well as irritating me. Puts a whole new meaning into “be there in a jiffy”.
Now they have got my attention and I have my I-spy glass, I decide to take a look at the small print on this helpful little bottle. A note written sideways on the label says ungrammatically
“FOR BEST BEFORE END SEE NECK”
On the neck it says “DECEMBER 2011” which is probably how long it could take some people to open the bottle!
Your article made me smile as I am having enormous trouble getting some of my tablets out of their protective wrapping. Aspirins, in particular, are very difficult but most of the others always present a challenge. I wondered if it was to encourage you to open them before they were needed. I spend about 30 – 45 minutes every Sunday evening preparing pills for the next week. Yes I do have a few – 7 in the morning} I must say it was easier when they came in bottles and could be counted out.
Isn’t it crazy that medication blister packs which were intended to make taking pills easier, turn out to be difficult to open. This is yet another storey of bad packaging , where no doubt the designers have 20/20 vision and full dexterity. Why on earth don’t they test them with older people first ?
This probably is one reason why so many pills are not actually taken, which defeats the whole purpose of blister packs !
P.S.
Only seven pills a day — your a novice at this growing old game 🙂
See my blog on “Pilly Galore” — you can find it in the archive Dec 2010.
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