Toy Packaging; Toy Rage

Have you heard the song by Sara Groves called “Toy Packaging”? Take a minute, click right here, and listen to it. I will just wait here while you do it.

How did you like it? Cute, huh? Well, I thought so too and then I saw this article in the New York Times entitled “With New Toys, More Assembly Required.” It seems that opening toys and assembling them has become such a chore that some consider it to be a threat to their insanity. “Toy rage” if I may coin a term.

Here is what the article has to say:

For a variety of reasons — from international trading patterns to the amount of shelf space at big domestic retailers — toys are coming in more compressed packaging these days and with more dreaded assembly required. And many adults feel less and less up to the task. …Manufacturers, she explained, save on shipping and labor costs by packaging toys flat and unassembled. ‘It keeps the costs down,’ she said. ‘It’s the Ikea model. Consumers pay less as a result, but they bear a bigger burden when they open the box.’

That’s not the only article on the topic. Randy Compton of Think-a-lot Toys sent me an article entitled “Aboxalypse Now, Overpackaging, killer clamshells and other common triggers of wrap rage.”

It is certainly appropriate to be concerned about reducing freight and packaging costs. It is also smart to create packaging that resists easy pilferage. But maybe we worry so much about creating packaging and carton sizes that please the big box retailers that we forget about our ultimate customer, the consumer. Do we really benefit by making parents hate to bring home toys?

As Sarah Groves so eloquently puts it: 

Nothing makes me lose my cool like toy packaging
Kids you really need to leave the room, mom’s opening toy packaging
I’m sorry you have to see this sight
You must be brave, no please don’t cry
I promise it will be alright
I hope to have it by tonight
Nevermind this dynamite
Toy packaging