Pluggers by Rick McKee for April 26, 2022

is it sour cream and onion?

Totally untrue. I’ll fight a bag tooth and nail to get to my favorite flavors.

That’s why I mangle all the bags of chips in my grocery store before I check out.

Muscular bag. It’s ripped…

Ruffles are the best.

It IS to wonder why the packaging people don’t make their products easier to open. They have to know that the population is aging and doesn’t have what it takes for a long struggle to get, say, their favorite bag of potato chips open.

Which is why I have a pair of utility shears handy in the kitchen—for when they don’t open easily ! ! !! !

Make my own popcorn and put it in a container with a screw on lid :-)

really…they made adult proof caps for meds…..why not chip bags?

Clancy’s. I just use scissors b/c I like a clean cut.

I keep a pair of scissors in the drawer closest to the snack cabinet. Much easier to just cut the bag open across the top. It will also fold neatly to be resealed this way.

You shouldn’t need a pair of metal snips to open a bag of snacks and not have the bag shred in three or four directions at once. And shred mostly from top to bottom of course.

You should be able to open a resealable bag without the resealable strip being either torn off or rendered useless. You should. Really. No, I mean it, you should be able to have one. I don’t care what they’re like now, you really should.

The resealable strip should not require three sessions in a microsurgery operating room to simply close the bag and keep air from getting in.

The packaging engineers who design bags so poorly should be put in one of their bags as an abject lesson. One way or another, problem solved.

In the meanwhile just keep a few decent clothespins (if you can still find ones that don’t fall apart or break if you look at them as severly and harshly as you would an adorable little puppy with a tail wagging so fast and hard that it is nothing but a blur, who just peed on your floor a teeny little bit) around to hold the bag closed.

And if you have a CO2 laser or a plasma cutter then most bags will be easy to open. Not all, but most. Using C4 can make the chips taste a little bit funny so I do not recommend using it.

Hope her insulin is easy to get to.

I keep a set of scissors in the kitchen for just such occasions. And the older I get the more the occasion arises.

A Plugger knows it’s going to be a good day when they open a bag that actually tears along the perforations from one edge to the other..

One of the local grocery chains has “Easy-open” packaging: if your scissors are sharp enough.

On a related topic, what about the bottles (medicines, condiments, spices, coffee, etc.) where you have to unscrew the top and peel off an inner seal. In most cases there is no tab large enough to grip, so you end up stabbing a hole and peeling it off a piece at a time. And let’s not forget the wonderful molded-plastic packaging designed to keep shoplifters and shoppers from ever getting to the product without damaging fingers, cutting tools, the instructions [always written on the only part of the package that can be torn], or the product itself.

I once sprained both wrists and it was months before I could open any bagged product without a knife. I think the idea is they can stack the boxed products higher without bursting. There’s little consideration for older people with reduced muscle strength. It’s not like potato chips are going to be thrown around like airliner luggage.

They need a good seal to keep all that air in there. So much air.

If you unfold the vertical seam along the back of the bag so you can grip it, then poof (technical term) the bag out so as to get a grip in front also, it is often possible to pull apart the top seam cleanly and neatly…voila. Otherwise, it’s the kitchen scissors, for sure, no ripping. Even packages with a guide for ripping seldom seem to work effectively or neatly.

I’ve found that most things labeled “Easy Open” aren’t. I generally just cut the package below the zip closure.

“Tear Open Here.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)