Pluggers by Rick McKee for December 14, 2023

Yup each and every time I go shopping or cook a boxed meal.

Why do the company’s makes that print so tiny?

Eh me can bearly sees them teeny tiny texts.

Just as bad is when the expiration date is printed on top of other printing on the label.

that is one good function of cell phones

I do that all the time, except I don’t actually take a picture, just zoom in and look at it on the screen.

Too true. I’m not gonna ‘like’ it, though.

Works for hard to move appliances to get model numbers or power requirements.

Nope never did that …. My problem is seeing stuff far away ;-)

The small type is not the worst; its the way each manufacturer finds a different place to hide it. Volunteering at a food bank, we spend a lot of time looking.

Is it a can of Bush’s Baked Beans?

Or the print is so faded that you can’t read it.

It’s times like these when it’s nice to be near sighted. All you have to do take your glasses off, put your nose close to/on the package/container, and read away.

My beautiful wife and I are both at this point. And I do not think it is all us, it is the print!

ALL the time! It’s also really helpful that there’s no standard place to put it and it’s often black numbers on a dark background

Who has been watching me in the pantry??? I do this so often my smart phone is running out of film.

From today’s Comics Curmudgeon:

I’m on the record as being cranky when Pluggers just generalizes the long-contested definition of a plugger into “pluggers are old”, so I appreciate today’s strip, which tells us that pluggers are old and also their refrigerators are more disgusting than you could possibly imagine.

I believe expiration/best by dates are being replaced by manufacturing dates. Also the date you see on meat/bakery items is the date the item was packaged or repackaged.They can take a pack of ground beef, remove the plastic wrap/squirt some red dye on it/put new plastic wrap/put new date on it.

I use a similar technique to read the price labels on very high or very low shelves. Also serves as proof if the checkout price doesn’t match the display.

Magnifying glass, in a well-lit spot.

This plugger is old enough to remember when there were no dates on food packages. And, I still have some of those items— things like vinegar that, if they ever ‘go bad’ can still be used as cleaning products.

My mom would buy maple syrup in gallon tins, then can it into pint jars that she would label with the date and hand out as gifts. I still have a few of those—And I’d still use them if I need maple syrup— except the one that’s dated August 8, 1974— the day Nixon resigned.

What I hate even more than the size of those dates is the lack of color contrast on the packaging — tiny white letters on red or orange is really annoying.

Don’t even get me started on prescription bottle labels!

The reasons for the tiny lettering are: the ink is expensive, so they use less of it with small fonts, the Date Code machine can run faster if it prints smaller, and it takes less room on the packaging so it does not interfere with their label/advertising.

My phone can zoom without needing a photo taken.