things kevin hates

I’m sure many of y’all got CDs and DVDs for Christmas. Unfortunately, before you could enjoy your new stuff, you had to get the packaging open. Most any media sold these days comes shrink-wrapped, and I don’t mind that. It’s fairly easy to get that stuff off with your fingers, or maybe a pair of scissors if absolutely necessary. But the vast majority of CDs and DVDs (though not all of them) have a strip of tape across the top. This strip can be damn near impossible to remove.

If you’re very lucky, sometimes the strip does come straight off (I just opened two DVDs, and one did exactly that). But more often than not, the strip resists your attempts at removal and breaks off in tiny little slivers which adhere to your fingers. With CDs, perhaps the best method is to pop open the case by removing the tab at the bottom left corner so that the front of the case completely detaches from the rest of the case. Here’s an example of me pulling apart a case (look at the bottom left of the picture):

The difficulty in this method lies in the fact that you have to be very careful to avoid breaking the case. If you break the small plastic tab your case will never stick together again. And while this makes it easier to rip the tape off, even that’s no guarantee. And with DVDs, you just have to pull the case open once you’ve gotten a bit of the tape started, but you a) have to get a bit of the tape off and b) have to pull off the strips of tape which remain on either side of the case. I suppose you could just leave the tape on at that point since it wouldn’t interfere with opening the case, but if you’re as crazy as I am it’ll bother the hell out of you and you won’t be able to live like that. You’d lie awake at night bothered by your inability to remove the tape and you’d resort to whatever means necessary to get it off.

Okay, I exaggerate a wee bit. But the tape pisses me off. Sometimes, even if you do get it off, the sticky residue traps dust and dirt and makes the case messy.

And the thing is, there’s no need for this to happen. I ordered a CD from amazon the other day and it had no such strip. I assume there’s some sort of anti-shoplifting purpose to the strip, but I don’t see why that can’t be integrated with the rest of the packaging.