Wired News has an article about Tales from Packaging Hell which raises several interesting points.

From Psyclone electronics cables encased in impenetrable layers of thick plastic to DigiPower camera batteries coated with packaging several times the size of the item itself, the hardest part of buying electronics these days is opening the products when you get them home. In many cases, it makes solving Halo 2 seem like a kindergarten project.

The bottom line is the bottom line. Retailers demand the hard-to-open packaging to avoid “shrinkage,” or shoplifting, a problem that cost U.S. stores more than $10 billion a year or $25 million a day, according to statistics from the National Association for Shoplifting Prevention. They also want the item to be visible to customers and capable of withstanding the rigors of long-distance shipping from manufacturing plants in Asia.

“In a nutshell, it is pretty much all about retail theft,” says Mary Ann Falkman, editor-in-chief of Packaging Digest, a trade publication.

It’s a trade-off. Retailers choose availability (difficulty to steal) and integrity (ability to resist damage in shipment) since those are the threats from which they must absorb the economic impact and tough packaging is an effectively mitigates those threats.

I once bought a Belkin KVM whose packaging I’m pretty sure is classifed as an anti-personnel munition. When I sliced my finger open trying to get it out of that packaging (I still have scar), it was an externality to everyone on the supplier side of the transaction. I had to accept that cost.

Actually, I transferred the cost onto my employer, because they bore the cost of lost productivity due to my slow typing for a few days. But either way, it was an externality to both Belkin and CompUSA since they didn’t have to pay for so much as a band-aid.

And I got off lucky.

Anecdotally, though, emergency room doctors say they’re slammed the week after Christmas with such injuries and see them regularly all year. Dr. Christian Arbelaez, a Boston-area ER physician, sees about a case a week, some as serious as tendon and nerve damage that require orthopedic surgeons to repair.

“I would definitely like to tell (manufacturers) that serious hand injuries are occurring because of this packaging,” said Arbelaez, a member of the Trauma Care and Injury Control National Committee of American College of Emergency Physicians.

There’s got to be more to it than the story presents, however, because at the end it talks about how retailers are trying to move away from this packaging.

Many manufacturers are beginning to tune into the problem. MP3 player maker iriver recently switched to paper boxes for its top-end offerings. Energizer started packaging its batteries with slits in the back of the clamshell to give customers a point of entry. Monster Cable is already a leader in easy-to-open packages — for years it has encased its cables in plastic containers bolted together with rivets at the corners that are simple to pull apart. The company says its upcoming next generation of packages will be even easier.

So consider the parties involved, their individual (and often conflicting) risk priorities, and let’s try to find the imbalance.

1) Retailers want low theft rates and undamaged merchandise. Insanely-difficult-to-open packaging largely mitigates both their risks.
2) Manufacturers want low production costs and undamaged merchandise, since they may eat those costs through RMA’s, depending on the agreement. Packaging probably mitigates this risk very effectively.
3) Thieves need easy-to-open packages so they can get their hot little hands on some hot little goods without paying for them.
4) Consumers want low purchase costs and easier-to-open packages. The packaging aligns with the cost goal (assuming it reduces shrinkage), but does so in direct opposition to the goal of being able to start playing with our new toy within seconds of getting it home. I can’t speak for the vast mass of consumers, but I don’t know that the packaging has ever actually changed my purchase decision. Price, on the other hand, impacts my decisions (especially on the sort of goodies that come in blister packs) almost every time.

So why the change?

1) Thieves have adapted to blister packs effectively enough that they no longer mitigate the risk of theft. This mostly would consist of bringing an exacto knife, razor blade, or small scissors to the store. (highly likely–criminals are both determined and resourceful)

2) Consumers have begun forcing retailers to internalize the cost of packaging injuries, probably through lawsuits. Even if this is the case, I can’t see this driving a change in packaging, both because of the economic leverage ($25 million/day would need a LOT of lawsuits to offset that cost) and because I don’t think many retailers are well-coordinated enough internally to bring all the necessary data and decision makers together to cause a deliberate change. (conspiracy-theory-low likelihood)

3) I’m not a “normal” consumer, and people are not buying things because of the packaging. Given that there is generally *not* a less-protectively-packaged competing good (or, if there is, they’ve all been stolen), I put this at low likelihood as well.

I’m going with option #1–blister packs are a universally-despised, sometimes-dangerous countermeasure which no longer effectively mitigating the risk of theft.