One of my ongoing interests is how products are packaged. This began when I was about fifteen and my birth family hosted two Japanese engineers who were in Australia to install and test a huge new Japanese generator (or transformer) at the power plant where my father also was an engineer, and who brought us lots of presents.
During the week these men lived in a boarding house, and weekends Saturday or Sunday, they came to our place at Berowra, in the outer northern suburbs of Sydney in the 1960s.
At the time we had a garage which served as living and dining room and my parents bedroom, while kids had two bedrooms in the house built by my father on weekends, one room for three boys and one for three girls.
I don’t recall the power station. It could’ve been Lidell and that would’ve been a family shorthand nickname.
Lol, getting mired in backstory there!
Japanese packaging has always been superb! Classy! Stylish! Rave rave rave!
I saved all the wrappings of all the presents they gave us and kept them for years. And when I was in Japan, in 1976, I saved all packaging from vending machines and the like. I think at the end of my four months travel through Asia, Siberia, Russia and Scandinavia, a good bit of my luggage was souvenired packaging.
All to no avail, of course. My first night in London, the house where I was staying was robbed. All my precious collection was trampled through the mess left by two perpetrators breaking through the plasterboard ceiling, and getting away with all cameras, the family’s silver and jewellry. They even nicked my feather-down sleeping bag.
But. Getting back to the subject. Packaging. Enduring interest.
These cardboard ‘zippers’ fastened the lid of the box to the underside and nothing was torn taking them off. Bet they can be used again.
The laptop was covered with this simple envelope. The paper of similar weight to greaseproof paper. And similar to greaseproof paper, is coating-free, safe for recycling in the composting bin. (So called ‘baking paper’ is NOT safe!)
Several other bits of cardboard and paper wrapped the cord and power plug. All of it calm, plain, and functional.
People will say we pay for all that. True. And I’d rather pay for good design than bad. I’d rather pay for paper than more plastic bags. The bag handles in the first image are probably the only non degradable parts, but will be re-used as long as the bag lasts. And possibly after that if I can find a reuse for them.
Rita de Heer 