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Hardware

Cool Packaging Ideas? 22

Posted by Cliff from the endless-layers-of-shrinkwrapping dept.
FoamNuts asks: "Gone are the boring days of foam inserts and styrofoam peanuts. We all like to buy toys, and my question is simple: What's the coolest packaging you've come across? Yesterday I got a Sony CD-RW which was secured in a warped plastic inner-tube. My previous HP CD-R was packed in a clever plastic/cardboard combo where the cardboard folded up and a plastic sheet lifted and supported the drive in a cool hyperbolic way. Sometimes we forget the other places cool engineering shows up." I guess I'm just a Philistine when it comes to packaging. Anything is cool as long as I don't have to grab the X-acto blade to carve thru layer-after-layer of plastic.
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Cool Packaging? More

Cool Packaging?

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  • has a long history. Go to big library or big bookstore and find one showing Japanese use of bamboo strips etc. Not high tech toy delivery packaging, but beautiful.
  • With optonial helium. Now that is fun, you get neat balloons with your order, and your sensitive product is floating in a space of helium. And you naturally put some advertising/slogans on the balloons. Your (Geeky) client would be crying with joy. (Actually, this is a good idea, now where do I file a patent?)
    J.
  • Ha. You think you're a geek?

    When my research lab got two M$ optical mice, we didn't even get around to installing them for a day or two. We spent our time trying to figure out how the circuit that made the light flash worked!

    IIRC, it's an LED and a zener diode "backwards-wired", in parallel with a resistor (like 1 M ohm or so). The light blinks after the zener breaks down, or something like that (I'm not a circuits guy). We then rewired that damn thing with a potentiometer to control the rate of flash of the LED.

    Net result? A room full of geeks mezmerized by a flashing light and no work done for a day... :-)

    Again, IIRC, the circuit looks like this:
    (slashdot killed my formatting)
    ______
    | | |
    + | D'
    - R |
    | | L
    |___|_|

    R=1 M-ohm resistor
    D'=zener diode with a very low breakdown voltage, wired "backwards"
    L= light-emitting diode wired "right"

    Remember, I'm not a circuits guy (hell, I dropped out of high school and am in my first semester of college!) so I may be way off here...

    TheNewWazoo
    ("...no sir, I haven't taken Circuits 1.")
  • My two favorite packaging methods are injected foam and inflated pillows. In the former, the object is wrappen in plastic and put in a box on a foam pedestal, with a couple of plastic sheets which divide the box into sections; foam is injected into both sections and this shapes to fit around the object perfectly -- the plastic-separated sections allow the foam to be opened. In the latter, the object is put in a pouch in what looks like a plastic bag; when the "bag" is inflated, it forms a pillow entirely surrounding the object and suspending it within the cardboard box.

  • software/cables/moose package

    Must be a rather large package..

  • DO take care not to dissolve a bunch of these handy-dandy packing nuts in water all at once. I've managed to plug up a drain very tightly due to my efforts in trying to dissolve a bunch. Take them slow and easy, through a garbage disposal if you have the ability.

    Remember, these things are starch. Starch (like potatoes, rice, etc) plugs drains if not given lots of water.
  • The little blinking lights are cool. The doors in my dorm have peep holes. I used duct tape to tape the light to the door, so people walking by see a flashing red light in the door. I've had a lot of people who either knocked or left a message that it's very cool. I also rigged a switch to it, so I can turn it off and on.
  • I opened the box to my Que! drive and there weren't any peanuts or anything. The whole thing came in the portable carrying case that they provided. The software had a compartment, along with the free CD-R and CD-RW they provide. Then there was a compartment for the drive itself, with velcro straps to secure the AC adapter and cables. The whole thing is made of pleather to make you vegan geeks happy.

  • I received a package some time ago...They wrapped the components in multiple anti-static bags, put foam spacers underneath the air-tight assembly, inside of a regular cardboard box, and then injected expanding foam (much like the kind you can get at a home-supply shop, but softer, bouncier) info the underside of the box. The effect was that the part was completely enveloped in a foam crypt, and the expansion of the foam lifted the part off of the spacers placed at the bottom of the box. It has the added bonus of security, just incase you are paranoid about the feds (or whomever) peeking into your package, because to get the part out, you litterly have to tear off the foam.

  • Heh...I still have that blinky thing around...been going for a month at least.. It's still fun to intimidate the cat with it. I must be really bored, or atleast easily entertained.
  • That'd be my favorite packaging option.

    I'm not sure how well the average computer-related item rates for avoiding excess packaging. Some do ok, but I guess it's a result of trying to keep costs down more than any regard for the environment. And yet it's still kind of annoying when we get a shipment of 100 computer-related items, unpack them all, and wind up with a pile of plastics and other packaging that is 3 times the size of all the actual components put together.

    Yet another reason to go for the cheaper OEM products and picking them up locally yourself, I guess.

    What I'd like really like to see are more creative, environmentally friendly packaging developments. Real popcorn was trendy for packaging during the late 1980's early '90's, but not really practical for delicate items or those that don't like dust. Why can't someone develop something creative out of food products (or whatever) that disintegrates in harmless stuff after a few days of exposure to natural elements?
  • I don't know if it counts, but my Logitech Optical Mouse came with a cool blinking red LED light poking through the front of the box, supposedly to draw your eye while it was on the shelf (which it did, of course).

    Made me feel odd carrying it through the store (light blinking in my arm), but when I looked inside to peel the light off, which was secured with some foam tape to the box, I saw that it was powered by 2 Duracell Ultra AA batteries! Yay - free batteries!
  • As an SA for a call center, I once received a large box containing FOUR fully inflated packing pillows to protect my order.

    The actual contents of my order?

    ...One 3Com Dongle.

  • I used to work for an early email vendor (at one time they were #4) Their trick was to do no advertising, everything was via card decks, trade-shows, direct-mail, etc.

    A potential customer would call or write or whatever in and we'd ship them out a free 30-trial of our software. It was on a single floppy and ran only on Novell Netware servers. The plus was that was then the corporate LAN standard and this product installed in 5 minutes, creating the address books, rewriting login-scripts, configuring accounts, everthing.

    Once it was installed it defaulted to EVERYONE getting an account and the client, and it really did work quite well. Of course once it had been running for 30 days it deactivated itself for everyone but the Administrator, thus causing the users to demand en masse our be purchased and turned back on.

    Our tricky part was getting the universally overworked Server Administor to install the darn thing. Sure they'd order the free trial but if it sat buried in their Inbox it didn't do any good.

    The solution: Unstackable packaging.

    We shipped out the kits in 8.5"x11" boxes that were wedge-shaped, nothing could sit on top of them without sliding off. Thus our brightly colored box was always on the top of any pile reminding folks to install it.

    Between the packaging & our "courtesy follow-up calls" offering to walk the potential customer through the install (and yes they were real support-folks, not scripted drones) made for an incredible success rate. For something that we internally called "the worlds cheesiest email" (a play on our slogan "the worlds easiest email") it made a mint and built a corporation.

    It may not have been the most "kewl" packaging but it worked magnificently and succeeded at selling the product.

  • Real popcorn was used back in the mid-sixties for packing slot cars sent to regional and national drag races. This was back when most kids could only afford to send the cars and not themselves.
  • Why can't someone develop something creative out of food products (or whatever) that disintegrates in harmless stuff after a few days of exposure to natural elements?


    There exists such a thing, and I've received many things packed with it. They come in the form of cylindrical peanuts that have the appearance of normal foam peanuts, although they're a light brown instead of white. Anyway, they're made from starch, so they dissolve quite easily in water (takes about 4-5 seconds in lukewarm water) and are safe to eat (well, to a point, anyway...after enough I'm sure the cardboard dust et al would pose a threat). I dunno how well they stand up to sunlight and such, but I'm sure your friendly neighborhood bacteria would have no problem with them after they hit the landfill.

  • A little late, but....
    We get AOpen PCs from a local vendor. They come with an easy to remove keyboard, software/cables/moose package, sitting on a handled tray. But the best is the PC. It is has the baggied, form-fitting foam packaging, all secured by one of the biggest rubber bands I've ever seen. Now that's a creative LART!

    --
  • M$ Intellimoose. Bloatware, you know.

    --
  • Well, the VA Linux packaging is pretty cool. The server goes in, then a box containing cables, books, etc. It's easy to pull the top box out. I've done a few trade shows and demos and it comes in pretty handy for cables and small devices. Now if only the servers weren't so damn big. I couldn't close the back door of a rack one time if anything was plugged into it.

    Also, I got an IBM Thinkpad a few years ago that was suspended in a plastic sheet inside the box. That was pretty cool
  • Yawn. Pink Floyd's PULSE, 1995
    ---
  • Bubblewrap - you can never have too much bubblewrap
    Bright-colored foam pellets, instead of plain white.
    TUX-shaped foam pellets
    Foam bricks that look like bricks (3 holes, red color)
    ---

  • Well, it's not packing material, but I've gotten two of these V-Lite [vlite.com] video tapes in the mail. Pretty neat. It's essentially a very cheap VHS tape that weighs a fraction of a real tape. One of their claims is that it is unusual enough that people will notice it and want to try it.

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