Chicago home goods maker Peers & Webb has achieved the goal that has eluded businesses for over a century: A product package that is absolutely impossible to open.
On June 15, the American Packaging Institute certified the hard plastic cover on P & W’s Aunt Annie’s Twin Flashlights as Guaranteed Un-Openable – based on the fact that nobody has been able to get at the flashlights since they were introduced in June of 2022.
Companies across the globe have spent billions trying to reach this two-year milestone, the point at which a package is certified un-openable. They’ve utilized increasingly thicker layers of plastic, solid zinc fasteners, Alabama-based gluing compounds, and more. The average American now spends 42.3 days per year trying to open cookies, microwave ovens, and other products.
“More than once we thought we’d make the two years,” says P & W’s CEO Mel Cranston. “But then some guy in Quincy, Illinois would figure out how to open the pickle forks or ice tongs.”
The best attempt until now was by the Niesenfraus Group of Dusseldorf, Germany, whose package for Whitfield Tea remained un-openable for 23 months and 27 days in 1991. It was just about to be certified when a thirsty resident of Dayton, Ohio managed to pry it open using a four-foot hatchet, beeswax and silicon-based explosives.
Meanwhile, sales for the twin flashlights have risen 35 percent each of the past two years – apparently unaffected by the fact that nobody has yet been able to use one.
