Toy Garbage, Come on Already
I’m no Captain Planet and I hate the new trend to label everything “green”, but I don’t think our society should needlessly waste resources. There always is a bit of talk surrounding toys and their packaging in this regard, due to the fact that some toys create a lot of garbage. I don’t normally think about this issue, but I recently got a hold of of my first Star Wars Evolutions pack* and was pretty much disgusted with the amount of waste. First though, let’s take a look at the package before opening:
Not a bad presentation, but what always bothered me a bit was the size of the box. It’s incredibly long for only the figures. There’s a little note on the box showing that the big square to the left contains additional accessories. I figured with the size of that square you must get some neat stuff.
Nope, that whole square is used for two minuscule guns. Now to be fair this box is used for a variety of figures, but I’m betting that practically none of them have huge accessories that require that much box.
It’s not like Hasbro hasn’t had three packs in the past that required all the plastic and cardboard in the world. The Cinema Scenes series of figures featured three characters in (usually) really cool poses. Even while posed with several accessories, the box was not as large as the Evolutions packs:
Opening the box for the figures reveals a mess of tape, twisty ties, plastic, and cardboard. Do we really need to be making this much garbage for only three figures?
Hasbro, this is ridiculous.
*Okay, my Mom bought it for me. Can’t a thirty year old man get a toy from his Mom?
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:24 am
First, yes, a thirty year old man can get a toy from his mom.
Second, yeah, that’s way too much package. I actually think the GI Joe single cards are pretty good that way. No twisty ties, no huge gaping empty spaces. A card and a bubble with a toy between the two.
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I hate those damned twist ties! Just pack my figures in an old school bubble on card without any special posing and I’ll be happy.
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:52 pm
The twist ties create variants,dammit! Yes broken or mangled variations on what you thought you bought!
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I completely agree. I think what it comes down to is how much shelf space they want their products to occupy and how “eye catchy” they want to make things.
Hasbro is by far the worst I think. At least with DCUC and MOTUC, Mattel keeps things pretty tight. I actually just sorted and cut up a bunch of Transformers Voyager boxes that I’ve had kicking around for a while. I put the plastic “bubble” part in one bin, and the rest of the box in with the cardboard.
May 23rd, 2009 at 8:51 am
I scored the Modok wave of Marvel Legends at a huge discount a few years back; I didn’t care about any of the characters, I just always wanted to put together a Build-A-Figure.
I was stunned at the trash, and worse, it made me reflect on how much I’d produced one figure at a time over the years.
I got some Sigmas on the same trip, and these were the results:
[IMG]http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z58/MonteWilliams/Garbage1.jpg[/IMG]
May 27th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
I don’t throw my packages away until I’ve reviewed whatever toy came in it (which is why I have the entirety of DCU 4, 6 and 7 packages still hanging around), and will then throw stuff out in large batches. Carrying armloads of empty plastic and cardboard out always makes me feel bad…
June 12th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Lol, that’s where all the Ewok-money went to, making fancy-ass packages for these figs.