What’s that Joni Mitchell line? “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?” Who knew she was singing about garbage bags?Īllan Ripp runs a press-relations firm in New York.With the amount of varied waste we dispose of each week or even day, it’s important to understand how much we can put into a trash bag before it breaks and how heavy duty bags differ from standard bags. Still, I wish I’d stocked up on the old Heftys - something tells me they were a better fit for the job, flex or no flex. She even offered to send me a sample supply of Ultra Strongs. Katie informed me that Hefty’s engineers at Reynolds went back to the test lab to retool the bags’ diameter and hopefully make life better for heavy-duty tidy-uppers like me and John Cena. Gets a bit of the action from Hefty’s flex technology. I wonder if Bounty, made by Procter & Gamble But that might be offset by the paper towels I now need to wipe down the inside of our garbage can whenever the bag collapses. I don’t begrudge any company for trying to make a more economical or eco-friendly product - a quarter-penny and fractional ounce of plastic saved on every bag could do wonders for Reynolds Consumer Products’ bottom line and the environment. Or was it a form of corporate penny-pinching, like when Toblerone last year tightened the dimensions of its Swiss Alp-shaped chocolate bars to reduce their weight in the face of rising ingredient costs? It’s hard to know since Hefty didn’t promote its revamped bag design under the chestnut banner of “new and improved.” Did the world of household trash storage really yearn for flex technology, especially as the old bags stretched perfectly well? Or was this an example of a design makeover producing an inferior outcome - think LED light bulbs, the Tropicana orange juice carton fiasco, or Poland Spring water bottles that crinkle like Saran wrap and spill after the first sip. It’s certainly another case of corporate tampering with a well-branded product that, by my longtime loyalty, needed no fixing. ![]() But Hefty’s ham-fisted tinkering seems to deserve a spot on the marketer’s pantry shelf of shame. OK, it might not stir the same global outrage as New Coke or pose a serious safety risk like Samsung’s battery-exploding Galaxy Note 7. “It is correct to say the dimensions of the bag have been slightly reduced,” she wrote, “but the amount of trash the bag can hold has stayed consistent, due to the flex technology.” ![]() It wasn’t our intention to make anyone wrestle with their trash cans.”Īt least I wasn’t crazy and felt solidarity with all the other bag wrestlers - including actual professional wrestler John Cena, a WWE superstar whom Hefty hired to promote its Ultra Strong bags in a series of muscle-bound YouTube spots.Īfter some back and forth, I got Katie to concede the ultimate truth about the new Ultra bags. She continued: “We made an update to the bag’s diameter to provide a tighter fit so the bag doesn’t fall into the can, but after receiving some feedback, we found that the change in size caused a fit issue for a handful of trash cans. Hefty Ultra Strong was designed with a new technology that allows the bag to stretch and also improves puncture resistance.” I searched for news releases issued by Hefty, and after several attempts reached a responsive PR person named Katie, who confirmed my suspicions. I couldn’t imagine what kind of recipe would call for a Hefty trash bag. I reached the Reynolds Kitchen consumer-response line, where a recorded message explained that representatives were unavailable to take my call - though I was invited to visit the web site for great recipe ideas and cooking tips. Doh!Ĭertain that my wife hadn’t replaced our garbage can, I called the toll-free product hotline posted on the box to investigate. Worse, tying the stuffed opening with Hefty’s pull-string chord frequently caused the bag to tear. By the time the bag filled and needed replacing, it had mostly dropped inside the bin. Back-and-forth I’d go, trying to keep the tapered bag in place, groaning like Homer Simpson when it popped off and waiting for someone to tell me this was an all-new “Candid Camera” stunt. One side of the bag kept slipping off the rim, like a bottom bed sheet that had shrunk in the wash.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |