Is That An Individually Wrapped Banana In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Glad To See Me?

There's product packaging...and the there's THIS

As a marketing guy, I can appreciate effective product packaging. And I’m keen enough on multi-cultural issues to understand that different countries are sometime really different.

But these pictures of Japanese product packaging seem kind of insane.

Japan, after all, has very few natural resources – in point of fact, it imports almost ALL of its wood, metals and petrolium-based products. Being as these things all go into product packaging, one has to ultimately ask what purpose some of these packages serve.

I understand, there’s a market…but markets are sometimes like toddlers – petulant, irrational, shortsighted and self-centered. That’s an equally good description of marketers and packaging designers, by the way…but I digress.

Anyway, as much as I love capitalism, one of the few spot on criticisms of it is that it generates high levels of waste. That said, what is one to make of individually wrapped eggs, plums and other such delicacies.

Check out the story “Japan sizes of food” over at Tokyo Damage Report along with lots of food packaging ideas courtesy of the Land of the Rising Sun.