Doh! Stupid Simpsons DVD won’t open!

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

We bought The Simpsons Movie on DVD yesterday. The case had the most stupid red button on the side; whatever it was supposed to do—it turned out it’s attached to what seems to be a lever mechanism extending across the case, under the DVD—it prevented us from opening the damned thing. A little applied force in desperation, and the box split, front and back, with shards of plastic exploding outwards. The cover sleeve is torn, again front and back, and the stupid thing still won’t open.

We won’t be able to take it back to the store until the weekend but come on! I’ve got two degrees, for goodness’ sake, and if I can’t open a DVD case it tells me something is either really, really wrong with the packaging or I’ve become suddenly and inexplicably dumber than dumb.

It looks just like an ordinary DVD case. But it isn’t. Doesn’t anybody test these things when some bright spark in product development decides to innovate and reinvent the wheel? Maybe the red lever thing is intended as an anti-theft mechanism. Clearly, it’s supposed to just work. I assume that because the packaging contains no information on how you’re supposed to open it. Silly me, I just thought it would pop open like every other DVD case in the world…

categories: all wired up, film & video