http://faerye.net/tag/medicine Posts tagged with "medicine" - Faerye Net 2008-08-06T11:43:02+00:00 Felicity Shoulders http://faerye.net/ http://faerye.net/post/zyrtec-d-worst-packaging-ever Zyrtec-D: worst packaging ever 2008-08-06T11:43:02+00:00 2008-08-06T11:43:02+00:00 <p>I&#8217;m a very allergic person. I&#8217;ve been on one antihistamine plus decongestant or another for years, which is often inconvenient. For one thing, the insurance companies don&#8217;t like paying for all those meds, so they get the fast-track to over-the-counter. For another, the decongestant in my pills, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine" target="links">pseudoephedrine</a>, can be misused as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine#Misuse_and_illicit_use" target="links">meth</a> precursor. So the law restricts how much I can buy, requires me to submit my name to a Federal database, requires the store to keep them behind the counter, yada yada. Oh, also (thanks, Wikipedia!) the feds require &#8220;Non-liquid dose form of regulated product may only be sold in unit dose blister packs.&#8221;</p> <p>I go back and forth between on-brand and store-brand, between Zyrtec-D and Claritin-D &#8211; varying antihistamine is better for your allergies, and sometimes there are coupons! Claritin-D comes in standard blister sheets: 6 or 8 pills, perforated divisions, exactly the sort of packaging we&#8217;ve all been opening since our parents couldn&#8217;t get child-proof stuff open and we volunteered to help. You rip the blister, out pops the pill.</p> <p>Zyrtec, on the other hand, has this:<br /> <center><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/faerye/2739322180/" title="Zyrtec-D's packaging sucks by Eilonwy Anne, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3107/2739322180_8d46589f03_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" border="0" alt="Zyrtec-D's packaging sucks" /></a></p> </center> <p>First of all, this is a waste of resources. The box is bigger and more complex (internal divider) to hold piles of individual blister packs, the blister packs use more plastic and foil than a traditional blister sheet. Secondly, they are absolutely positively without any doubt <strong>not</strong> &#8220;Easy Open&#8221; (who thought of the phrase &#8220;Easy Open Blister&#8221; anyway? The word &#8216;blister&#8217; not associated with leisure and ease, folks.). You have to fold the tear to get it started, the loooong tear sometimes goes awry and doesn&#8217;t hit the blister, and even when it does follow the curving perforation perfectly, it only removes a shred of the blister around the pill, leaving the patient to dig at the heavy foil for a while before she can get the damn thing out. That&#8217;s without getting into picayune stuff, like it being easier to estimate how many pills you have left from a sheet than from a jumble of blister sarcophagi.</p> <p>I know, I know, free market, free country, why do I keep buying them? Because I still have some $5 off coupons, and when you need medication to breathe, $5 off three weeks&#8217; supply is not bad. And I can&#8217;t believe that the company won&#8217;t wise up eventually. After all, I am <a href="http://flickr.com/search/?q=zyrtec-d&w=all" target="links">not the only person</a> to post a picture of this package to Flickr with a grumpy caption. They can&#8217;t kid themselves they&#8217;re saving the world from meth by adopting such ridiculous packaging when the other brands aren&#8217;t encasing <em>their</em> pseudoephedrine in hyperbranded pucks that look like mini-golf greens. Give over, guys. I just want to take my allergy pill and go to sleep without sneezing. You just want me to buy it. Why can&#8217;t we get along?</p>