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Crying Over Spilt Milk

An article in the New York Times explores how a new boxy-shaped, spout-less gallon milk jug is being received by customers of Sam’s Club and Costco. The boxy jug’s design is environmentally-friendlier, easier for retailers to stock, and more efficient for dairy producers to deliver. The end result is fresher, cheaper milk for consumers. Win-win-win-win, right?

Wrong, if the bitter and enraged Sam’s Club shoppers are representative of the typical American consumer (and, let’s face it, they are). “I hate it,” one woman says. “It spills everywhere,” says another woman, a homemaker who is pictured attempting to pour milk from the boxy jug while rolling her eyes and smirking, as if to say They call this a milk jug? What kind of game is being played here?

Sam’s Club is even giving lessons to shoppers on how to pour milk, emphasizing that it works better if “rock-and-pour instead of lift-and-tip.” Despite repeated reminders that the milk is fresher and better for the environment, plus the added bonus of no longer having to expand energy lifting the jug into the air, consumers remain rueful and suspicious of this strange new milk.

Still, the numerous benefits of the boxy jug may mean that it is the gallon milk design of the future, and Americans better get used to this newfangled way of pouring milk. In fact, with packaging re-design in the works for virtually every aspect of our way of life for greater efficiency, they better get used to a lot of things. The era of milk jugs with convenient pouring spouts is coming to end. Will we persevere?

Posted in Americana.

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