matchbox mega rig packagethere&rsquos a story that matt petersen, vp of design for mattel inc., tells about how he learned the top three complaints from parents about traditional toy packaging. &ldquoi was at my godson&rsquos birthday party,&rdquo remarks petersen. &ldquothis party was for a two year old, so all these moms and all these toys are around and i said, &lsquoi just took over a packaging job here at mattel.&rsquo i got berated by these mothers. they were livid about their experiences opening these toys &lsquotoo much packaging,&rsquo &lsquoall the twist ties,&rsquo &lsquoa terrible experience&rsquo was what they told me. they asked, &lsquowhat&rsquos wrong with you mattel&rsquo&rdquo&ldquoi really took that lesson personally and realized that we mattel could be so much better, and our consumers care deeply about that experience,&rdquo he adds. &ldquosince then, we have been doing everything we can to make it better.&rdquoreimagining toy packagingto this end, mattel partnered with amazon.com to create packaging for directtoconsumer delivery a couple of years ago. today, the mega rigs pirate ship is one of many toys offered by mattel and amazon in both traditional retail packaging and a new type of sustainable packaging designed to take the frustration out of opening toy packages. this new packaging, which is aptly named frustrationfree packaging ffp, was codeveloped by mattel and amazon and does not require the twistties, securing bands and the inner blisters often used to market and secure toys in traditional packaging.some assembly requiredlike its traditional counterpart, pirate ships to be sold in ffps are manufactured, assembled and packaged under one roof, going from plastic pellets to packaged product. traditionally packaged product, though, is assembled and secured with plastic bands, plastic tabs and inner blisters to a paperboard insert. a pirate ship in ffp is shipped unassembled with its accompanying smaller parts in taped plastic bags.traditionally packaged products also receive an extra layer of packaging to protect the brightly printed, windowed primary packaging. before shipment to amazon&rsquos distribution centers, traditionally packaged pirate ships are placed two to a corrugated case. in contrast, ships to be sold in ffps are loaded directly into shipping containers.worldwide effort by mattelmattel had approximately 10 people worldwide working on creating traditional and ffp packaging for the pirate ship. project manager gabriel sheffer led the team through the ideation process much of the package structure design was done by mattel&rsquos packaging engineer franklin stowe.&ldquoat the beginning of a product design project&mdashwhether it begins on a sketchboard or in someone&rsquos mind&mdashwe&rsquore already starting to think about ways in which we could make it more sustainable,&rdquo petersen remarks. &ldquosustainability&rsquos all about making choices, and each one of those choices usually takes more time, money, employee energy and effort. as a company, we must have strong convictions that it&rsquos an important principle, and we have to be disciplined in terms of how we go about doing it.&rdquothe team was charged not only with making sure that the ffp packaging was designed in the most sustainable way but also that the regular package was as ecofriendly as possible. overall, the company has succeeded at reducing packaging material use across the board. petersen boasts that mattel has reduced packaging by 5 percent every year.still the need to have high shelf impact required certain concessions. &ldquoknowing that we had to make it as marketable as possible required us to do certain things, such as using a window box,&rdquo says petersen. &ldquoso the original is the window box, showcasing all the products in a really dynamic way.because of this, the ffp yields substantial sustainability benefits over the traditional packaging it uses 54 percent less paper material 100 percent less pvc because there is no window 96 percent less overall plastic packaging material and 100 percent fewer twistties.the dreaded twisttie&ldquowhy does one want to get rid of twistties&rdquo petersen asks rhetorically. &ldquotwistties are very important to packaging toys, especially when packaging heavier items. but consumers hate them. they do. they hate them. they looked at our previous packaging and thought that it was very difficult to open. this is the antithesis of what we wanted the experience to be, which is a fun experience with a toy. so, from a brand perspective, we knew we needed to move away from that.&rdquomattel has introduced a formal program to remove the amount of traditional packaging restraints. the plastics reduction program focuses on reducing the amount of these restraints used, as well as making it easier for consumers to open and access mattel&rsquos products. this doesn&rsquot mean that twistties are going away completely, though.&ldquomany of our plants, though, are in places far away,&rdquo he adds. &ldquoso we know we need to lock that product down. and the heavier the material, the more we have to make sure that it&rsquos secure. product protection is also important, because it&rsquos not a positive experience to open a toy and find that it is damaged from being not sufficiently packaged.&rdquotested from a to z&ldquowe&rsquore dramatically cutting back on twistties across everything that we do,&rdquo petersen comments. &ldquobecause of this, we test packaging in a multitude of different ways drop testing, transportation tests humidity and heat tests. we even have machines that just shake packages for days and days.&rdquoin the case of the ffp, testing is done not only by mattel but also by amazon in its packaging laboratory. &ldquovendors can ship the package for free to use, and we evaluate the packaging&mdashtesting it for transshipment, to ensure that the product is secure,&rdquo says nadia shouraboura, vp of technology for worldwide operations at amazon.com inc.as part of its ista 3a testing intl safe transit assn test procedure 3a is a general simulation test for individual packagedproducts shipped through a parcel delivery system. basic requirements for this test include atmospheric preconditioning, random vibration with and without top load, and shock testing., amazon vibration tests ffps on a dynamic solutions ds1300.this vibration testing system puts out 1,320 forcelbs. with a 26in. magnesium head expander. this expanded mounting surface enables testing packages in vertical orientation. the shaker system operates over a frequency band from 2 2500 hz. however, amazon&rsquos system is designed primarily for transportation simulation testing in lower frequencies of up to about 500 hz.engineers operate the aircooled vibration test system with dynamic solutions dvc8 controller software, which is designed to run on windowsbased pcs with an available single pci slot. this software enables amazon&rsquos packaging engineers to conduct sine, random, shock, sine on random, random on random, and field data replication testing. with eight channels, an engineer can set one as its control and then monitor response from seven points on the test package.soliciting feedbackshouraboura says transit testing is only one part of amazon&rsquos packaging testing program. &ldquowe look at two aspects of it one is that the product is well protected during transportation the other is that the package is easy to open and customer friendly,&rdquo she explains.the company does this by actively seeking consumer feedback. &ldquowe offer two ways for our customers to leave feedback,&rdquo she explains. &ldquowe print a url, which invites our customers to leave feedback, on our printed boxes. amazon customers also can look at their order history online, click a button next to an individual item and leave packaging feedback.&rdquopredominantly positiveaccording to shouraboura, consumer feedback for the ffp pirate ship has been overwhelmingly positive. she shares this amazon consumer remark &ldquothis was my first time ordering something with amazon&rsquos frustrationfree packaging. it definitely lived up to its name. i was very pleased with how simple it was to get to the item without having to remove 17,000 twist ties that are knotted in an inhuman manner. i&rsquoll definitely look for more items packaged like this in the future&rdquoamazon says that its consumers are giving other products in ffps a thumbs up. another consumer remark shared by the internet retailers speaks directly to how well the ffp performed in the most primary of packaging purposes product protection in addition to the ffp&rsquos sustainability attributes &ldquothe item is still shipped securely, but now i don&rsquot have to deal with that horrific plastic armored stuff.&rdquoshouraboura is understandably pleased with such positive feedback and is looking forward to expanding use of ffp. &ldquothis is how i see our future in 10 years, every product that amazon ships will be in frustrationfree packaging,&rdquo she exclaims. &ldquoof course, our thirdparty merchants can complement our selection with other types of packaging.&rdquo 
