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Teenagers Are Still Eating Tide Pods, But Don't Expect A Product Redesign
If you've never seen it, a Tide Pod looks like a little rounded packet, white with two separate swirls of blue and orange liquid. To be clear, a Tide Pod is laundry detergent heavily concentrated into a single packet, meant to dissolve in water and clean a single load of laundry. But these days, it's a dare — an Internet meme, in which teenagers try to eat Tide Pods as a "challenge." The trend picked up in December, but the pace of poisonings is still getting worse. So far in January alone, poison control centers have received 134 reports of "intentional exposures" to laundry packets, Tide or others. That's compared with 53 cases the American Association of Poison Control Centers reported for all of 2017, mostly involving teenagers.
[...] Designs like this are never willy-nilly, says Chris Livaudais, executive director of the Industrial Designers Society of America. The process starts by studying the habits of a potential user to find ways to make their life better in some way. In this case, the condensed formula does away with a heavy jug and the need for measurement.
[...] The colors are already associated with liquid detergent, Livaudais says. And the swirls "might imply how active the ingredients are and how well it would do the washing job."
Jones says the swirls were indeed a design choice — indicating that the pod brings together three ingredients (cleaning, stain-fighting and brightening, he says). The pod is transparent because customers have told Tide they like to know what they're putting into the wash with their clothes.
Livaudais says industrial designers spend a lot of time mulling best and worst case scenarios for the use of products. But if someone knowingly chooses to misuse them? "That's completely out of our hands," he says.
National Poison Help hotline: 1-800-222-1222.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @04:13PM (11 children)
You used to be able to buy compressed solid packs of detergent, until everything went to liquid. Bring those back, and maybe teens will just go back to rather eating a pack of crackers instead.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 31 2018, @04:15PM (8 children)
Bring back the powder and they'll just snort them.
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(Score: 2) by rleigh on Wednesday January 31 2018, @05:49PM (7 children)
Am I the only luddite here still buying big boxes of powder? I doubt you could snort much, the agony of your mucus membranes dissolving would likely stop you quite quickly!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 31 2018, @06:04PM (4 children)
The pods are just too convenient. Grab one, throw it in the machine. Can you imagine back in the olden days when people would pour powder into a little cup and then pour the cup into the machine? Horrors!
And don't get your fingers stuck in the rollers that squeeze the clothes dry.
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(Score: 4, Funny) by takyon on Wednesday January 31 2018, @07:01PM (1 child)
Do you know how long it takes to cook a decent meal around here? Fucking hours. But now I can just throw a Tide pod in my mouth 3 times a day and I'm good to go. Very convenient.
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(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday January 31 2018, @08:05PM
I prefer to microwave them before eating.
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(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday February 01 2018, @11:57AM (1 child)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:18PM
Brawndo it's what plants need. It's got electrolytes.
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(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday January 31 2018, @06:53PM
Nope. I still use laundry powder in a box. All I can say about snorting it is "Nobody around here has ever tried it, and I don't intend to suggest it.".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday January 31 2018, @08:44PM
Powdered laundry detergent doesn't work very well in modern hi-efficiency washers. It doesn't dissolve very well and you wind up with detergent clumps on your laundry.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @04:33PM
The tabs are mostly powder. The liquid part is in its own chamber. Dishwasher tabs are the same way.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday February 01 2018, @06:12PM
How about instead they keep selling the liquid, but stop watering it down so much. They'd be able to sell smaller lighter bottles.
If course they won't. The reason they do that is because it means they sell bigger bottles, which customers like.