Pour.

We picked up a carton of orange juice at the local convenience store. It’s your usual (in the states) half gallon sized orange juice and it comes in a waxed cardboard carton. We usually use the returnable glass bottles but we were lazy this time around. The carton has a plastic spout drilled into the side of it.

I am curious about this.

For decades there was a marking on one end of the carton that had two little circles and it said “press here to form spout”. The task was as simple as implied; push in the correct spot with your fingers and the cleverly folded waxed cardboard will pop out into a convenient spout that allows you to accurately pour into the vessel in which the liquid is going to be contained. (How’s that for fancy writing!)

I fail to understand why we have gone from this cardboard spout setup and have decided to include a piece of plastic in this formerly easily recycled container. Has the dumbing down of the American public resulted in the failure to comprehend the instructions of “press here to form spout”, complete with two little pictures? Were people trying to do this on the wrong side of the carton? Will some lack of plastic throw of the delicate chemistry involved in the unnatural preservatives contained within, thereby nullifying the impossibly long expiration period? Was the simplicity of the carton not sexy enough? I miss that simplicity.

I’m going to remember the glass bottles next time.