Readers of Benny's eye on the streets pedantic corner

Good morrow eye on the streeters. I was having a think recently and I thought you're always reading me talk a load of twoddle about my gripes at the world, and I wanted to know what other people find annoying. I thought it can't just be me, Charlie Brooker, Karl Pilkington and Jack Dee that moan this much so I mailshotted my email address to see what other people thought.

Got my first reply today so I thought I'd use this section of my blog for people to get whatever it is off their chest

Here's the first then. It's anonymous but I thought just generally due to it's highly Benny style and character that it was worthy of publication.

The Capri Sun dilemma. 

Dear Benny,

I have been following your blog with a keen interest for some time now and have found your posts highly educational, amusing and liberating. However, I have felt for a while that there has been one key area that has grated at me, yet you have felt no haste to blog it to the nation. This key issue is the simple, yet intensely annoying, Capri Sun packaging. 

I am going out on a limb here, Benny, in hoping that your vast readership agrees with me, but Capri Sun packaging is possibly the worst designed and most exasperating packaging ever born to man. There are two key problems; firstly, and most obviously, the ridiculous angle of the straw hole, and secondly the bizarrely small amount that you actually get when you finally penetrate the hole (not a euphemism). For means of this correspondence, we shall deal with each of these core problems separately. 

The main, and lasting, problem is the harrowing ordeal that you are faced with when having to pierce the inaccessibly- designed straw hole. I am an able-bodied young man with perfectly good dexterity and motor control, so much so that I can seamlessly take the annoyingly spikey, individually-packed straw easily from its packet (which I have seen some struggle even at this early stage of the Capri Sun experience/ordeal). The process of piercing this absurd hole can take minutes of my precious time and the end result can vary from simply accessing the drink inside the foil container to varying degrees of spillage on myself and the surrounding area. I have wondered whether it is my approach to the process of straw hole puncture that is at fault, so have tried many angles and differing methods. For example squeezing the top of the container to create a ridge where the straw hole is exposed seems sensible, but this can guarantee spillage and I have known as much as a third of the Capri Sun be displaced by this method. An alternative is to try and angle the straw but just insert it point down. This can pierce straight through both sides of the container and a similar loss can be experienced. At a loss, I even tried holding the container upside down and piercing it upwards…It goes without saying that this was an abject failure. I am at a loss.

 This is not something that I have experience with other soft drinks in cartons, so I just can’t understand why the people at Capri Sun insist on this outrageous packaging. I despise it, and it is made so much worse by the fact that the juice is so good.

 Most other juice brands (Ribena and Um Bongo) aside don’t even have a scratch on Capri Sun. This is further annoying as in my workplace the choice is Capri Sun or Happy Shopper (I kid you not, they still make it) cartons which taste like bad Spar squash that has been under diluted and left on the side for at least a month for the water to go stale. The Capri Sun is the only decent and thirst quenching option. Why do they not just use a normal carton, or serve it in a can (it works for Rubicon!). 

This brings me to the second point. Perhaps it is again a design issue, but there seems to be, when the hideous and traumatic events of the straw hole piercing are over, there seems to

be so little to actually drink

 This is also truly odd because in the average Capri Sun there are 200ml whereas the average normal carton (Ribena aside) is 125ml. It always seems however, that you are done within three slurps of the delectable stuff. Why is this? Is it down to straw design, I mean admittedly they are outrageously spikey, but they seem pretty conventional. Or is it once again down to the absurd and thoughtlessly designed packaging which encourages you to squeeze, and gives you a shorter drinking experience? 

I am not sure what I aimed to achieve by this letter Benny, but I just needed a way by which to voice my concerns. I hope there are others out there that are suffering like me. I am a simple man, and just want Capri Sun to realise how much of the national time they are wasting and equally how much better the national mood might be if they changed to conventional packaging. Perhaps it is time for us to lobby for a Capri Sun Bill or even boycott the infernally packaged beverage altogether?

Have you any advice Benny? 

Yours Sincerely, 

Disgruntled of the web 

P.S. I recently asked a Congolese friend whether he liked Um Bongo. He said “What is that?”. It turns out we’ve all been lied to for years and it was actually just an advertising ploy. THEY DON’T DRINK UM BONGO IN THE CONGO. I am appalled and haven’t bought any since. 

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I agree entirely. That straw through the back shit. Can't be arsed with that. I remember it well from my childhood, if you go through the back you just have to suffer all the way down the drink. Cartons at the best of times are annoying though. It's like they have a thing now with this foil shit so they won't lower themselves to cans or proper cartons like normal people do. There should be the option. I had one burst in my bag once as well when I sat on it. Not good. You are right though the juice itself is sublime!!

Thanks for the email! Hope you like my pictoral additions. Fair play like the first one doesn't really fit but you know it had to be done.

Cheers, 

Benny.

(Anyone wishing to add their letters/emails to this feel free to forward me your gripes to bongobenny@hotmail.com, any I think worthy will get posted here and I'll get back to you with a little bit o' writing, thanks)