Waiting on the world to change? Nope not me...

Ever since I can remember I’ve thought that cans of whipped cream were poorly designed. I didn’t mind the dispensing bit at the top, that was fine, genius in fact. I loved seeing that thread of whipped cream on my dessert or hot chocolate, with ridges created by that circularly perforated dispenser. No no, my quarrel was with the cap, and I use the term "cap" loosely. At some point, yes it's a cap. It's a cap when it's sitting on the shelf in the refrigerated section of the grocery store. It's a cap on the way home from the grocery store. It's even a cap if left unopened in your refrigerator.

But as soon as you broke the seal by snapping off that little piece of plastic, you were left with something that looked like a cap, but by no means functioned as a cap. It sat atop the can but didn’t seal it, so the slightest movement would send that little red piece flying. And within a couple of days of opening the can a dried yellowish whipped cream encrustation would form on the top. I remember looking at that as a child and thinking, "That can’t be sanitary." I griped about it every time I had to run that grimy tip under hot water.

Then about a month ago, I went to replenish my stock of whipped cream and I noticed something different about one brand of cans. It didn’t look like the others. There was… a cap on top. No little piece of plastic to be broken off. No, this was a real cap... one that would actually seal and keep the tip of my precious whipped cream safe from oxygen and free of dust and dirt. Cool Whip. Oh Cool Whip you…


Bastards…


What the hell?! What is this?! Is nothing sacred? Granted the old caps weren’t the best design, but I dealt with it. I didn’t stop eating whipped cream because the first spray of whipped cream, after a few days of sitting uncapped in the refrigerator, was a little discolored, a little hard, kind of gross. It didn’t kill me. I grew up with those faux caps. They were apart of my childhood memories. They were a part of me. And now Cool Whip was trying to take all of that away?


Who asked them to lead the revolution of change? Certainly not I. I wasn’t invited to attend any focus groups. Had I been, I would have told them to leave things well enough alone. Shouldn’t they have bigger and better things to worry about?! Will changing the caps increase marketshare by that much? I don’t think so Kraft. I think you’re going to find that many of us will not take this lying down.

I snatched the Cool Whip off the shelf and threw it angrily into my cart. After all I was still a poor student and it was on sale. I saw little alternative. But as soon as I got home I threw away the cap. Take that Kraft!