Excess packaging?

With LOTS of family in town the last week or so, we've had the occasion to play a few board and card games. We play the standards: Apples to Apples, Set, Phase 10, Blokus and others. Last night I opened my fairly newly purchased copy of Qwirkle. We had played this in Sedona in January with I celebrated a recent birthday. I remembered that it was fun, and required some strategy. It's kind of a combination of Set and Dominoes....

In the very large box, were the playing tiles (all neatly wrapped in one plastic block), and a cloth storage bag. All of the tiles (which are all that is required to play), neatly fit in the cloth bag, leaving the very large box, and some card board packaging as trash. Now I realize that MindWare, the maker of this great game, will sell more copies in the very large box than they would otherwise, but this really makes me think about how much they are wasting in packaging. It's a great game, don't get me wrong. I may even buy another copy for a gift someday (or I might not...), but hopefully we'll soon see reductions in the excess packaging. Why am I picking on Qwirkle instead of thousands/millions of other products and manufacturers? Because the empty, very large box is sitting on my kitchen counter, waiting for the trash/recycling truck to come by tomorrow.

Kudos to the company that makes Bananagrams. It's a great game, with similar components to Scrabble. The small cloth banana shaped pouch that the game is sold in has no extra packaging. You keep all of the tiles in the pouch. It will be my next game purchase for sure. Here's their blurb: "The award winning anagram name that will drive you bananas!" They've won several toy awards, for good reason. For more info on the game, click here.