It’s impressive that someone managed to design hotel toiletries with screw caps that are designed to both be impossible to open and to feature a sharp collar that will punish you for trying
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My last hotel experience featured brand name glop that I recognized, but the pumps were in a little torture rack permanently attached to the shower wall.
Where I stay every single one of them saves the environment. I calculate that I have saved the environment at least thirty-eight times by now, and I want to know who keeps unsaving it.
That's really stupid (of the company, not you.) Penhaligons is a high-end brand with excellent scents; it's a shame they screwed up packaging this badly.
You've clearly made the mistake of thinking that those toiletries are designed to be used. They are for show.
If you manage to use them, you will discover that the quality of the product is low
And also with writing on impossible to read without glasses. Gropes for bottle while in the shower - is this the shampoo or the shower gel? Arrgghh conditioner!!
My husband has to open mine for me, because one of the OTHER things wrong with me is severe arthritis in my hands. On the other hand the stuff did make my eyelashes longer.
This gives me flashbacks to my lab days and having stoppers on glassware stuck. I've had some success with changing the temperature, both cold and hot.
I encountered their perfume for the first time at Heathrow a couple months ago, and the bottles are even worse - all of them have glass animal heads for caps that are even harder to open than that round bulb.
DESIGNER: I was thinking if I designed something that was a pain in the ass to use, more people wouldn't use them so the hotel would go through their supplies more slowly and thus save money, some of which will go to me
What hotel chain has money (or lack of) for weird bottles like that? The hotels I worked in all had the most simple screw off toiletries that even a pill bug could open them.
I have a vision for how this packaging design went:
1. Client wants bottles that look *fancy* fancy like their perfume bottles.
2. Oh no these bottles are leaking product everywhere during shipping!
3. Increase the torque on the cap screwer. Problem solved!
To say nothing of the tiny type on shampoo and conditioner bottles, so you can't tell which is which. Hey hotels, we don't wear our glasses in the shower!
Actually it is a great brand and one of my favourite toiletry items from any hotel I went to...but it is true that the design is not very conducive to getting them open!
I've encountered that brand a few times back when press trips were frequent. Always at properties I couldn't afford/wouldn't pay for if on my dime. Good stuff, IIRC, but def had to open at least 1 of those with pliers upon returning home.
Yeah that's because it's designed to mimic their (spendy) fragrances. But those don't have screw tops. These days they're hiding atomisers, but originally that little ball bit would've been a glass dabber.
Penhaligons have been around for a very long time, modernity is hard for them 😔
This is to make us embrace the trend of large bottle bolted to the wall.
The hotel we stayed at last weekend went with squeeze bottles, so I had to hold one hand underneath and squeeze rhetorical center like I was putting mayo on a sub…
Even with dry hands I was at the point of legitimate injury and still could not make the cap budge. Eventually I found a way to wrench it off using the rubber bath mat for grip and protection
It's a good reminder that many of the things I assume are shitty, ableist design that ignores the needs of disabled people are actually just shitty, terrible design that ignores the needs of everyone.
Clearly, the proper technique is to break it off at the neck like an old west bar fight/drunken master kung fu film/intricately choreographed wuxia brawl.
I took a furniture design course 20 years ago. One of my classmates had interesting ideas, and no shortage of design sketches, but his chairs were better suited to looking at than sitting on.
Back when Penhaligon's was established, the snobby hotels that would stock it always had a little person living under the bathroom sink to assist with taking the cap off. It was a different time. A dark and horrible different time.
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I took a couple of mini bottles of Penhaligon's shower gel home with me from a schmancy spa town hotel once.
I bought a teenytiny "trial" box of fragrances, and a couple are sooo good, but I cannot afford to buy a proper bottle full 😭
I have wanted a small bottle of Endymion for a while, but I don't even wear the scents I have now, so a sample is sufficient.
100ml cologne for £70, easy. Ok if you have the cash to splash.
If you manage to use them, you will discover that the quality of the product is low
That looks frustrating. Sorry!
DESIGNER: I was thinking if I designed something that was a pain in the ass to use, more people wouldn't use them so the hotel would go through their supplies more slowly and thus save money, some of which will go to me
ME: ...shit, that checks out
1. Client wants bottles that look *fancy* fancy like their perfume bottles.
2. Oh no these bottles are leaking product everywhere during shipping!
3. Increase the torque on the cap screwer. Problem solved!
Never had that in any of the ones I went to so I guess I'm lucky
Penhaligons have been around for a very long time, modernity is hard for them 😔
The hotel we stayed at last weekend went with squeeze bottles, so I had to hold one hand underneath and squeeze rhetorical center like I was putting mayo on a sub…
It probably wouldn't even result in a personal top 5 weirdest look from TSA luggage screeners.
(And also, yeah. What were the designers of that bottle thinking?)
Charge or reward, check-out will show.
Possibly Penny Mordaunt.
https://archaeologymag.com/2024/03/1100-year-old-viking-sword-pulled-from-english-river/
I'm so sorry and thank you.
[*] somewhat offset by 157% increase in blood stain damage to bath mats.
Note to self: If need be stay in a hotel in future, bring adjustable wrench
no wonder I keep farting bubbles...