When Greg was over the other day, him and his wife were commenting on the excessive packaging for Battle Strikers toys. Well, Greg and I had just returned from a local store which had a sale on Xbox Live Gold subscriptions and 2800 MS Points cards. I also picked up a rechargeable battery for my included controller while I was there, since I’m a semi-environmentally conscious (and even more importantly, cheap) person. Three items, three totally unnecessary clamshell packages. You can imagine the facepalming that took place when I showed off the above packaging I’d torn through to get that stuff.  Thankfully, a close inspection showed that they were PET Category 1 plastic, making them theoretically recyclable in most jurisdictions. Still, most folks would confuse them (seen in the hand on the left) for the straight-to-landfill plastic kind and just toss them. Seems like a lot to hold two items which are essentially just codes, and a small battery pack.

Strangely, I picked up another point card at Walmart, which was basically the card, that’s it. I don’t know why MS feels the need to clamshell cards, maybe because these ones have a ready-to-redeem code, while the Walmart one had to be activated in-store first. Still, you’d think there was a better way.