Products that Frustrate – Individually Wrapped Hot Dogs

January 26, 2011 24 Comments

Products that frustrate are products that I don’t quite understand at the grocery store. Here is another one, Individually wrapped hot dogs. I don’t really understand the need for these.

Products that Frustrate – Individually Wrapped Hot Dogs

Before I begin, let me say, I love hot dogs. When I go to Five Guys Burgers, I am often stumped, burger or a hot dog. We won’t even discuss why eating a hot dog is something we shouldn’t do too often, we know hot dogs aren’t always nutritionally viable, they are filled with preservatives, and often use cuts of meat that we wouldn’t ordinarily eat, but let’s face it. Hot dogs can be tasty, quite tasty in fact.

I was chatting with a fellow blogger, Jacki of Funny Not Slutty, a comedy website, and she mentioned these individually wrapped hot dogs. I have seen these advertised on TV and thought they were odd, and didn’t think twice about it. Today, I went to the grocery store for inspiration, and to pick up a few ingredients for my next copy cat recipe, and went over to the hot dog section and saw these.

So, hot dogs are not complicated to cook, many of us cook these in the microwave, or we may boil them in water, slice them open and grill them. Microwave cooking typically does not require fancy or exotic cookware, I personally would simply place a hot dog on a plate, and heat it up for 30 seconds, if I was in a neat mode, I would place a paper towel over my hot dog. Why must they be individually wrapped?

I am single, so for me, I can’t really eat a whole pack of hot dogs at once. So once I have had a couple of hot dogs out of a pack I will put them in either a baggie, or even a container and place them back into my fridge. Why as consumers should we pay for a company to wrap these up for us. Our husbands, our children, and most anyone that can fog a mirror can wrap an opened package of hot dogs to save them for another time.

I love hot dogs, I love that I can have dinner in 30 seconds, I do. I really do. Hot dogs are not complicated to prepare, and their storage is quite simple. Why on earth do we need individually wrapped hot dogs? Products like these frustrate me, because they cost much more than normal hot dogs, they have excessive packaging, and I don’t see a need for these. I would rather see a much more tasty hot dog in the space on the shelf to purchase.

Do you have products that frustrate you? What are the products that frustrate you?

Here are other products I don’t understand.
Pre-made UnSweet Tea
Pre packaged spice blends

http://www.facebook.com/nightstalkerths Barbara Hale

I freeze them
for my mother who is 81 years old and for her to get them out of the freezer and have just one is great. She doesn’t have to take them all out and not use them.I love them for her.
Guest

I actually think the Individually Wrapped Hot Dogs is a great thing. If the kids are hungry they can just grab a hot dog and cook it instead of opening a whole package and only one or two hot dogs getting used so that they won’t go to waste. I use to buy this for my kids as a snack.
Janiceg6768

The juice spills out all over my shelf when my family rips open the regular ones, this way, no mess
Scottandjuliem@att.net

but thank you but if you don’t want to it’ aurrite
scott mccain

all i want to now is what is there recipe
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Romona

I love them, great for work or even if you just want one or two no need to waste a whole package. What’s not to get!.
Brian

Ah, it works for me. They work perfect if you decide to take them to work.
http://www.google.com/kent Kent @ Abstract Photography

I usually just put half in a ziplock in the freezer, and the other half in the fridge.
http://ezinearticles.com/?Abstract-Photography&id=355638 Thomas – Abstract Photography

Seems like a waste. I usually just put them into 2 different ziplocks. One goes in the fridge and one goes in the freezer.
Kokophuffs

I think individually wrapped hotdogs are a good idea. I usually freeze hotdogs so if they’re individually wrapped I can just take one or two and cook them instead of having to pry and chisel them apart which often leads to the hotdogs breaking apart.
- http://www.copykat.com Stephanie
  
  I appreciate different points of view I think sometimes I lean on the side of being frugal. I will eyeball certain things very critically. I was impressed that these are decent beef hot dogs, and not the mixed meat variety.
http://www.longdazeshortyears.blogspot.com The Mommy

I don’t really get it either. If you’re not going to use the package in the 5-7 day alottment then just freeze them by putting them in a freezer bag and take out/defrost what you need next time? They’ll keep forever in the freezer.

And my pet peeve is the ultra-expensive 100 calorie packs of snacks. I call this packaging for stupid people. If you have to pay someone that much extra to calculate how much 100 calories is instead of figuring it out yourself (even if you need a calculator – $1 for a simple one) then you should have to pay twice as much for the product – which is what some of them are.
- http://www.copykat.com Stephanie
  
  I am sometimes guilty of purchasing those. I am single, and an open bag of snacks turns into a serving size for me.
http://iambaker.net Amanda

Oh. My. Annoying. For me and my three+ kids, that would be a nightmare. I guess every product is designed for a need though…
jason

as others mentioned, individually wrapped means the other hotdogs will stay fresh weeks or MONTHS longer. What is the mystery? I could buy 2 25oz jars of spaghetti sauce at the store, or I could buy 1 45oz jar. but the 45oz jar would probably spoil before I could finish it. Individually wrapped is a great idea.
Lise Silverwolf

Opps…I forgot to add – we put the baggies in the freezer until we are ready to use them. Anyone with a fridge usually has a freezer they can pop the leftover re-wrapped doggies in!
http://LiseSilverwolf.wordpress.com Lise Silverwolf

Ugh! What a waste of packaging. I must agree with you, Stephanie. I cannot imagine paying for individually wrapped dogs. Like you pointed out, it is not rocket science to rewrap the leftover dogs. It’s just my husband & I, and we cannot eat a whole package at once either. But, knowing this, I don’t something “magical” – I PRE-PLAN! Yep. I bring home that pkg of dogs, open it, and split it into 2 baggies – 4 dogs in each, since I know that’s all we’ll cook/bbq at one setting. Genius, I know! LOL
Linda

I think it’s a great idea, once a regular pkg. of hotdogs is open they are only good for 5-7 days. My husband & I don’t eat a whole pkg. of hotdogs in a week, so to have them individually wrapped would work for us.
Virginia Read

Thanks goodness, someone got the idea to wrap the hot dogs individually. My husband and I cannot eat more than 2 each and sometime just one. If the rest are not eaten that week, they spoil.
So we have to throw away the rest of the package.
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http://ColiesKitchen nicole

I have never seen those in person how funny! I do think they would be a pain in the rear!!
http://crystalscozykitchen.blogspot.com/ Crystal

The thing that I’ve been frustrated with lately is pre-packaged produce… The only way to buy clementines is in a 3 or 5 pound bag. The main reason this is frustrating for me right now is my son is absolutely in love with them and as they are becoming out of season there is always at least 2 pieces in each bag that are mushy or moldy. I wish I could just buy individual!

On another note, I have to laugh at the going to 5 guys and thinking about buying a hot dog – first I have a food aversion to hot dogs (something about eating a hot dog then getting the stomach flu… I can’t eat them!) The second thing is that the ONLY time I’ve eaten at Five Guys was when I had morning sickness… never felt like eating there after I lost my lunch. I may be able to visit one again now (3 years later) as last time I drove by one (they are not in my area) I did not feel nauseous. I’m glad some people enjoy eating hot dogs!
Mellissa

The one thing that has had me scratching my head are the packages of toast. Yes Toast!!! I mean really how hard is it to take a package of bread that costs between .85 and 2.00 depending on your preference plus a few cents for electricity, but you are going to pay over 3.00 for itty bitty tiny pieces of bread shaped pieces of toast???

As for the hot dogs, I don’t know about you, but the only people that I know of that will eat 1 hot dog at a time are children.