How is the way Nintendo boxed them “weird”? If anything, stapling the receipt to the box is weird, that’s so unnecessary. No other store is doing that.
Update 6/5/2025 12:42 p.m. ET: A customer who was impacted by the stapling issue says they were told that replacement units are on there way from a neighboring store. How did the staples become a thing to begin with? According to what they were told, the store’s air conditioner was broken and it had gotten hot enough in the store that the receipts weren’t staying taped to the boxes. To avoid mixed up paper work they were stapled on instead.
It was too hot for tape? That’s bullshit, it was only 85 fahrenheit in Staten Island today, what kind of tape are they using that stops working at 85 degrees? WHY DID YOU NEED TO TAPE THE RECEIPTS, THEN??? JUST PUT IT IN THE BAG. WHY ARE YOU OVER-COMPLICATING THIS???
Nintendo makes a lot of dumb decisions. But stapling a receipt to the box wasn’t one of them. Don’t blame Nintendo for this, blame the morons working at the Staten Island GameStop.
The display side of the unit faces out, covered only by a single cardboard layer. Stapling stuff to the box is definitely weird, but the box layout is too. Just not very resistant to shipping damage in general. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t have the unit facing upside down at least. Then the first thing you’d see upon opening would be the laser-etched Switch 2 logo.
I ended up digging up my old Switch 1 box after reading this story, and it’s packaged very similarly. It was screen-up, with nothing covering it but a plastic baggie and the cardboard layer of the box. Though it was slightly more recessed, there wasn’t much stopping anything that would’ve punctured the box from damaging the screen on that model, either.
I think the lack of any major packaging issues from the Switch 1, and that there aren’t reports of other mass damages on the Switch 2 outside of this particular store, should tell us that the packaging is fine. Not ideal (clearly), but fine for 99.999% of units shipped. I can’t imagine that they didn’t do stress-testing on the packaging designs before shipping and accounted for being kicked around in a FedEx truck, but I doubt they accounted for somebody deliberately puncturing the packaging.
For me that begs the question though, what is gained by the layout being the way it is? If it were a compromise between adequate packaging strength based on whatever stress tests they did and the appeal of the unboxing experience for example, then fair enough. Maybe it’s just me that doesn’t find the featureless black rectangle of a powered-off LCD display that appealing.
In my general experience when I don’t have enough information to reason a decision like that - it was just to minimise cost.
You’ve got a shelf full of fifty boxes. Forty five of them are sold. You’ve got five people working in the store across three registers. You want to make sure that the people who ordered one get one, so you pre-allocate them by printing out all the orders and attaching them to the box.
How is the way Nintendo boxed them “weird”? If anything, stapling the receipt to the box is weird, that’s so unnecessary. No other store is doing that.
It was too hot for tape? That’s bullshit, it was only 85 fahrenheit in Staten Island today, what kind of tape are they using that stops working at 85 degrees? WHY DID YOU NEED TO TAPE THE RECEIPTS, THEN??? JUST PUT IT IN THE BAG. WHY ARE YOU OVER-COMPLICATING THIS???
Nintendo makes a lot of dumb decisions. But stapling a receipt to the box wasn’t one of them. Don’t blame Nintendo for this, blame the morons working at the Staten Island GameStop.
85° outside. It was 85° outside where I am too, but the thermometer inside said 90°.
Our tape didn’t melt though…
The display side of the unit faces out, covered only by a single cardboard layer. Stapling stuff to the box is definitely weird, but the box layout is too. Just not very resistant to shipping damage in general. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t have the unit facing upside down at least. Then the first thing you’d see upon opening would be the laser-etched Switch 2 logo.
I ended up digging up my old Switch 1 box after reading this story, and it’s packaged very similarly. It was screen-up, with nothing covering it but a plastic baggie and the cardboard layer of the box. Though it was slightly more recessed, there wasn’t much stopping anything that would’ve punctured the box from damaging the screen on that model, either.
I think the lack of any major packaging issues from the Switch 1, and that there aren’t reports of other mass damages on the Switch 2 outside of this particular store, should tell us that the packaging is fine. Not ideal (clearly), but fine for 99.999% of units shipped. I can’t imagine that they didn’t do stress-testing on the packaging designs before shipping and accounted for being kicked around in a FedEx truck, but I doubt they accounted for somebody deliberately puncturing the packaging.
The side forms would protect from lateral motion, as long as nothing was slammed onto the face of the box it’s pretty right.
To staple a receipt onto a box (eg: no baseplate to fold the prongs) you need to use some force, which is where the problem starts…
For me that begs the question though, what is gained by the layout being the way it is? If it were a compromise between adequate packaging strength based on whatever stress tests they did and the appeal of the unboxing experience for example, then fair enough. Maybe it’s just me that doesn’t find the featureless black rectangle of a powered-off LCD display that appealing.
In my general experience when I don’t have enough information to reason a decision like that - it was just to minimise cost.
Mate, a hand stapler can penetratively attach rubber to wood, it’s not a packaging fault.
You’ve got a shelf full of fifty boxes. Forty five of them are sold. You’ve got five people working in the store across three registers. You want to make sure that the people who ordered one get one, so you pre-allocate them by printing out all the orders and attaching them to the box.
In the bag? You think they’re going to hand out a .001¢ bag for free when they can use a .0005¢ staple!? Think of the profit margins!!!
Yeah