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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Bakery tape: Strongest
tape in the world?It's hard to understand why duct tape has the reputation as the greatest tape in the world when the king of sticky tapes clearly is that stuff used by bakeries to seal boxes of pastries.
The question is, how did a sticky tape apparently developed by NASA to be un-tearable and indestructible come into the possession of the nation's bakeries?
We've all had the experience of buying a box of doughnuts at a bakery only to get home and discover that we need a blowtorch or rotary saw with a carbon-tipped blade to cut through the tape that seals the box.
Why? When was it decided that the best use for industrial-strength sticky tape was to confine bear claws and croissants in boxes?
Every other fast food you pick up comes in boxes that spring open at the touch of a finger. Most plate lunches are packed into flimsy Styrofoam boxes secured by two measly tabs. Or cardboard paper boxes in which the top is simply folded in. French fries are put in open-ended boxes, free to catch the view on the ride home.
Only pastries, those pastries bought in bakeries, apparently are such a security risk that the boxes they are put in are sealed with the strongest sticky tape in existence.
THE tape looks like regular old Scotch tape, the kind that tears so easily you can hardly get it off the roll without it breaking into pieces. But bakery tape has the strength of Kevlar. Bakery tape could stop a bullet. But because it looks like regular tape, you forget. And when you get home with your box of goodies, you run your finger under the cardboard, thinking it will break the tape. It's not until the tape has severed your finger at the knuckle and you're gripping the bleeding stump in agony that you think, "Hey, that's some kind of strong tape!"
You think, "That's the kind of tape they should use on the space shuttle, to make sure no heat tiles fall off. That last shuttle disaster would not have occurred if the tiles had been secured with bakery tape." Or, "This is the kind of tape that could keep a bumper affixed to a car. And it would look a lot better than that silver-colored duct tape."
In the meantime, you're bleeding all over the kitchen, and you still haven't got your box of doughnuts open. So you try everything from a Ginzu to chain saw, and you still can't get the tape to part. And shortly before you lose consciousness, you think, "Why did all those sweet-looking, grandmotherly bakery women get together from all around the country and decide to tape boxes of pastries closed with a high-tech product that would foil any attempts to get at the scrumptious edibles inside?"
It doesn't matter whether you go to Zippy's in Kaneohe or King's in Honolulu or Mama's in Tuscaloosa, Ala., they all are supplied with sticky tape strong enough to reel in a 600-pound marlin.
I don't begrudge bakeries the desire to keep their takeout products safe and secure. But are Napples really in more danger of a catastrophic spilling on the ride home than miso butterfish and two scoops of rice?
And I'm all for high technology. As long as it is used responsibly. Using this advanced scientifically designed indomitable sticky tape in bakeries instead of for legitimate military applications is technological overkill.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com
