Amazon Just Reformatted Your Packaging

Manufacturers of toys and electronics just inherited an admittedly long-overdue and quite welcome market development. According to the electronics obsessives at Engadget, the kind of wasteful plastic packaging that commonly enwraps tech goods (packaging like this ESPN remote below):

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/06/ultimate-remote-1.jpg

...is being phased out of online shopping (and cloud computing) heavyweight Amazon's shipping lines.

Beginning today, consumers who are tired of borrowing the fire department's Jaws of Life to rescue their new USB drive can opt for products in Amazon's "Frustration-Free Packaging," which utilizes streamlined packaging that often includes recyclable cardboard. 19 products from the likes of Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft and Transcend are currently available in the new containers, and the firm's CEO has a vision of offering its "entire catalog of products in Frustration-Free Packaging" within a few years.

Here's the Frustration-Free Packaging storefront.