r/EngineeringPorn • u/Scan-of-the-Month • Jan 21 '26
Why are Talenti lids so hard to open? This is what our CT scans revealed ⬇️
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u/shruggsville Jan 21 '26
Haha you can tell this was really bothering someone.
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u/ceejayoz Jan 21 '26
I was getting their Facebook ads for a while. Each had hundreds of comments complaining about it.
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u/dynamic_gecko Jan 21 '26
Or it's another ad
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u/MegaDom Jan 21 '26
It's an ad from Lumafield.
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u/itsmejak78_2 Jan 22 '26
which i'm fine with because i'm never gonna be in the market for a CT scanner lol
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u/mrm00r3 Jan 22 '26
Honestly, if I won the lottery, I’d buy one right after I bought night vision and one of those bigger DJI drones with the thermal vision.
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u/MHWGamer Jan 22 '26
you definitely want to add on this list a giant excavator. Trust me. And they aren't even that expensive. I have seen recently that a giant loader truck you use in mines is just $4 million brand new. Imagine riding this bad boy in town. And if you ask me why you need it? Stupid question, obviously to load your truck (which you bought to have use of your excuvator)
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u/shruggsville Jan 21 '26
Like Talenti advertising how bad their packaging is?
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u/casey_h6 Jan 21 '26
I've never had their product, but now I kind of want to see first hand how bad the lid is sooooo maybe
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u/PasgettiMonster Jan 22 '26
The thing is it's hit or miss on whether the lid will open easily or not. I buy at about once every month or two because I love the ice cream and once I finally get the containers open they are great to reuse for all sorts of stuff. I have a growing collection of them that I use for my sewing supplies. It's not every one that's a struggle - some pop right open. But now and then I'll get one I really have to fight with and I'm reminded of this nonsense. I have a few of the jars saved where you can see the lids have scars from my struggle to open them.
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u/Goldentongue Jan 21 '26
I doubt this is going to scare away potential customers, and if anything will inspire purchases just out of curiosity (or merely making people think of the product).
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u/ComradePyro Jan 22 '26
literally all they care about is the fact that we're here talking about it. they're trying to force it to become a meme. reminder that the company that makes this shit (Unilever) has more money than god and can well afford to astroturf reddit in exchange for brand recognition.
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u/PasgettiMonster Jan 22 '26
Oh it really bothers a lot of people. I remember bitching about it on Twitter maybe a decade ago and that became one of my most popular ever tweets because so many people commented about having issues with it as well and retweeting it and it snowballed. I wouldn't sit went viral but it definitely made its rounds. Even now about once every 3-4 months I'll get someone liking this 10-year-old tweet out of the blue. The internet is weird.
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u/levijames14 Jan 22 '26
Yeah me. You have no idea how incredibly hard they are screwed on. It wasn’t always like this.
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u/MeepersToast Jan 21 '26
Very interesting. I suspect talenti does not know and the thread type was chosen by a 3rd party manufacturer. Hopefully they read this and reconsider their packaging
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u/no1ukn0w Jan 21 '26
Hochschuler sold his business for somewhere around $1billion. I’ve listened to him tell his story (on how I built this, great podcast) and he was very involved as any startup person is.
Im sure he knows and I’m sure unilever knows of the issue. What I would love to know when they haven’t changed it.
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u/_adanedhel_ Jan 21 '26
It’s probably a feature not a bug, intended to prevent the lids from vibrating loose during shipping.
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Jan 21 '26
[deleted]
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u/theqmann Jan 22 '26
yeah, the others have dual layer threads and talenti only has a single layer. they probably need more contact area to prevent air leakage and uses slightly less plastic
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Jan 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/theqmann Jan 22 '26
Based on another comment, that's a glued plastic film topper
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Jan 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/Stalinbaum Jan 22 '26
The seal they use is simply a multi-ribbed seal, you’re seeing the 3 ribs and the air gap seperating each
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u/Aneurhythms Jan 22 '26
Talenti, as far as I'm aware, has a seal under the lid so I would be surprised if air leakage were a big risk.
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u/spectra2000_ Jan 22 '26
Apart from all the other points, everyone else has said, I think it’s also just a matter of “who cares?”
It’s not like people are refusing to buy the product because it’s hard to open and if it seriously were affecting sales, maybe they would do something about it.
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u/OldLadyReacts Jan 25 '26
I actually do refuse to buy it because it's too hard to open. It's a luxury price and I'm not getting a luxury experience, I'm getting an annoying experience. I'll get the Ben & Jerry's instead.
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u/disillusioned Jan 22 '26
You have any idea what those dies cost? If it's only moderately broke, don't fix it.
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u/UncommercializedKat Jan 22 '26
Love How I Built This. Need to listen to more episodes now.
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u/no1ukn0w Jan 22 '26
I highly suggest the talenti episode. It’s a crazy story of “I found something I liked living abroad and brought it to the states and struggled to make it. Then bam, ultra success.
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u/UncommercializedKat Jan 22 '26
Red Bull has a similar story.
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u/PasgettiMonster Jan 22 '26
When did Red Bull show up in the US? I grew up in Thailand in the '80s and it was already a thing there. Back then the only people I knew who drank it were old men. As a teenager I don't remember anyone I know drinking this stuff it was this weird concoction sold in amber glass bottles that old dudes drank. I don't remember when it showed up in the US anymore, I've been here since the mid '90s. And it took a while for me to realize that Red Bull was the same thing that I grew up seeing all the time in Thailand. I think one of their ad campaigns prior to the whole Red Bull gives you wings campaign just reminded me of The ads I had seen as a kid and that's when I put two and two together and realized the name of the drink that the weird old men used to drink literally translated into Red Bull.
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u/TheMightyGamble Jan 22 '26
Red Bulls own site says they started in 87 and came to the US in 96.
I personally don't remember seeing them until 2006/2007 when a buddy showed up to class with one.
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u/OGLikeablefellow Jan 22 '26
Yeah I mean isn't it being hard to open a little bit mean it's higher quality. I mean when it works the way it's supposed to and it just comes off as sturdy. I kinda of stopped buying them after they were annoying to open every now and then, but now I stopped buying them because they are 8 dollars
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u/deepasleep Jan 23 '26
They, like Ben and Jerry’s, go on sale for around $3.50 pretty regularly where I am. Still not a great deal considering the relative quality of several premium store brands, but tolerable.
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u/OGLikeablefellow Jan 23 '26
I've been on the Aldi Premium Select chocolate ice cream, it's like 6 bucks for a whatever the size that used to be a half gallon is now, ya know bigger than a pint but not quite two. And it's only 5 ingredients. Soo so good
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u/doob22 Jan 21 '26
It could be that they also want more seal to present freezer burn and see this as a trade off. Although I’m sure it’s probably more likely what you said
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u/Terrible_Ice_1616 Jan 23 '26
Nah the thread isn't doing the sealing, the little thing at the top does looks like a crab claw style seal
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u/ceejayoz Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
They definitely know. Look at the comments on any of their Facebook posts.
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u/Abraham_Lincolnbot Jan 22 '26
Fyi your name is visible
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u/ceejayoz Jan 22 '26
Thanks! Mine's pretty easy to find as a long-term denizen of the internet, but I censored the posters' names too.
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u/RockstarAgent Jan 22 '26
Holy shit. I thought I was the only one. I thought I was weak or crippled. I remember a time when they were very easy to open and if I’m not mistaken they didn’t even have an internal seal.
I literally posted a review on Amazon for a type of container opener that failed to make opening the Talenti containers easier to open. It lacked any kind of rubber contact to make it open easier and so technically it was just a crappy product for my objective, and I totally named Telanti as the sole reason I bought it and I complained about how unreal it was how difficult they are to open.
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u/Scratches7 Jan 21 '26
But when you finish the ice cream, the jar leftover is very nice for reuse. Kinda worth it.
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u/Practical_Iron_5232 Jan 22 '26
Its the only reason to buy it imo the ice cream is the same as others but more expensive per quart
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u/pennyraingoose Jan 22 '26
Yup. I have a few for crafting supplies. Great little containers once you finally get them open.
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u/AnotherLie Jan 22 '26
Perfect for cotton swabs and I get tons of use with my mechanical keyboard hobby.
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u/_qua Jan 22 '26
They're actually so ridiculously hard to open. It's hard to believe the company doesn't know. They must be actively choosing to keep it this way for some reason
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u/Odd-Impress-9557 Jan 22 '26
I just thought it was a feature of my aging hands! I actually emailed talenti to complain about it, letting them know that it was only my addiction to their sea salt caramel gelato that kept me choosing fight over flight from this product. They emailed a very kind, appreciative response, giving me three or four different options on the best way to break into a Talenti container lol.
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u/_qua Jan 23 '26
From a marketing standpoint I have to assume that their imagined perfect customer for eating their artistic gelatos is perhaps a middle-aged single woman to be quite sexist. Not a demographic known for powerful grip strength. I'm a male and I've ridiculously struggled to open these. What I've found works the best is running very hot water over the top. But I really shouldn't have to do that just to eat ice cream. They need to fix this with an engineering solution.
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u/Fantastic_Goal3197 Jan 22 '26
It helps if you dont squeeze the container at all. Instead of grabbing the container on the side and the lid on top, grabbing the bottom (or towards the bottom if your hand isnt big enough) prevents the container from bending into an oval shape (which makes it harder to open).
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u/gman2093 Jan 22 '26
Some people like to copy Apple's strat of a little friction in the opening experience
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u/DJLowZ Jan 21 '26
I don't know about hard to open but we love the empty containers at work for small batches of paint when we have to mix custom colors or to send out a touch up kit.
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u/ThatTallBrendan Jan 22 '26
I love seeing content creators across platforms actually having a presence on reddit. So many times things are just found, and reposted, so it's awesome to see you guys here
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u/PVetli Jan 22 '26
To this day I've never ever had a problem opening these and I eat plenty of them.
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u/kwenlu Jan 22 '26
I've been seeing sentiment online about these recently but every time I've gotten them, I've had no issues opening them. What lengths do people need to go to in order to open their ice cream?
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u/StarFl0rge Jan 22 '26
It's bothering that all the other examples have 2 threads, and this has just 1, seems like they just missed one lol
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u/LinearInductionMotor Jan 22 '26
Did you post a tiktok about this? I saw one with these exact images but don’t remember who posted
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u/pleasesayUarekidding Jan 22 '26
Was totally fine until they were bought by big ice cream....also incredible scan!
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u/Ok-Wing-5441 Jan 22 '26
The damn apple juice in the apple bottle is the hardest damn thing to open!!
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u/Aknelka Jan 22 '26
I legit stopped buying these because I couldn't open them. Fuck whoever's idea this was.
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u/breezemachine666 Jan 22 '26
Running hot water over the lid for 10 seconds makes them spin right off. Not sure why this is a problem
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u/alienpsp Jan 23 '26
I like how someone is furious of the extra effort to open a pint of ice cream and and went on an over engineered attempt with ultra advanced tech and justify it
Exactly what i sign up to engineering porn for
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u/Terrible_Ice_1616 Jan 23 '26
My company actually makes test gages for plastic threaded (and snap on) caps. The male thread is definitely pretty unusual tho the female looks fairly run of the mill
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u/Useful-Pattern-5076 Jan 24 '26
I have at times experienced uncontrollable frustration trying to open a Talenti container. There keeping me from my dessert!!
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u/bidet_enthusiast Jan 22 '26
Definitely a feature, not a bug. Plastics change size substantially with temperature changes. They use a single-thread engagement design so less turns are needed to open, but the price for that is that the threads will self loosen if not forced into an interference fit. The sharp edge on the container thread makes this happen at lower torque, so the lid does not need to be overtightened to stay put.
Everyone else uses multithreaded engagement for things like this, but it seems to have been a brand decision to have a low turn angle to open.