Juice Boxes are evil.

Juice boxes are supposed to be designed for children. They come in fun little packages with tea-sipping mice and flashing lights so kids will think drinking their grape punch from concentrate is a joy instead of desiring a refreshing soda. But whoever designed the drink box should have a mental assessment done. The person who designed the drink box straw should go to jail.

The average standard drink box comes in a pack of three. They are bound together like a little family of fun in a sharp piece of plastic. The plastic is difficult to remove. Sometimes you have to use a knife to get it off, or a pair of scissors. Sometimes the plastic cuts your finger. Children should not be allowed to use sharp objects, especially not sharp objects that are being used to cut other sharp objects. And might I add that this extra plastic seems rather wasteful. Juice boxes should be liberated and sold individually. Not only would this delete the problem of the extra plastic, but it would let a child be more adventurous. Instead of drinking fruit punch three days in a row, he could have fruit punch, orange drink AND raspberry punch! So if one day Timmy was not in the mood for orange drink (maybe he had an orange for breakfast) he could just switch and take another option. Not to mention people who have four kids. If someone had three kids life would be easy because there are three juice boxes. With four kids someone gets dehydrated. Or you have to do the mathematical equation that you have to do when buying the hotdog buns and hotdogs, which all leads back to a conspiracy between the meat and bread industries. Well it appears the juice industry has caught on to the classic hotdog scheme! With four kids you have to buy more than one package of juice boxes. If you buy two then you have 2 extra. You have to buy FOUR packages of juice boxes in order for each child to get an even number! You know how children fight if everything isn’t equal! You could always buy two packages and just throw the extra two juice boxes away to avoid a conflict. It would be a waste of money, but it would still be cheaper than buying four packages of juice boxes.

But back to the straw issue. The straw causes a majority of juice box problems. On the average juice box, there is a homely little straw in a slice of plastic glued to the exterior in a diagonal fashion. Not only is this impractical because it blocks the picture of fruit on the cover that someone at the factory painstakingly designed, but the glue is flimsy and sometimes it detaches. If you liked drinking soda through a straw but there were no straws available you could get by. You could just drink from the can like a regular civilian. But with a juice box there is no option. Sometimes a straw falls off of a juice box and is lost on the way to school. At lunch hour, Timmy eats his crackers and just at his pivotal moment of thirst discovers that he has no straw! A good mother might have given Timmy some extra straws to keep in his desk in case he dropped one on the floor, but most mothers don’t consider the straw factor because juice boxes were not in fashion when they were children. Plus, they don’t sell juice box straws individually, so if one straw is lost it causes a vicious cycle of straw-borrowing, and there will always be a box without a straw sitting in the fridge until one day the father decides to pour it into a glass. But he could have bought a larger container of juice if he had wanted – he was just trying to make Timmy feel better.

Timmy has no straw and no one will share because it would be unhealthy and counter-effective. Sometimes people try poking the metal hole out with a pencil, but it is very difficult to drink from the small hole. There is a limited amount of juice that can flow through the hole, and you have to tilt your head all the way back for it to work. Some people try expanding the hole with their pencil, but in doing so, their pencil lead touches the juice inside and they don’t want to drink it anymore.

There is always the little flap at the front that you can fold up and cut along the dotted like. The problem is a child who can’t read might not understand these instructions. And the Crayola scissors can only cut through construction paper, and even then they leave a rough and unprofessional edge. Besides, the spout would be too large for a child’s mouth and he would just spill the juice on his Ninja Turtles shirt and perhaps develop an aversion to juice.

There is also the danger of a cracked straw. This can be dangerous in different ways, as there are a variety of cracks. There is the side crack. This is the least dangerous because it simply makes the drinking process more difficult. Air comes in through the crack so the child must suck extra hard to attain juice. This could cause an asthma attack if the chid in question happened to have asthma. The pointy-end crack is also not dangerous, but frustrating. It makes the bottom scraps of juice unattainable as there is no proper suction due to the crack. This is a waste of precious and delicious McCain beverage. The dangerous crack is the even-end crack. A smart child will carefully examine the straw before use, but many children are preoccupied with trying to act cool despite their plastic Barbie lunchbox when all the other grade fours have trendy linen Velcro sacks. This straw can act like a crab claw and pinch the child’s tongue, causing a cut and perhaps some tears. This will make the child look like an even bigger loser.

The straw wrapper is almost as bad. The static electricity makes it cling to the child’s hand because she has been sitting on those orange plastic chairs all day. When she tries to throw it in the garbage, chances are she will miss. This is due to the static as well as the fact that the plastic is light-weight and flutters easily. The odds of the child picking up the wrapper are slim because most children are lazy. The janitor might miss it as it blends in with the floor and there the litter will sit for days! In a way this is better than the aluminium foil dot on the top of the juice box. Sometimes the foil is punctured out completely and falls into the juice. Who knows what health problem the juice box generation will encounter in the future.

Another problem with juice boxes is the fact that they come in a box. The corners are sharp and pointy and smuggle juice in the bottom that the straw cannot reach. This causes the child to create that horrid echoing slurp sound in the middle of class. Because juice boxes are not see-through the child can never accurately locate the remaining juice, elongating the slurping mode. Also, if one steps on the juice box it will explode. Sometimes a child might accidentally step on a backpack because there aren’t enough hooks in the winter. If the backpack was one of those cheap canvas ones the juice box would easily explode and destroy the child’s math book. Plus the child would be thirsty at lunch and have only his tears as a reminder of the delicate feel of liquid.

There have been a couple of attempts at solving the juice box problems during the past. There are reusable plastic containers with screw-on lids. These containers are cost-effective and environmentally friendly in the long-run, but they are dumb because they leak. The lid untightens slightly and Timmy’s gym clothes are stained red. These containers are also often difficult to drink from as they have flip-up spouts reminiscent of toddler drinking cups. Plus, after you are done the drink you have to carry the Tupperware home again, and if you did a craft that day you might not have room in your bag. Also, that means your parents have to wash the container every day, and it is difficult to wash because there is a narrow opening and you can’t get your hand inside to scrub. There was also the invention of the juice bag. They might as well have called it a barf bag because that’s what the idea makes me want to do. It does nothing to solve the straw issue – in fact; a bag of juice is more difficult to handle without a straw. It is just as fragile, and there is the added complexity of not being able to place the bag of juice on your desk. You either have to drink it all in one go, or be able to eat with one hand. If you were eating crackers for lunch and you had to put peanut butter on them that would be too difficult to do.

And another note of frustration: are juice boxes recyclable? Most say yes but some say no. It is never on the picture that people send to your house when they have a new recycling program. And sometimes at school we would put them in the yellow recycling bins but the janitors would pull them out and leave them there after taking everything else!

I think the best juice boxes are the square ones that are white and have the angled top – like a miniature milk carton. They have a higher quantity of juice, the juice is usually of a better quality, and they often attach convenient bendy straws instead of the cheap straight ones. But there was this one time in grade five that I brought one of those to school. I think it was called Fresh and Tasty and it was apple flavour. I was really thirsty that day but when I took a sip of my juice it tasted sour. Not fresh, and very tasty but not in a good way. I went to the back sink to dump the juice out. I didn’t just want to throw it in the garbage because the juice would have slowly leaked and then if someone threw out a pencil it might stab a hole in the garbage bag and the janitor would have to clean up the mess. As per the limited juice flow through the aluminium hole, I opened the spout to dispose of the liquid. The juice flowed out and was followed by a large chunk of rotten brown apple glob. I never drank Fresh and Tasty juice again. It was a bad lunch because I felt sick and was really thirsty. I would have just gone out into the hall and had a drink from the water fountain, but I had Mrs. McMahon that year.