3M Packing Tape
Available Here $4.50
Please excuse this short interruption from celebrating the lesser known and more interesting industrial products of the world, while I sing the praises of one of the largest multinational companies in the world, 3M.
I am making an important declaration on behalf of a fantastical store: The Hardware Store of My Dreams only carries 3M-branded adhesive products!
Life is short and there is nary a more painful way to waste it than scratching at a clear roll of packing tape, squinting to find its beginnings, then carefully trying to pry up the stuck edge of tape in its straight-entirety, stretching it onto a box and having it tear even more gruesomely seconds later, and knowing that you have 6 more boxes to tape and then carefully calculating the time wasted picking at the tape like a rat or driving to the hardware store down the street to buy some propper 3M branded tape.
As one who has and continues to dabble in the packing and wrapping arts, this previously detailed experience with clear packing tape is small beans compared to what can happen with a roll of generic dollar-store masking tape: using a knife blade to ever-so-carefully coax an inch and a half long ragged edge of disobedient tape off the roll, hoping to rejoin it in-whole with two other ragged edges, and then make a clean cut on the tape, smiling, thinking you have pulled all of the weeds out by the roots and seconds later it all comes crashing down again. Oh the trauma, oh the wasted lives!
Be it classic Scotch tape, blue painters tape, packaging tape, masking tape or even duck tape, The Hardware Store of My Dreams is going to force you to spend the extra dollar for the good stuff. There may be categories like blue painters tape where it might be neck in neck in terms of quality with some smaller, independent brand, but the truth is that nobody is ever going to significantly outperform 3M products, only match them.
As part of growing older and wiser is knowing when it's worth springing for the good stuff, isn't it nice to know that the hardware store of your and my dreams has already lost sleep, overthinking these things on your behalf, so that you are able to live a less stressful existence rich with well taped edges.