This blog is not so much a rant but a direct attack on the stickers that are, quite frankly, rubbish. You know the ones, they’re like the annoying kid on a rollercoaster ride: you try to peel them off but they don’t want to come off, so you keep tugging and in the end it’s just a whole big mess left over. The thing is I reckon we have ALL suffered as a result of this sticker debacle, so…you bloody adhesive residue pains in arses, this blog is for YOU. And YOU, rollercoaster kid, YOU ARE NEXT!

Note: This is not to say that there aren’t any good stickers out there, because there are. But just like the rotten apple that spoils the bunch, it’s always the worst stickers that we remember eh? And no I am not a bad sticker peeler, I can peel it with the best of them but I need something decent to work with dammit. None of that permanent superglue-sticker garbage.

Apples

Speaking of rotten apples, these cursed stickers even come to get us when we are merely trying to survive: Apple stickers, do we even need them? Why the HELL are they there? For me an apple is just an apple, disregarding the green and red varieties and level of crunch: do we really need to know whether the J&J Bros grew them? Do we tell ourselves “No! I sincerely refuse to purchase an apple from those scallywags the J&J’s and would much rather a fine apple from those chaps at O’Connor Fields…now THOSE are fine apples if ever there were any” while twirling our proverbial moustaches and enjoying a vintage cigar? I just want to eat it, not spend an absurd amount of time trying to peel the sticker off and getting rid of all the remnants in order to maintain a basic level of friggin’ hygiene.

Angry Rating:7/10

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Cars

Ah registration stickers…disgusting. You’d think that on a nice, smooth material such as a glass windscreen that the stickers would peel right off. But no. Not car rego stickers: you need to forcefully KEY the bastard off and then scrape away all that solidified crap so as to prevent yourself from obstructing your vision and being able to see those zebra crossings on a schoolday afternoon. At 3pm. Chances are not only will you never EVER get it all off and end up with a whole collection of dried sticker leftover residue for the entire lifetime of your vehicle, you will also have to remove Mr Lollipop-man splatter from the outside, depending on the severity of my exaggeration here. All in all, car rego adhesives are the worst of a bad bad bunch.

Angry Rating:10/10

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Games

Why are game stickers so bad? Nearly all of my games have sticker reminders on them, and it’s even worse on 360 cases because of the grooves on the corners and middle; hence the evil sticker’s ability to sabotage them by digging right in and starting a civilisation. As for the occasional stickers on the manuals…well.

On this note I must also expose another aspect of this sordid sticker trade: it may be best to stay as far away as possible from used/second-hand games: it seems as if these titles carry with them the worst stickers on the face of the planet: metallic, plastic barcoded, forged on and absolutely irremovable. It’s almost as if these stickers are trying to humiliate and stigmatise the “bargain (and, let’s face it, occasionally povvo)-shopper” with the permanence of the words “3 Day Hire” as in those Scarlet Letter days of old(e), granted without any Demi Moore in the mix never mind the adultery.

Angry Rating:9/10

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DVDs

Game and DVD cases are practically one and the same now, but here is another lovely specimen of a crappy sticker’s destructive properties. Thank YOU DVD store for placing your sticker on the INSIDE of the plastic sleeve DIRECTLY on the cover paper. No, seriously, thanks a lot. How else would I end up with the most wrecked cover out of anything I’ve EVER owned? At least the movie was surprisingly good but, man! Every time I decide to whack it on it’s a constant reminder to boycott that store/Tom Cruise movies, whichever comes first.

Angry Rating:10/10

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Books

There are certainties in life; 100% guarantees. For instance sunrise and sunset, oil doesn’t mix with water, Uwe Boll movies are always bad, so on and soforth. Another one of these certainties is that whenever you buy a book, there will always be a sticker on the back cover, maybe over the barcode, covering the book’s original recommended retail price. And chances are, this sticker will totally SUCK. Now depending on the quality of both the cover of the book and the sticker, you could very well make it a nice and clean peel. However if you are particularly unlucky and have, say, a book with a cover made of that brown recycled paper with bits of stick in them AND the sticker is one of those blood-sucking ones, then it’s going to be painful. And what are you reading on recycled brown paper anyway? Feminist poetry? Shame on you!

Angry Rating:6/10

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Beverages

Ok I admit this is petty and one must be quite bored to peel stickers off a beer bottle in the first place (isn’t there a song that mentions this? Sheryl Crow?) but come one, we’ve all done it. Right? Well I just did it to illustrate my point and, golly what a surprise, beer bottle stickers are utterly terrible as well. The bottle is going to end up in the bin afterwards anyway (unless you collect them, freak, although if you line them all up as makeshift wind instruments to play a song I must concede that that is kinda awesome) so maybe this blog was just an excuse for me to drink. Highly likely. Besides, after a rant like this I think I’ve earned one.

Angry Rating:N/A