Crisper Sleeve Chaos

Hot Pockets had a lot going for them. They were delicious, they were easy to make, and, most importantly, they had the Crisper Sleeve. The Sleeve was easily one of the more influential inventions of the 20th Century, and should have earned them the Nobel Prize for Microwavable Food Technology (they were edged out by those EasyMac bowls). The Sleeve was straightforward to use, and was essential for a delicious Hot Pocket meal; if you didn't use the Sleeve, your Pocket would come out all soggy and gross. I don't know how the Sleeve actually worked, or made a difference, but it did. It made life a little better, if only for a few fleeting moments.

Then they changed everything. Someone over at Hot Pocket decided to be cute and "revamp" the Sleeve. Hot Pocket took what could be called the "simple, white" sleeve (remiscent of an Apple design, if they designed microwavable cooking tools) and decked it out with perferation, bold colors, and instructions that stink. Now, instead of just shoving the pocket into the sleeve, heating it up, and eating it, you are expected to tear things, fold other things, and insert one piece of cardboard into another. It's lunacy!

First, you insert the Hot Pocket into the now-red sleeve. If you have purchased one of the 30-some Hot Pocket varieties that are relatively meaty, like the sausage and pepperoni, it might take some work to actually shove this thing into the sleeve. For some reason, the designers at Hot Pocket thought the sleeve needs to be able to split in half, so that while holding it, you don't have to push the Hot Pocket through the sleeve, but rather you can just destroy the cardboard. A lame idea to begin with, but when shoving one of the meatier Hot Pockets inside, the perforation breaks and the sleeve is ruined before even being microwaved!

Then, after you've finishing nuking it, you are expected to perform origamic surgery on the bottom half of the sleeve. You have to fold the top portion and insert this small tab into a slit on the bottom half. By doing so, you have created a true "pocket" so that the Hot Pocket doesn't slip through, or so that boiling grease doesn't shoot out the tail-end of the pouch and burn your hands. It sounds like a novel idea, but it almost never works. They might as well have put a button or zipper on the bottom to make it hold together.

All in all, this new crisper sleeve is a disaster. In fact, now I'm out there looking for old boxes of Hot Pockets, just to get the good sleeves back. Had I known this change was going to occur, I would have figured out a way to reuse the sleeve (something the instructions beg you not to do). Years ago my brother found a Hot Pocket crisper sleeve on sale on eBay for $500. At the time we thought the seller was crazy... but apparently, he knew something we didn't.