People Are Injuring Themselves While Trying to Open Talenti Gelato

Attempting to open a lid of Talenti Gelato can be quite the Sisyphean task—it's an ordeal that some aggrieved customers have called "annoying as shit."

If you’ve never experienced this firsthand, count your blessings. Those brown lids are soldered so tightly to the plastic jars that they’re highly resistant to brute strength, as well as tried-and-true methods such as loosening a jar in hot water. The struggle is driving customers to extremes. We’re talking shears. Wrenches. Knives. Pliers. This is where food hacks stop being polite and start getting real.

It’s been five months since Mic reported that Talenti might have something of a problem on its hands after numerous reports of maddeningly stubborn lids began circulating on Reddit and Twitter. ("I can't open my jar of Talenti gelato," hurryupand_wait announced on Reddit last summer. "This is so frustrating. My hands hurt.") Talenti issued a statement to Mic claiming that the culprit was an “over-zealous lid-tightening machine” that the company fixed after seeing the flood complaints that came its way.

Folks, I’m sorry to report that it seems that Talenti Gelato still has a problem.

As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, Talenti’s lids continue to put customers at risk of sawing off a vital limb—all in innocent pursuit of dessert!

”A difficult Talenti-opening session can last hours, propelling ice-cream lovers through emotional swings,” the Journal notes. This issue has prompted frantic, starving customers to shift into “MacGyver mode” when trying to open the jar.

Even though Talenti claimed to have addressed this apparent design flaw last summer, the concerns have only gotten louder on Twitter, as the Journal notes, with the company receiving more complaints on the platform in the last two weeks of January than in the last two weeks of October.

Consider the hardships of one Talenti customer quoted in the Journal. She practices Muay Thai, but that apparently didn't make any difference; she injured her palms after hours of trying and failing to unscrew the lid of her dessert. Growing hungry and desperate, she decided to stab a knife directly into the lid and make an orifice herself, resealing the lid with packing tape. Another customer allegedly threw the jar at her sink after hours of being unable to open it. The lid opened the second the container hit the sink.

Talenti did not respond to immediate request for comment from MUNCHIES on Monday regarding what it makes of this recent stream of complaints. The company did feed the Journal the same line it issued to Mic last summer, reminding the Journal that Talenti had been dealing with an “over-zealous lid-tightening machine” that had been fixed. “As new pints hit store shelves, there will be fewer and fewer pints with tight lids out there,” a company spokeswoman told the Journal, implying there are some stray fault products populating frozen aisles.

Ah, how I dream of a world with more accessible Talenti lids. We don't live in that world just yet. If you're one of the unlucky few who does end up with one of these obstinate lids, better bust out those Channellock pliers!