Food containers- stickers or printed?

[GrahamB]

I was checking the parts in Supermarket 3200 today. In our set, there are 16 different food containers (jars, flat tins, cans, drinks cartons, bottles with handles, tubes). They all have stickers.

When I checked the PDF plan at playmobil, it showed all these parts already stickered (in my instructions, it shows how to apply the stickers) and a different (smaller) sticker sheet as part of the instructions. Checking the part numbers (all 30 89 nnnn, showing they are not simple parts, they are made up of sub-parts) from the PDF back at PlaymoDB, I found quite a few sets have these food containers in (though the DB does not include these parts for 3200).
PlaymoDB Sets with at least one 30 89 nnnn food container part

Does anyone know whether these parts are supplied with stickers attached, or are the labels printed on? If stickered, there must either be a sophisticated machine to apply them, or lots of sticky-fingered out-workers!

[tahra]

I opened the supermarket recently - the stickers were not applied.

[playmofire]

I was helping my great-niece recently with a set with food containers in and stickers had to be attached.

[sbblabotw]

I don't have 3200 inventoried properly: there are two versions really (one with pre-stickered containers, one with stickers supplied separately) and I've only included the unstickered containers in my inventory. I've shown both sets of instructions, though, and the stickers included in each set - one with all the food labels (30 89 0282, "Stickers for 3200 (signs, containers)"), one without (30 89 5022, "Stickers for Supermarket (updated)" ).

I've rarely seen a food container (or similar such as cream tubes or shampoo bottles) with a printed label: they seem to be either pre-stickered, with "30 89" numbers as Graham has found, or supplied in sets with stickers to apply. Printed parts have numbers starting with "30 6". I don't have a good mechanism for keeping track of what-stickers-go-on-what in the database:  anyone want to do some detective work in that regard?

I've also discovered that there are two sizes of jar, and I've got them named the same - I will fix that! The lids fit both, fortunately.

[GrahamB]

Thanks for those replies. I have never seen a food container with a pre-applied sticker, so my experience accords with yours, tahra and playmofire.

Heather- I had come to the same conclusion as you, that there are two versions of this set. The later instructions show the 30 89 nnnn containers with the stickers (not printing- my mistake for suggesting that) already in place.

So next question- has anyone opened one of the sets I listed and found the parts pre-stickered?

7777, 4178 or 4857 would be good ones to check as they each have many of the 17 parts in question (numbers 30 89 5052 to 30 89 5202 oh, and 30 89 5272 I just discovered, there are probably others).

I'm interested in this not just out of my normal obsessional interest in all things PM, but because it might shed light on some of the working practices used to create our favorite toy:

Am I correct in thinking that Geobra uses outworkers who bag up the bits prior to the sets being packaged, each box containing a number of pre-packed bags? If that is so, then for a set like 6872 (two light blue tubes with stickers 30 89 5132) it might not be a lot of work for the outworkers to affix the stickers. But with set 7777 (33 stickers on 16 different types of food container), this becomes a lot more time consuming.

So are we looking at a clever mechanical machine to do this job, or human labour? There are no stickers in these sets for the end user (read: parent, Christmas Eve) to apply.

[GrahamB]

Update: I ordered six of the 3089nnnn food container parts from DS and they came with the stickers in place. Looking carefully at how they have been applied (and having done quite a few of these myself!), I believe they have been applied by hand not machine.


Firstly, the stickers were not all started on the same face of the plastic part (the photo shows the overlapping end of the sticker in all 6 cases). This could happen with a machine because (some of) those plastic parts are square in section and it would not matter which face the sticker was applied to first.
Secondly, the sticker is higher up the part in some cases and lower in others. Again this could be caused by machines with different settings.
Thirdly, one of the stickers is not even straight (on the right hand, green container).

If these had been applied by machine, I should have thought there would have been greater accuracy and consistency. So until someone can tell me different, I believe PM are using human labour to apply the stickers.

But why? PM sets almost all come with some final assembly to be done by the end-user, often with stickers to be applied, so why make an exception for these parts? It cannot be cheaper, surely?

The only reason for using pre-stickered parts I can think of is that it saves having to include instructions on how and where to apply the stickers, as in the reissued instructions for set 3200. For a small set which otherwise needs no instruction sheet, this might make sense, but I shouldn't think it happens very often.

[StJohn]

Thanks for the detective work, GrahamB! I guess you're right this is done by hand. Baffling, but somehow understandable in the quirky way of doing things at Geobra. I wonder whether Maltese pre-schoolers or little Franconians are forced to do the job.

Best wishes
StJohn