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Misleading Package Size: Difference between revisions
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=== [[Real Life]] ===
[[Image:Eprom.jpg|thumb|An early computer memory chip (Intel 1702A). The actual circuit is just the tiny square behind the window.]]
* Tends to be used by children when they need to make a surprise, in order to make the other child think they got a huge gift. Alternatively, they just got lazy/bored and put a small box in a shoebox.
* A lot of companies do this out of either false
** This is a common problem with food packaging; there are supposedly legal limits to the use of "headroom" for packages like cereal boxes, but loopholes let manufacturers continue to get away with a little more if they hide behind "contents may settle during handling" or other spurious disclaimers.
** Another food package which is prone to misuse is the air-tight plastic bag which has been "inflated" during the packaging process. Half a bag of crisps, half a bag of air. The factory insists that it needs to be air-tight to keep the product fresh, but the end result is that it becomes more difficult to estimate how many chips/crisps or candy pieces are actually in the bag.
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* When CDs were first sold they came in boxes 3-4 times bigger than the disk. This was meant to help prevent shoplifting.
** This one has been zigzagging, with "normal" CD cases (5mm thick with often a booklet), shrinking to thin CD cases (half the thickness, never a booklet), and growing back to DVD cases (width, height, and half the thickness of a VHS).
* Integrated circuit "chips" are often manufactured in multiple forms where two or three different versions of the part have the same circuitry inside, but are widely different in physical size. This usually includes one or two tiny form factors (some version of surface-mount or ball-grid array) intended for products assembled by automated machines, and a larger version of the same part (sometimes with the connections all spaced 1/10th or 1/20th of an inch apart) which is large enough to be soldered to a circuit board by hand. This "package" is a permanent part of the component.
** These parts are then subject to further packaging into reels, tubes, trays, boxes for distribution – with that intermediate packaging discarded when the chips are soldered to the board.
** That plastic anti-static tube full of small computer chips will then be placed in a small antistatic bag or two, then placed into padding or bubble wrap for shipping, then placed into a cardboard box... largely for protection from static electricity or mechanical damage, but even the tiniest speck of a component attracts many times its own weight in packaging material. Order one resistor (which in surface-mount is commonly 0.080" x 0.050" or smaller) and see how much extra packaging is placed around it before the part actually gets shipped. :)
* Some parents will often package something small in a much larger box during a gift-giving holiday to tease them.
** This makes sense if the form factor would otherwise make the contents obvious... such as a printed book, a vinyl LP or an audio/video cassette. A gift wrapping which follows exactly the outline of a distinctive object (be it a violin or an iron anvil) might be amusing for fictional dramatic purposes, but would be a dead giveaway of the contents in real life.
== Smaller case or misleading shape examples ==
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* A commercial once had a woman unwrap a package the shape of a tennis racket to reveal an armchair inside.
=== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ===
* ''[[Dragon Ball]]'': anything from the Capsule Corporation (vehicles, appliances, houses, ect.) collapses down for storage in a capsule no bigger than a person's finger.
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