Considering the endless amount of product packaging, as well as the care and attention that go into marketing, it is shocking how terrible some containers are. In the past, I vented about the wretched Costco milk jug redesign of 2007. Today, another dairy product comes under fire.

This time, the product has not been redesigned. To my knowledge, it has always been terrible; I have just never had to participate in its horridness until recently.

One of my favorite breakfasts is yogurt. It’s also one of my favorite snacks and, with honey and toasted walnuts, makes a tasty and healthful dessert. My brand of choice comes in little cylindrical containers which have tops that are wider than their bottoms. While I tend to buy the single-size ones for their exotic and delicious flavor options — including pear mangosteen — and the convenience of being able to tuck them into my messenger bag for those early class days, I will also buy the larger size of either vanilla or plain for my honey and walnut thing.

Last week, I ran out of pineapple passion fruit and pear mangosteen personal-sized yogurt, so I decided to buy a yogurt at Etc. in the HUB, and should you wonder what a mangosteen is after two name drops, it’s a tropical fruit that looks like a tennis ball-shaped eggplant filled with sweet, delicate, amazing white pulp that sort of resembles a curled-up maggot or a head of elephant garlic without the papery skin.

With recent excess of activity between work, home and school, I’ve had little time to go to the gym, so I was in the market for light or low-fat yogurt for my on-the-go breakfast. The only light yogurt at Etc. was a single brand in two flavors — by the way, what’s up with that limit on options, Etc.?

The flavor I picked was raspberry — acceptable in a pinch, though generally recognized by the layman and not tropical.

As it turns out, this yogurt had a severe problem. While it was creamy, smooth and mouthwateringly reminiscent of a warm day picking raspberries — I mean, they really nailed the raspberry flavor — I could not get past the container.

It was that brand — which shall remain nameless — that has the narrow top and wide base — what a failure of packaging. I would like to know whose idea that was.

The biodegradable HUB corn spoon barely fit into the narrow little top, and I was unable to run it along the top ridge to partake of the yogurt in the uppermost crevice. The narrow body of the yogurt carton made it difficult to get the delicious breakfast out, and once I managed to struggle the stuff into my mouth, I reached a new difficulty with getting the yogurt from the very bottom of the insipid plastic trap.

Sure, this is a very minor setback to an otherwise good day, and I am thankful that the poor design of yogurt containers is at the top of my list of complaints rather than a legitimate problem. But as a consumer of many things, I cannot fathom why this certain brand insists on putting its good product in a stupid little container.

Just as Costco milk pours — or dribbles, actually — with its new design, this yogurt challenged my morning more than my admittedly less tasty brand of choice, and after this experience, I shall never switch — nor even willingly venture — toward other options.

However, it has just occurred to me that the aluminum foil from the top of my beloved pear mangosteen yogurt seems to always tear off in pieces. From the first shred onward, opening a yogurt often degrades into a sticky and delicate affair, ending in a small pile of variously sized aluminum scraps covered in dairy and fruit.

I am unable to determine why these small yogurts need to be so challenging. The large size never presents this much trouble.

Reach columnist Matt Jackson at opinion@dailyuw.com.