I woke up this morning, fed the dog, got my wife off to her teaching job, and drove my 17-year-old daughter to school. Time for breakfast — some toast, coffee, and granola covered in yogurt. I had finished off a pouch of granola yesterday, so I grabbed a new one. Here’s where the fun began. I located the tear notch and started tearing. The package ripped about 40% across and stopped. I switched to the other side of the notch and tore again — another 40% and it stopped. Upon closer inspection, the material did not delaminate. That is the usual culprit when interlaminar bond strength is too weak and the print web separates from the sealant layer. In this case, the film simply was not designed to support a reliable linear tear. As soon as the tear passed the side weld, it immediately veered upward at a ~45° angle. Compounding the problem was the top seal: it was a classic ghost seal — it looked sealed, but in many areas the seal was nonexistent or extremely weak. A stronger, consistent top seal might have kept the tear propagating linearly along the bottom edge of the seal. The foolproof solution is laser scoring between the notches. But if that is not available from your converter, you must fix the material and process issues. All these problems could have been prevented with some very basic quality tests at both the film converter and the packer.