by Lore Sjöberg

Round
I'm not sure what purpose these are intended to serve. Do people get in a lot of hole-punch accidents? Wouldn't a standard rectangular Band-Aid adhere better? My theory here is that as a result of playing with peg-and-hole toys between story time and snack time as toddlers, we as a culture now have a primal need to match up shapes, even in minor medical emergencies. If there were any reasonable way to get a flesh wound in the shape of a rhombus, we'd probably have rhomboid bandages in the variety pack as well. C

Fingertip
Nice to see the folks in R&D earning their stock options, but I remain unimpressed. I'm a tolerant man when it comes to first aid, but I think we've coddled our paper cuts for too long. There's only one proven way to get a Band-Aid to stay on your finger, and that's to wrap it so tightly that your fingertip turns the color of cranberry juice cocktail, thereby shifting your worries from infection to amputation. All the intricately-shaped specialty bandages in the world won't change that. C-

Small Rectangles
If your cut, burn, abrasion or pimple scab is to small that you can cover it up with one of these, you can probably safely ignore it. And if you're going for the sympathy ploy, which I suspect is where a hefty portion of the world Band-Aid flow goes, you may as well go for one of the big ones and score the maximum amount of concerned looks you can get without breaking out the gauze.B-

Big Rectangles
These are everything do-it-yourself medical treatment should be. They're sterile, easy to use, and they make loss of bodily fluids fun! Although in all fairness, I should say sterile or easy to use, but not both. I've never been able to get the hang of attaching the thing to my body using only the easy-peel backing; I either end up missing the laceration in question by a centimeter or so, or dropping the damn thing on the floor. I doubt that touching the sticky bit is going to end up inducing gangrene, but it's the principle of the thing. Band-Aids are as close as I'm likely to get to performing elective surgery, and I want to do it right. A-

Illustrated
While I understand the principles behind these ("Anything children touch must have merchandised cartoons on it"), I'm concerned about the psychological impact. Do we really want pain and blood loss associated with My Little Pony in children's minds? Do we really want to hand disaffected Lit majors yet another vivid metaphor with which to describe their disaffected childhoods? ("I looked down and saw Bert and Ernie covering my wound, just as so-called 'happiness' and 'togetherness' concealed the oozing pus of hypocrisy that I called my family.") It's just a little odd. C-