Polybag

Direct marketing: polyethylene bag, heat sealed or open at one end, used to deliver one or more mailing pieces to an address. Polybags may be transparent or colorfully printed. They are the dominant carrier for card decks because of their low cost and attention-getting power, and usually have a tear strip at one end to open them easily.

Polybags have been used for many years by alternate delivery services, who hang polybags carrying several promotional pieces, publications, product samples, and/or catalogs on doorknobs, instead of leaving the material in mailboxes, which are reserved for the exclusive use of the U.S. Postal Service.

Because of regulations passed by the USPS in 1986, second-class mailers, such as magazines, can mail promotional material such as brochures, reply cards, and catalogs inside the same sealed polybag as the magazine and pay second-class postage on everything. These are commonly referred to as piggyback mailings, outserts, or ridealongs. One thing that cannot be mailed at second-class rates is a product sample, which must mail third-class. In early 1987, the USPS considers anything that could not conceivably be bound into the magazine a product sample; therefore, fragrance strips and paper-embedded cosmetic samples can usually qualify for second-class treatment, while a bar of soap cannot. Stricter regulations were being considered at the time of publication that would disallow anything not relevant to the contents of the magazine.

Merchandising: polybags are also used to package retail merchandise such as groceries, hardware, and garments.

A polybag is a plastic bag sealed around a periodical such as a magazine or a comic book. Originally used by publishers for the protection of subscription issues, polybags became more common in the 1990s as a way to add an extra incentive, such as a trading card, poster or CD, to the purchase. Polybagged magazines also often contain subscription offer cards, and more recently, advertisements.

During the "Speculator Boom" of the 1990s, comic book publishers began to bag many of their comics, usually with a "special cover" (i.e. glow-in-the-dark, embossed) or with a collectible incentive inside. Fans had to choose between either reading the comic book or keeping it in pristine condition for potential financial gain, or doing both by buying two copies.

In addition to holding subscription offer cards and advertisements, some comic books and magazines are mailed or displayed in polybags which partially or completely obscure the cover, often with just the title and the cover price visible. This is often done for comic books and magazines which feature adult or pornographic content, either to comply with local laws or store owner policies about displaying such content, or to prevent customers from opening and reading them in the store, or at least before paying for them (if purchased at a newsstand or store), or to protect the subscriber's privacy if the comic book or magazine is delivered by mail.

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