You asserted > It's not a cynical marketing ploy like you describe - it's functional. I believe the parent comment is saying that the closing-force varies clo

You asserted > It's not a cynical marketing ploy like you describe - it's functional. I believe the parent comment is saying that the closing-force varies closely with price; as price goes up, so does the force required to close it. While there may be a functional reason for some difference between opening-force and closing-force, you wouldn't expect that functional reason to result in that correlation so strongly, and that the majority of the difference in force at high price points is a cynical marketing ploy. (I'm not sure I buy that, it makes sense to me that a more expensive cooler has a thicker gasket to get a better seal.) Yeti is a well-known expensive brand of coolers.