We bought a gravy boat. It came in a small box, and inside the box was sort of cut out to hold it in place. Fine.
This small box was wrapped in about 36ft of bubble wrap (I am guessing but am not exaggerating - was in 2 sheets and I think both were about 3x my height) and then put into another huge reinforced cardnoard box that was nailed shut - so I had to maul it with scissors to get it open, then unravel all the bubble wrap.
Now obviously I'd have been annoyed if the thing had been damaged in transit, but was there any need for that much packaging??
That said, I won't be buying bubble wrap for a fair while. In fact I may start my own small business selling lengths of it :)