Yes I made a point to carefully observe the clear back side of the package and cut it with scissors, making sure not to damage the zipper.

Still, to make it worse, the zipper was apparently just barely glued onto the outer bag and peeled off the bag as soon as I opened it, ultimately still ruining the zipper, despite careful efforts not to.

Of course I ended up having to put the whole package into another zipper bag to keep it fresh…

🤦