I remember those. I thought they would make great cowlings for large-ish radio-controlled airplanes.
I remember them, too! We used to bring empties to school so that the teacher could cut the bottles in half through the middle and pull off the plastic bases. We’d fill the bases with dirt and plant seeds in them, then turn the bottom of the bottle upside down over the dirt and push it into the base. It turned the whole thing into a kind of greenhouse.
They were certainly around long after the late 1970s in the UK. I was born in 1977 and Ithink the old-style pull tabs were a fixture for the first 8-10 years of my life. I remember thinking the new-style ones were a bit pointless cos if you were a litterbug you could still break the ring section off and toss it on the ground… 
Edit: I don’t think those “push button” tops were ever used here. I have never seen them before.
Those push buttons sucked. They were hard to punch and they still broke off half the time anyway.
The country is going through the same stuff that was a movement in the 70’s. Conserve energy, recycle and use more environmentally friendly products.
Pop cans were switching to aluminum cans at that time. They started switching from pull tabs about the same time they switched to aluminum cans. People would drop the pull tabs on the ground or on the beach and you’d end up with a sliced open toe or foot. Sometimes you needed stitches. The pull tabs were everywhere. I don’t think one kid didn’t end up with a bad cut at some point from the pull tabs. Pull tabs often broke off at the rivet area where the pull ring and tab joined. You had to try and open it with what you had at that point, which often resulted in a deeply sliced finger. One thing they could do to be more environmentally friendly without much trouble was to get rid of the pull tabs and it was a big hit with consumers. No more tabs to cut your feet and hands on.
Pain: getting the skin between one’s toes cut by a 1970’s style pull tab.
In the Bozeman, MT area in the late 1980’s, at least one of the bottlers (Coca-Cola, I think) had the little plastic cup on the bottom of the 16 oz. bottles, too. This was when they first switched to plastic bottles. My sister went on a field trip and got to see how those bottles were made.
I remember how fun it was to peel the styrofoam labels off the old 16 oz. non-returnable glass bottles. I would try to peel mine off in one thin continuous strand.
For pure can-top horror, remember the razor-sharp cans of pudding given to schoolchildren in their lunch boxes?
Heh, I learn something from here every day…I looked up “church key” and realized that it was what we just called a “can opener” (or “the punchy can opener” to distinguish it from the cranky can opener that you used to open cans of tuna/cat food/etc.) We used it in my childhood (the 1980s) to gain access to delicious Juicy Juice.
(To this day I am incensed by seeing plastic bottles of Juicy Juice. Punching a hole in the top of the big can and pouring it into a pitcher makes it taste better! Now get off my lawn, whippersnappers.)
There are plenty of Stay-tabs in Israel. I had a can of Diet Coke just last night with a stay-tab.
The same covers they had to lick, so as to not waste pudding stuck on the lid.
Friends of mine saved the rings because, as students at Pitt, they used them to jam parking meters. They would insert the ring into the quarter slot, and turn the handle. The ring would get jammed into the gears and disable the meter. Free parking until the meter was repaired. Then they would move their vehicle to a new meter and start over.
I’ve been encountering 1970’s-style pull tabs in parks here in the area north of Boston. The first time I found one, I figured it was bit of (sub)urban archaeology, and I’d found a sort of 1970s fossil, buried over 30 years ago, and uncovered by erosion so I could show my daughter MilliCal the way we used to live in the Olden Days.
Then I statrted finding more and more of them.
I’ve found so many of them that the “fossil pull tab” theory won’t wash anymore. Is there some drink that comes in a can with a classic pull-tab, or something? I can’t account for all these classic pull tabs any other way.
Hi-C from a can punched open with a church key just tastes right. I learned a quick lesson about pressure when I asked why it was best to have two holes.
Cliff Osmond, a name few people know, but a familiar face for many years, was the choker.
I have seen some cans with pull tabs occasionally. There is no federal law requiring they don’t use them. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few towns didn’t have laws against them. I didn’t pay attention to the cans with pull tabs, but I think they were imported energy drinks or such.
Pull-tops stopped being used here around 1988 or 1989 I reckon. I remember the statabs must have been introduced in the UK first. When we were up north we bought fizzy pop and didn’t know how to open the statab for about five minutes.
Super-cans (500ml of 7UP or Coke) died out around the same time.
Four words: Pop Top Chain Mail.
They changed from steel cans with pull-tabs to aluminum cans with pop-tabs, all at once, in 1992 or so. I think they passed a law or something.