Guess I’ve got beer on the mind today. So anywho, a few weeks ago we were helping dad clean out a bunch of possessions gathering dust at his place. He had several ‘junk drawers’. In one of these I counted no less than eight old church-key bottle/can openers. These were all at least 50 years old and featured lots of cool old school mostly defunct beer brands (e.g. Goebel, Drewery’s, Rhinelander) names on them. I asked him where he’d got so many and why he bothered to keep buying them if he already had several. Dad said “nobody BOUGHT church-key openers back then. They used to give them away for free at stores.”
Dad’s been known to make overly-sweeping generalizations now and then, but I also know he’s an extremely frugal person and in my observations, it would be rather unlikely even minor household funds would be expended in acquiring something the household already had. I do know that I have never encountered any stores in my lifetime giving away church keys for free, but figured I would pose the question to the older Dopers:
Were church-key openers commonly handed out for free at grocery stores before the introduction of pop top cans?
Church keys made in bulk were cheap and a lot more than beer use to need them. In the Navy our box lunches came with church keys even when there was nothing in them that needed one. I came home with a dozen of those easily. My guess is the Navy was running down a supply of church keys left over from an earlier time.
I know my Dad had some cheap ones from the 60s or before into the early 80s. At least 2 of them said either Reingold or Ballatine, I can’t remember which now.
Minor nitpick - the other end was for non-twist-of bottlecaps.
I was born in 60, so I wasn’t buying such things myself, but have a vague sense that churchkeys were just the kinda thing that “turned up” rather than being bought. And they never really wore out, so you tended to amass multiple ones. I’d imagine they were handed out at liquor stores and such as promotions.
Thinking back, my mom bought the groceries and dad always made a separate trip to the liquor store. Did groceries not sell booze back then?
Tangentially related - we were at Joshua Tree last week, and while touring an old homestead, I saw an old ring-style poptop on the ground. I asked my 29 yr-old dtr - she had no idea what it was! :smack:
ahhh…I have only vague memories, but fond ones… of family reunions in the early 1960’s.I was 6-8 years old.
Lots of relatives, lots of picnic tables, lots of hot dogs, lots of bottles of soda…and LOTS of churchkey bottle openers. I used to play with them, and had a wonderfully jolly and fat uncle who would help me open my bottle of chocolate flavored something.Then he’d hand me the opener and I’d take it with me. And then somebody would pick up a bottle and call out “hey,who’s got an opener”–and everybody nearby would hand him the nearest one.
Openers were plentiful. So I’m pretty sure they were free.
Probably given away at gas stations, too…Remember when gas stations had a “ringer”–a rubber hose laying on the ground ,so that as soon as your car entered the area, it ran over the hose which made a bell ring? And then the attendant would run* to your car. They would pump the gas, check your oil, wash your windshield, give you free maps and a toy for the kids and give you a free gift for yourself. I seem to remember churchkey openers with the logo of gas stations. Sinclair Gas used a logo with Dino the dinosaur, and I had lots of Dino toys, including-- I think–some bottle openers.
*(One brand of stations had a stopwatch sign, with a big arrow that started rotating at the moment of the ring, counting the seconds. If the attendant didn’t get to your car within 30 seconds, you won a free prize.)
Heck, I was at a beer/wine tasting late last year, and the beer companies were giving away openers. They just had the bottle cap remover, however.
I do remember rewatching The Graduate and being a little taken aback by Hoffman using a can opener on his beer while floating in the pool. I’m old enough to remember such cans, but really came of age in the ring-pull era (and had the sliced feet to show for it from carelessly discarded ones).
I came of age with ring-pulls, but there were still church keys everywhere. I remember using them to open cans of soda as a child.
Once everybody switched to stay-on tabs, these became the tool of choice for beer advertising. I must own 30 of those suckers.
My wife has several bottle-openers which had belonged to her grandparents; many of them have the name of a store (or a brand of beer) printed on them, which strongly suggests to me that they were give-aways.
To the OP: are they this kind of church key (which look to be stamped out of a flat metal plate), or this kind (which seem to be cast)? (We have a few of both designs.)
Even once beer cans switched to pull-tab openers (and, later, pop-tops), church keys were (and are) still useful for opening bottle caps. And, I remember my mom using the pointed end of the church key to open cans of Hawaiian Punch when I was a kid.
Dad’s church keys are all the first (stamped metal) type - with the can puncturing tool on one end and the bottle cap remover on the other end. I recall mom using the puncture end to open cans of Hi-C back in the day. I got an old Goebel church key from my parents years ago I use at our house to this day for opening cans of broth (using the puncture end) or beer bottles (using other end).
As a kid, we used the triangular end of that for opening the cans that beverages like Hawaiian Punch came in. You make a triangular opening to pour out of and a second one on the same end but on the opposite side, to allow in air.
I can’t begin to count the zillions of churchkeys that my younger hands held. Used on drink cans and bottles, sure, but also to open paint cans, or punch-out enough of the top of a food can to extract the contents, or short-out electric circuits and dangerously replace fuses, or open battery compartments when a coin wasn’t handy, or make Claws of Steel by taping them to fingers. I’m sure the (mis)applications were endless. Are they still used in various parts of the world?
I also recall doing the same thing to open cans of motor oil in that era. Preferably, one would then wash the church key (or use a different one) before opening another can of Hawaiian Punch. 
Regularly. I have one with a magnet stuck to my fridge, for opening beer bottles. My wife uses it for opening cans of broth when she’s cooking (on those occasions when she doesn’t buy the broth in boxes).
Didn’t they have a metal spout that you’d jam into the can top to open it? Yeah, at home you’d need a church key and a funnel.
We’ve got at least 1 of both kinds you linked to in one compartment of our silverware drawer. I think the “stamped” one is fancy, w/ a fold out corkscrew.
Show of hands - who had a car, on which they knew where you could open bottles in the door jamb?
I think I remember that. Later my father bought a gizmo that punched a hole in the oil can and also provided a spout to use to pour the oil.
They’re used in my part of the world, if you define that as my kitchen. I use mine for opening tomato sauce cans and for opening beer/hard cider bottles that either have crown caps–even the twist-off crown caps can be stubborn (and therefore painful). Mine is also handy for opening jars of home-canned food and to break the vacuum seal of some twist-off jar lids.
Yup, garages and gas stations likely had a resuable metal spout; if you had to add a quart to your own car, you might be stuck with the church key.
Where did you grow up? In many states it’s illegal for grocery stores to sell liquor. Some states, such as Pennsylvania have especially anal liquor laws.
I think church keys were the promotional flash drives, pens or stress balls of their day- I seem to remember there being a lot of promotional ones around as a kid in the mid-1970s.
That’s because then there were still a lot of bottled sodas and bottled beer, and stuff like Hi-C and (nasty) canned orange juice needed the pointy-end. But now, the Hi-C and orange juice come in boxes or plastic bottles, and sodas for the most part come in plastic bottles too, so church keys are something that aren’t nearly as commonly used as in years gone by.
Oh, and Cochrane, some states don’t let grocery stores sell hard liquor, so a moneymaking proposition has been to set up a liquor store next door to a supermarket in those states (like Texas).
Church-keys are not something people my age tend to have. Or know what they are. My husband knows what they are (I insist on keeping one on my refrigerator door) but has been arguing with me for 23 years about the name. To him and his family, it’s a bottle opener. He never heard the name church-key until I told him I needed one.
When I was growing up in Wisconsin, we used “bottle opener” for the stamped-metal ones, with a pointy end and a prybar end (often with a magnet), like the first image I linked to in post #7. The term “church key” was used less often, and I only remember hearing it specifically in reference to the cast version, which was vaguely shaped like an old-fashioned key (see the second image in post #7).