Yes, I realize the title sounds like it belongs to the first runner-up in a “Worst Amateur Screenplay of the 80s” contest, or maybe a crossover sequel to “The Name of the Rose”, "The Kiss of the Spider Woman, and “Le Retour du Grand Blond Homme”
I was just writing something, and it occurred to me that a once-common style of change holder seems to have all but vanished, and I never learned its name. I’ve heard it called a ‘change purse’, but to me that always conjured up the image of a pocket-sized clasp-top bag or satchel.
The device I’m recalling is an oval, flexible plastic chamber, ~3" long, with a single slit along its long axis on one side (and usually two holes for a ball-chain keyring). It had no moving parts per se; when you pressed the ends together, the slit flexed open as a gaping mouth. They held over 20 coins, but only a scant few painstakingly folded and re-folded bills. That’s probably what killed them. They probably still exist, but I can’t recall when I last saw one.
They were ubiquitous in the 1960s and 70s. Kids like me used them for lunch money and allowances, and I presume that adult business(wo)men used them too, since they were often emblazoned with logos or slogans as promotional giveaways. Unlike many inexpensive giveaways or game/vending machine prizes, they were actually widely sold in their own right. A dark “don’t lose me” red seemed the default color in the 60s, ranging through the rainbow 70s to the boring “Your logo here” beige cream of the early Reaganomics 80s.
What were they properly called? I’d settle for evocative popular nicknames.
However, given how common they were, I’m surprised they didn’t have a any clever nicknames, even local ones. I think everyone played with them at some time (e.g. stupid ventrilloquism tricks ) and “play” tends to inspire nicknames. Or have I simply always been surrounded by -er- “the easily amused” while the rest of the world calls staple removers (etc.) by their proper names.
What did the “easily amused” in your life call them?
It may even have been a precursor of the whole wave of keychain gadgets, because [unlike so many keychain toys of the 1970s] it was something you’d routinely carry for its own sake, and the keychain was an afterthought. [If keys continue to grow less sharp-edged and destructive, our cell phones may become our keychains – for both electronic and mechanical keys]
You may be right. I don’t tend to favor the kind of ‘trinket’ souvenirs most of those stores stock. My idea of souvenir is something that has a memory or association with the place or my visit, but rarely has the place name printed on it.
However, I was thinking “all but disappeared” from use. I dug some out of the attic for my kids after seeing a VA patient use one for his “soda change” about ten years ago (coins were practical because several VA vending machines returned Susan B Anthony $1 coins). My kids, and their friends, spent half the summer discovering their properties and limits. It seems they’d never seen one before.
Then again, it took me years to convince them that when I was young, only rich people had TV remote controls, and even millionaires rarely had video recorders at home [U-Matic 1/2" tape decks - this was before VHS/Beta VCRs] Okay, to be fair, our parents did have primitive remote controls; they were called ‘kids’.