What on earth?
i jsut got a huge pile of shopping, and i was stunned by how many types of can are unstackable.
by unstackable i mean that another can of the same product cant neatly stand on top of another,
they just slide off.
maybe it’s just a uk thing.
the following did not stack.
heinz anything ( soup, beans, ravioli(sp?))
tuna( small cans only, large cans were fine.)
baxters soups
kidney beans ( large and small cans )
What’s the deal? why make cans so they cant be stacked? I’m sure that about 5 years ago i didn’t have this problem, then one day nothing was stackable. It cant cost much to make them stackable, and surely it makes more sense to make them stackable for use in shops and stuff, ( i know they’re in cardboard boxes, but you might want to stack them anyway)
Only thing i can think of:
the companys want you to only stack their product in a pyramid like they do in all the american films, to make them look good. They dont want you stacking them straight up and down 'cos that makes them look cheap?
Well in Canada you get some stackable and some un-stackable.
The stackable cans (Campbells soud as an example) have a rounded edge on the bottom of them that fit into the top of another can.
It works like a hot damn, I can’t see this adding anything to the price of fabrication for a frick’n soup tin! SO I have no idea why they don’t all do it.
I’m guesing that it’s a product liability thing. If they make their cans stackable by design, then you make a stack 20 cans high and your kid runs into the stack and hurts himself when the top can falls on his head, then they run the risk of being considered liable. If their cans aren’t stackable by design, they’re in better shape lawsuit-wise, as its more easily argued that you misused their product.
Cans can be made two ways: wrap a cylinder and add top and bottom: these are easier to make if symmetrical (non-stackable as you put it) although one of the ends could be made a bit smaller.
The other way to make a can is extrude the body in one piece and add the top. This makes it very easy to make the bottom a bit smaller.
In my experience, shallow cans, like tuna, are more likely to be extruded than deeper cans like soup.
As a long-time drugstore employee, this is probably my number one product-related pet peeve.
I think the main reason that companies avoid doing this is cost. As sailor said, it seems to be much cheaper to just make a simple cylinder.
Typically, the larger main brands of food (Campbell’s, for example) will stack neatly. The cheaper brands will not. The worst example of this is Hunt’s Tomato Sauce, whose cans are extremely small and non-stackable.
In my experience the European can market is more demanding and requires higher level of product. In the US you find fewer extruded cans and a tiny fraction of easy-open (tab) cans compared to Europe. I have also seen cylindrical built cans with one end smaller to make them stackable, which I have not seen in the US.
In this type of food product in the USA price is the main factor for competition while Europeans seem to be willing to pay a bit more for convenience. The same thing happens in the sift drink market which in the USA uses syrup instead of sugar in order to cut costs but not in Europe.
Round-bottomed cans are a fairly new invention. And as Sailor points out, the mechanics of making one can type is way different from those of making the other type.
My guess is that there are zillions of perfectly good cylinder-style can-making machines still out there doing fine. I would also guess that said machine cost a pretty penny in the first place, and a new-style replacement machine would cost another pretty penny in the second place. So why get a new machine if the old one still works? (I know, I know, greyseal. But the stockboy lobby just doesn’t have the clout it did when ol’ man Hoffa was alive.)
IIRC, Cecil did a column way back about why condensed milk comes in those funny, lipless cans. Turns out that the plant was tooled that way from – I don’t know – the Cooledge administration or something. Since everything still worked fine there was no reason to switch to a modern can design.