I am on another forum dedicated to topics about camping and one thing that came up was that strike anywhere matches aren’t as good as they used to be. They are now difficult to strike, probably because of some nanny state conspiracy, etc. I wrote this off as nostalgia for the good old days that never were, but then I went out and bought a pack and I have to say that I agree that they don’t work as easily as they used to. Did something change in law or industry practice to make them so?
I had noticed that strike-anywhere matches have vanished from supermarkets, but you still see them in hardware and sporting goods stores.
Survival Tip: You can light a safety match without the special strip! Any match will flare if it gets hot enough, and with the right surface you can generate enough friction to ignite it. It has to be hard and rough enough to generate enough friction, but not so rough that it just scrapes the match head off. What works well is if you have a ceramic mug or bowl with an unglazed portion- usually the bottom rim where it sat in the kiln. I have tried this myself and can get it to work two times out of three, though I would very much hate to have to do it in the woods on a damp day.
The Diamond Brand red-with-white-tip strike anywhere matches were disappeared a year or so ago, have now been replaced by a smaller green tip, thinner stick version. Not nearly as good. They’re harder to ignite and the flimsy sticks break easily, which can be partially overcome by using them two at a time held tightly together. (I don’t know about Ohio Blue Tips, never bothered looking.)
The Googleverse told me that it is now illegal to ship the old tried and true good ones in the USA, because of the supposed fire hazard; the changeover is also a reaction to the use of the old-style heads in meth manufacture.
That’s what I read.
A few months ago I tried googling the old style red tip sa’s, and found them for sale on ebay at impossibly absurd prices.