Yesterday, for the first time in a couple of years, I bought a box of Tic-Tacs. One of the first things I noticed was that the Tic-Tac container was made of much thinner clear plastic than in the past. The old man in me thought “they sure don’t make things like they used to” at first, but then I wondered why the container needed to be so thick to begin with. Tic-Tac boxes certainly weren’t designed to be returnable or repurposed.
I wonder why, in the past, so many throwaway containers and items were overbuilt. Metal Band-Aid tins have evolved into thin cardboard boxes. Condiments that used to be sold in thick glass bottles are now in thinner plastic bottles. Many consumer goods used to be shipped in wooden crates, where today corrugated cardboard boxes are used. Throwaway pop and beer cans used to be made out of thick steel, where today they’re tin aluminum. Before I was born, many baked goods such as cookies and crackers were sold in metal tins, where today cardboard or celluloid packages are used. Regardless of a nostalgic “they built things better back then” sentiment, throwaway containers and goods of the past seemed even more wasteful than their less durable equivalents today.
So, why were throwaway containers of the past built so much more ruggedly compared to today?
Just a WAG but I’m guessing we didn’t have the technology to produce low-cost cardboard boxes and plastics were just a twinkle in some scientist’s eye when consumer goods were packaged in wooden crates.
I agree. And even if the technology for cheap plastic or cardboard packaging was available, it may have not been worthwhile for firms to upgrade their machines immediately.
Another thing to remember is that items in the past were probably more directly recycle. I imagine those thick glass ketchup jars and wooden crates were used time and time again. It’s likely that consumer chose cookies that can in containers they could use in the household when the cookies were gone. Now we have so much stuff that we don’t hold on to things like old containers.
Another factor is the public’s reluctance to accepting less-than-heavy-duty packaging. Do you remember the first time you encountered a plastic bag at the supermarket? I remember having serious doubts about its ability to hold groceries without ripping. And I remember the feeling of nostalgia when Band-Aids went from a metal box to cardboard . . . not to mention the demise of that little red thread.
Many of those sturdier containers were designed for reuse.
While Band-Aids came in a metal container, you could also buy them without the container, as refill packages. And my Mother’s cupboard still has metal cracker containers; each time we buy a cardboard container of crackers we open it and put the sleeves of crackers into the metal container.
Part of it is that there have been advancements in packaging materials, so that the manufacturers know now how, for example, to make a plastic container to hold juice that’s thinner without breaking excessively. And there’s also a realization that the lighter the container, the cheaper the container and the lower the shipping cost. Also, I see some products coming in rectangular jars when they used to come in round ones, because they can fit more of the rectangular jars in a smaller box.
In a lot of places I’ve been to, beer bottles often have a distinctive white ring where the body and neck of the bottle meet. They’ve obviously been refilled many, many times.
Things break. They break all the time. They break in manufacturing, they break in shipping, they break when they’re put out on store shelves, they break while being taken home, they break when being used. They break at the worst, most awkward times.
Anybody else here old enough to remember when eyeglasses used actual glass instead of unbreakable plastic? You had to worry about your glasses falling. ALL THE TIME. Because they broke.
Consumers hated having things break on them. Stores hated it, distributors hated it, shippers hated it, manufacturers hated it. So they made things that would break as seldom as possible while trying to balance off the cost of making them unbreakable. Things were made as thick as necessary and out of as strong materials as possible.
Plastics used to be hated because they were perceived as cheap crap. Part of that was because plastics often were cheap crap. Manufacturing techniques simply weren’t as good. The technology of plastics has advanced as tremendously as the technology of computers, but nobody thinks of it that way. But people also compared the thinness and lightness of plastic with the heftiness of metal and assumed that one couldn’t be as good as the other. Today they’re right. Metal can’t be as good.
I think Dewey Finn is on the right track. What has changed this more than anything, I think, is improved quantification of exactly how heavy or sturdy packaging has to be to perform satisfactorily. This is a mixed blessing. On the upside, the more efficiently we allocate expense to performing tasks without waste, the more utility we get for our money. On the downside, it seems part of a bigger trend of manufacturing research going into cheapening products while improving their convenience for the manufacturer and the people with which the manufacturer is in most frequent communication. My big garbage cans, for instance, represent amazing advances in making the plastic thin and making them nest closely for shipping to stores, and the design keeps advancing - which I get to observe frequently because I have to replace them so often when they tear. I grew up utterly unprepared for garbage cans that tear.
I recall when I was a kid you’d get a small jar of jelly and it was in a real glass, that when you were done with the jelly, you had a glass. Not a jar that could be used as a glass, but a jar that looked just like a glass you’d buy.
things used to feel more “heavy duty” because it’s a result of older manufacturing processes and materials.
look at, say, the engine block of a car. people think that engines used to “last forever” because they were big heavy lumps of cast iron, but the reality is that they were big heavy lumps because that’s all they knew how to cast back then- at least cost-effectively. not to mention that the engines back then just didn’t last very long at all. The iron used then was comparatively “soft” and didn’t wear very well; you were lucky if the car made 75,000 miles before the cylinders were tapered and the valve guides and seats wore out. People think old engines last longer because classic cars are still around; but they don’t realize that the engines in most of those cars have been rebuilt/re-machined at least once already.
Modern engines- even the thin-wall, high-pressure die-cast aluminum ones- simply last a lot longer than the ones in old cars. people have an expectation these days that an engine should go at least 200,000 miles trouble free. that was unheard of even 30 years ago (at leat with gas engines.)
Yes, I’m that old. What’s more, I remember how very thick the edges of my lenses were, because of the strength of my prescription. Today, my lenses are about a quarter of the thickness that they used to be.
Yeah, we had a collection of those glasses, too. And laundry detergents used to have bonuses in them, like drinking glasses. I used to save the big glass jars that peanut butter came in, and reuse them for other purposes. I STILL save glass jars, and my husband mocks my habits…until he finds himself in need of several small jars. Then I point out how much they’d cost to buy, and I pull out a couple of them from my stash.
However, my grandparents had lived through the Depression as young adults, and I lived with them for a couple of years when I was in my teens. And from them, I learned the value of saving bits of string, and empty glass jars, and how to use newspaper for cleaning before tossing it. My grandfather used to cut plastic bleach bottles to make tubs or scoops, for instance. I learned how to be a little creative in saving things, which in turn saves money. And I still re-use things. This Xmas, for instance, several presents were wrapped in either drawstring fabric bags from several years ago, or in gift boxes that I had covered in wrapping paper (again, several years ago). Some gifts were wrapped in new wrapping paper, but not all.
I never throw away the canisters or tins that some things come in, either. Either I use them for storage, or I fill them with gifts and pass them along.
I think that there are lots of reasons, some of which are detailed above.
Package strength: Technology has improved over the years, thus thin plastic is pretty much as good as thick glass. And it doesn’t shatter. Bonus.
Cost: As technology improves, the newer packaging materials become more cost effective.
Gas: Plastic is lighter than glass. Back in the 1950s this didn’t matter much when it came to shipping since gas was about 25 cents a gallon. When gas went over 2 dollars a gallon, it became a huge issue. As fuel costs continue to increase, the weight of packaging materials become an even bigger issue. Plus most manufacturers used to have multiple factories producing products across the country. As time went on, many manufacturing sites closed, making shipping costs more critical. Add in the fact that distribution centers for most big retailers and manufacturers are not cheap to maintain, so companies are looking to have fewer and fewer distribution centers. Thus shipping costs become more critical.
There are also things about the pallets and pallet arrangements used that are driving package size, shape, and design. Using a certain design can get more packages onto a truck in a way that there is less chance of breakage and is cheaper to do.
Yes, I work for a consumer packaged goods company.
Everything everyone has written makes a lot of sense to me. But the Band-Aids examples blows them all away. The era of metal Band-Aid boxes overlaps the era of cardboard breakfast cereal boxes by decades. How is it that they had the technology for paper cereal boxes for so long, but not for band-aid boxes?
The person who mentioned the metal Band-Aid brand bandage containers also mentioned non-metallic (presumably cardboard or paperboard) refill containers. So there’s no question of the technology not being available.
I wonder if it also has to do with the price of packaging as a ratio of the price of the product. Any one have any idea how much Band-Aids cost in 1964 in today’s dollars, and how much they cost today in today’s dollars?
Consumer prices generally have come down, especially for non-consumables. If there’s a relationship in the packaging ratio, then it would stand to reason that the package price would also have to come down. I’d say that for that I’d expect to pay more for a nice, Band-Aid sized metal box these days than for a small quantity of self-adhesive bandages.
The other thing about eyeglass lenses is that some/all of the plastic materials used have higher index of refraction than glass, so they can be thinner than glass lenses for the same correction.
You can still get that jam in those glasses, sold by Welch’s. Most people don’t buy that brand though because the quality of jam is pretty crappy for the price and it only comes in 2 flavors and only in the small jar.
I wouldn’t be too sentimental. Its quite obviously a ploy to get people to buy the smaller size (higher profit margin) product over the more economical large size. Welch’s isn’t running a charity, you know.
On a personal note ever since they changed the design of the glass to make the mouth narrower than the base, its dead to me. That happened in about 1994.
Here’s a Mad Man-era Band-Aid tin for sale on eBay. The auction says the tin is from the 1950s, but the graphics look like 1960. The price printed on the tin is 69¢. If the tin is from 1960, adjusted for inflation, it would be $4.94 in 2009 dollars;
The packaging controversy I remember best is: coffee cans. There was a major, major uproar when Folger’s coffee announced that they were switching from metal cans to plastic canisters. Folger’s coffee cans had dozens, maybe hundreds, of household uses. Folks my age almost certainly remember that Mom had a coffee can near the stove where she poured the used grease. And Granddad would say, “I don’t trust banks. My money’s buried in a coffee can in the yard.”
Plastic lenses for glasses were a godsend for kids with horrible vision, like me: glass lenses for my prescription were so heavy that my glasses left painful red marks on my nose every day.