Old Antique Toys: Tin Biscuit Containers

Saturday, January 26, 2013
(only -20 C or -4 F !)

Tin Biscuit Containers

http://www.morphyauctions.com

(Please click on the adbove address to be redirected to the Morphy Auctions Site)

Background

I remember several things about the tin biscuit or cookie containers. Up here in canada the Christie Brown Company would have tin containers for their soda crackers. And of course, who can forget the Danish butter cookies that are still around even today. I think you can even get them at IKEA. I never could figure out why a company would spend what I thought was a lot of money to provide a tin can for crackers or cookies. However, as it turns out (from Wikipedia), the ideas was to keep the contents of the container fresh. The British perfected the process of tinning or plating sheets of thin steel with tin. The main idea for this was to keep the steel from rusting. By 1850 the British were the world's largest supplier of the product. Eventually, the idea came to food companies for 2 reasons. The first, as I mentioned before was for freshness,while the second reason was for sales and promotion.

Of course, most of us threw out the tin cans, although a few times in my lifetime my mother kept sewing items in a Danish butter cookie container, ad I kept nails. And I'm sure most people have gone to a garage sale (yard sale for American readers) and found a decorative tin can while looking inside at the contents.

The idea of checking out the topic of tin cans just came into my head as I was searching for something else. However, little did I realize that companies way back used to make exquisite and alluring container for young children. Today, you can still find these items for sale, but they don't come with the soda crackers or the biscuits. You find them in novelty stores.

When I went to my favourite site for looking for toy photos - Liveauctioneer, I did a search for " "biscuit tin", and found close to 400 sold items through Dan Morphy Auctions and Bertoia Auctions. I thought that I'd use both of these great company photos today, but I found the 15 samples today just from Dan Morphy Auctions. So I kept today's post solely with Dan Morphy. Next time, it'll be Bertoia Auctions.