pull tabs

from my Pinterest board: REMEMBER WHEN

Remember these? The only way to get to the fizzy goodness of your favorite drink was to pull these tabs - thus the name PULL TABS.

Wikipedia tells us.... In 1959, Ermal Fraze devised a can-opening method that would come to dominate the canned beverage market. His invention was the "pull-tab". This eliminated the need for a separate opener tool by attaching an aluminum pull-ring lever with a rivet to a pre-scored wedge-shaped tab section of the can top. The ring was riveted to the center of the top, which created an elongated opening large enough that one hole simultaneously served to let the beverage flow out while air flowed in. Pull-tab cans, or the discarded tabs from them, were also called "pop-tops" colloquially. Into the 1970s, the pull-tab was widely popular, but its popularity came with a significant problem, as people would frequently discard the pull-tabs on the ground as litter or drop them into the can and risk choking on them.

The safety and litter problems were both eventually solved later in the 1970s with Daniel F. Cudzik's invention of the non-removing "Sta-Tab". The pull-ring was replaced with a stiff aluminum lever, and the removable tab was replaced with a pre-scored round tab that functioned similarly to the push-tab, but the raised blister was no longer needed, as the riveted lever would now do the job of pushing the tab open and into the interior of the can.

There's two things that I remember about these; 1) Most of the time the tabs were dropped into the can of soda because it was easier than finding a trash can or not wanting to litter, and 2) We used to make chains out of the tabs. We'd link one to another by inserting the tongue part into the ring of another tab and then folding the tongue over the ring.