May COM: Skotch Ice

This month's can is not a beer can, but you often find them with beer cans in dumps from the 1950s.

This little cans were made to freeze then place in coolers to help keep your beer (or sodas) cool longer than ice. They were sold by Hamilton with their coolers and were designed to prevent the mess melting ice could make in your cooler (soggy from from water from melting ice for example). They were made by The Hamilton Metal Products Company in Hamilton, Ohio.

Three cans and their accompanying four-pack holder from eBay.

Skotch Koolers

Hamilton Products made metal boxes such as cash boxes and fishing tackle boxes. Two brothers took over the company when their father died in 1945. Hamilton was not doing well and the brothers created new products to save the firm. A minnow bucket seemed like a natural fit with their tackle boxes, but that market was already established. They turned the bucket into a round cooler, but it ran into customer resistance as coolers were normally square or rectangular. Not giving up, they hired a professional designer who wrapped it in plaid which was a fad in the early 1950s, and added a leather handle and leather at the ends. It originally sold for $49.95 in exclusive stores as a luxury items. (that's over $400 in 2021 money). It sold, but not enough to keep the company afloat. However, making a less expensive copy of the same plaid design sold for $7.95 and it went like crazy! The company added other designs and kept going though the 1950s and into the 1960s, closing in the 1970s. (Their trademarks have since been reacquired). Their products were very popular, judging from the number of them you can find on eBay.

A Scotch Kooler advertisement from 1955.

 

Skotch Ice

The little cans made as an ice substitute were introduced in 1955. They were advertised as "A new dry-cold refrigerant, in cans, which freezes faster than water. For picnic, lunch box, travel and household use." It was a natural fit with their booming cooler business and four cans of Skotch Ice customers got in the package fit nicely in the smaller, hand-held round Skotch Coolers. You can still find the cans in dumps, generally along with 1950s cans, and they still have the liquid refrigerant in them. I do not know how long Hamilton sold them, but the ads for them are generally pre-1960.

From a 1955 ad in the Washington Star from Giant food.

 

Sources

"How Two Young Men Saved an Ailing Business" Changing Times: The Kiplinger Magazine (August 1953) 31-32.

Planet Retro Plaids (accessed 5/1/21)

Retro Planet Skotch Ice (accessed 5/1/21)