So what's the deal with soft drink cans?

[BigTex]

Have you noticed how thin the aluminum is? It takes very little to puncture a can, and what a mess that is.

[LibraryLady]

Reflects cost cutting measures, IMO.

I recall the time I ordered a root beer float and my thumb went through the side of the cup.

[dublusk]

because it is cheaper when it is thinner!

[Bob Of Burleson]

Aluminum beer cans were considerably stronger when they were introduced 50 years or so ago, and the way they opened was different, too. Instead of today's pop-top lid, you used your thumb to push a perforated part of the top into the container.

We once arrived at a party in Corpus Christi to find people gathered around our host as he contemplated his right hand, the thumb of which was firmly wedged in the top of a Coors aluminum beer can. If he tried to pull the thumb out, the sharp edges of the aperture threatened to cut him. And — just like in the Coors ads — the beer was Rocky Mountain frigid. His thumb was getting awfully cold.

In those days I carried a largish pocketknife, so I whipped it out and punctured the aluminum can to drain the beer. Then I cut off the bottom of the can to reach the bottom of the drinking hole and bent the edges back so that the host could extract his thumb.

He was grateful, but pointed out that I had wasted a full can of beer!

[BillB]

I remember the old tin beer cans you opened with a church key.
Crushing one with one hand was a strong man feat.

[BigTex]

Of course the cans are thinner to save money. Duh.

But I can't tell you how many cans have sprung a leak on me with the slightest of provocation. I've got DP all over the carpet of my car and all I did was put a couple of cans in a plastic shopping bag and set it down on the floor of the back seat.

[Benbrook Susie]

Beware using the perforations on 12-pack boxes.......

[Houston]

gotta make the cans thinner to save aluminum
the saved aluminum goes to Ford
Ford using this for the new F-150. not sure how this will work but Ford thinks they have a better idea.

[glenn/dallas]

At least its still 12 oz. cans, but it would not surprise me to see 11.5 oz any day now. Remember when coffee and sugar came in 1 lb packages.

[BigTex]

If you order soft drinks for a meeting from our catering department you will get 7.5 oz. cans.

[bodine]

And yet Alcoa shut down their Rockdale, Texas aluminum smelting plant a couple of years back. The public explanation was that the cost of electricity to run their furnaces was too high. Don't know what the real reason was...

[Mark]

gotta make the cans thinner to save aluminum
the saved aluminum goes to Ford
Ford using this for the new F-150. not sure how this will work but Ford thinks they have a better idea.

I don't think aluminum bodies with a V-6 will be a winning idea for pickups.