April 17, 2004

The Bottom Line

I have been away from the States long enough to have forgotten if the tin cans are shaped in the same way that they are here. I remember that they are cylindrical, of course. However, as we were shopping tonight, I noticed that it is only canned fish (as we were buying both tuna and salmon) that has a rounded bottom. Other products seem to have bottoms identical to the tops.

This means that while tuna and salmon are easy to stack in the cupboard, mushroom soup, corn, peas, and beans are not. With these items, the only way to insure fairly stable stacking is to place concentrically larger cans below smaller ones - thus placing all the beans on top of all the corn.

The appeal of the rounded bottom seems obvious to me. Why most canned food companies have taken their lead from fashion designers and gone for the uncurved model, I don't know.

Like I said, perhaps there are more rounded bottoms in the States. Unfortunately, as I still haven't solved the problem with the comments feature, no one can let me know unless they email me directly.

Posted by david at April 17, 2004 11:42 PM | TrackBack
Comments