Whatever Happened to the Pocket Tin? (w/ pictures!)

These days, the conceal carry holster gets in the way. :nana:

My leather pouch is much more comfortable and less bulky. Plus If I pack only a bowl or two for the day it's smaller than if I filled it to the max or about 10 bowls. Tin doesn't do that, but they are really cool to look at.

It doesn't look very pocket friendly, I guess it just fell out of fashion.

In the postwar years, plastic started replacing metal in many uses.
Plastic pouches, when they came along, were cheaper and helped keep the tobacco fresher. Also, the tins would require a lot of storage space.
I will not bring up the Prince Albert joke, but I'm sure somebody will!

I always keep some of these around:

They fit perfectly fine in a pocket

Is that Prince Albert in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Love those old pocket tins!

I like those old tins too.
I've read that PA was still available in pocket tins as late as 1985, complete with a barcode.

RJR sold the PA brand to John Middleton in 1987 and packaging changes occurred then too.
One source for finding good info is the Legacy Library. I went looking but didn't find anything about an official discontinuation of the pocket tins, but it's a vast swath of results to search thru and requires much patience, i usually only search thru the BAT archives for British info as it's easier to find...
...but what about this?

Dear Sir, there's a hair in my tobacco!

http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/action/document/page?tid=mol93i00
...or this document, Capt.Black has 18% PG & highest nic of the listed brands, Edgeworth is the 2nd lowest in nic! etc etc

http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/action/document/page?tid=bpm20d00&page=2
The curved pocket tins are cool too, like this one:


Here's a book with some good stuff, including old tins of SG Skiff 7 Grousemoor,

http://books.google.com/books?id=jSAxX7r3dQUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
A good selection of various pocket tins can be seen here:

http://antiquetobacco.com/tobacco-tins/pocket-tins/
All that beautiful lithography would cost a fortune nowadays!

I would speculate that these tins were primarily aimed at RYO smokers. You'll notice that the brands associated with this type of tin were commonly marketed as pipe and cigarette tobaccos. I expect they were much more convenient for shaking some tobacco into a paper than for filling your pipe bowl!

We all had bigger pockets back then.....and less money to get in the way.

mid-late 90's I, as a young lad smokrd velvet and pa out of a pocket tin like the one shown in the first post. I did not smoke a pipe often. instead, I rolled cigarettes by hand. I loved the velvet tin. coste about 1.50. miss it. miss the memories.

I think the small square tins like Peterson and Dunhill have fit the bill myself.