Iron City Beer Test-Markets the Self-Opening Snap-Top Can

In 1962, Pittsburgh Brewing Company worked with the Pittsburgh-based Aluminum Company of America, better known as Alcoa, to introduce a self-opening can for Iron City Beer. The new closure used a metal tab attached to a scored section of the can top. Pulling the tab tore open the drinking aperture, allowing consumers to open the beer without the separate pointed can opener commonly known as a church key. The mechanism developed from the removable pull-tab design created by Ohio inventor Ermal Fraze. Alcoa adapted and supplied the opening system, while Pittsburgh Brewing became its first major commercial test partner. Iron City Beer was test-marketed in the new cans in the Staunton, Virginia, area beginning in September 1962. The brewery promoted the package as the “New Easy Open Snap Top.” The test was highly successful. Pittsburgh Brewing reported that sales in the test market more than doubled within two months, and it subsequently converted its canned-beer production to the new opening system. Sales of Iron City cans reportedly tripled during the first full year of production. Other breweries rapidly adopted similar removable pull tabs, helping to make the self-opening can a standard form of beer and soft-drink packaging during the 1960s. The later stay-on tab used on modern beverage cans was a separate development.