When did plastic oil bottles first come out?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Jan 30, 2007
Messages
17,501
Location
Clovis, CA
All this talk recently about vintage oils has got me thinking: "When did plastic oil bottles first come out anyway?" I've been on this Earth since shortly after the Egyptian Pyramids were built, so I can still remember the old cardboard oil cans with the tin tops.
smile.gif
 
Well in High School for me in the Mid-Late 80's I still remember cardboard and tin oil cans. But when I bought my first car in 90 Never saw one for sale again. (OK little white lie did find one or two dusty old cans here and their in old auto parts stores up to about 93. But even the late 80's they were becoming obsolete. The first ones can remember were the early 80's Pennzoil bright yellow bottles were already out when Rick Mears one Indy in a Pennzoil car that was 84..
 
I saw a pic of a 1984 Mobil 1 ad where they were using the metal cans. Made me realize how long ago the 80s really were!!!!!!!
 
always saw plastic oil bottles. I barely remember when they used paper bags at the grocery store. they must have stopped that when in the early 90's when I was middle school
 
I had a can of oil here at the house that my dad found in the back of the oil cabinet, that was from the late 60s. Was in the old cardboard and tin can. It was some pure synthetic 30,000 Mile oil..
 
Ya, had to be mid 80's. Do you remember the cases of oil back then? Yep - 24 qts to the case. I knew back then that folks simply didn't want that much oil at one time - too heavy and too expensive. Back then I used to wait for Castrol GTX to go on sale for 99 cents/qt! It was expensive back then!!!
 
Pennzoil came out with the plastic bottle in 1984. It was round with a short neck on it. Quaker State followed but theirs had the neat vent neck on it. Fighting for shelf space in retail stores, Pennzoil came out with the square bottle in 1986 which looked close to what it is today. Every year at the national meetings they always had a theme, and the theme in 1986 was "The Challenge of Change". They opened the meeting by unveiling this 50' tall blow up bottle. You could put twice as many square bottles on the same shelf space as you could the round ones. Also something new with the square bottle was the 12 quart case. Metal cans, cardboard cans, and round bottles use to come in 24 quart cases.
 
The first 'square' bottle had the neck/cap in the center.
Now, most of them have the neck/cap offset for easier pouring.

I can remember all metal oil cans. 1 quart and 4 quart sizes. Push in spout always leaked.
4 quart was for service station use mainly.
Like the cardboard can, they had the SAE weight stamped into the top metal.
 
Quote:


"When did plastic oil bottles first come out anyway?"




Well, I can't remember anything but plastic bottles. I definitely remember frog-green plastic BP oil bottles from the very early '80s. We always kept one in the trunk of our Austin.
 
I miss the cardboard cans. Even before recycling became popular I used to incinerate the empty cans. Can't do that with the plastic now -- too nasty!

I still keep the can opener in my toolbox as a reminder.
 
Yeah, I agree that the trend took off in the mid-80s and was pretty much done by 1990. Reference points for me: I checked into MCB Quantico as a new 2ndLt in May 1983 and at that time, all the oil in the base exchange (I was haunting oil aisles even back then...) was the old fashioned cans. I remember trying to sort out QS, QS Deluxe, and QS Supreme. Three years later, after completing all of flight training, I checked into MCAS Cherry Point (1986). By that time, the oil at the exchange was in plastic bottles. All the M1 was in the round bottles that look sort of like what Redline uses today. There might have been some can brands left, a few, but I don't recall clearly, but M1 (which I was by then using) was for sure in plastic.
cheers.gif
 
I started with Kendall, and only recall the plastic. The only "old" oil at my parents' is about six plastic bottles of 10w40 Worldwide AP oil from 1988 or 89. I don't think I can remember seeing cans in the garage. Being under 8 at the time when we lived in IL I never paid attention to what was in the garage (sometimes looked like the houses on Styles' show Clean House
shocked.gif
). I was focused mainly on Star Wars and such.
star-wars-smiley-008.gif
 
I remember the old cans. I really hated them because I could never get the filler spout to punch right and it always leaked on everything.

Viva Plastic Bottles!
 
If I recall, there was one or two vendors offering plastic bottles in the very late '70s. The cans by the late '70s were rather colorful packages compared to the earlier ones. By the mid '80s most vendors, but not all, were bottling their product. I do recall still punching Havoline Supreme cans as late as '85. Mobil 1 was one of the last mainstream oils in an all metal can. The first Mobil 1 bottle I believe was a round white "center pour" style.

The cans weren't that much of a problem, as most folks topped off the engines of the era by the quart. I remember little plastic "lids" being sold for opened cans that were completely useless.

But opening a can of GT-1 was always a very pleasant experience. It was the "green" of that era.
 
Quote:


All this talk recently about vintage oils has got me thinking: "When did plastic oil bottles first come out anyway?" I've been on this Earth since shortly after the Egyptian Pyramids were built, so I can still remember the old cardboard oil cans with the tin tops.
smile.gif





Not only can I remember the cardboard cans but I have some of them.
grin.gif
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top