![]() Keating, despite being the son of company founder Edward Katzinger, suffered no blind allegiances to the past. It was the growing fear of antitrust lawsuits, in fact, that may have inspired 71 year-old EKCO chairman Arthur Keating to retire from his position and sell the family business to American Home Products for a cool $145 million in stock. It was the beginning of the end for EKCO as a Chicago institution, but they were hardly in a position to complain about it.įor decades, EKCO itself had been the conquering king of the non-electric housewares market, absorbing dozens of smaller businesses across the country and huddling their goods under its Chicago tent from cutlery and flatware to baking supplies, pressure cookers, chemicals, plastic accessories, aluminum foil containers, bathroom fixtures, lighting, building supplies, and more. Maybe it’s also a bit sad to presume we’d all nostalgically associate our moms with a can opener, but when EKCO ran these ads in magazines like Better Homes and Gardens in ‘65, it was a tactical maneuver more than anything a way to reassure the general populous that everything was still “business as usual” at the 75 year-old company-even though it definitely wasn’t.ĭespite posting a profit in every year of its existence, dating back to 1889, EKCO (a name derived from its original identity as the Edward Katzinger Company) officially surrendered its independence in September of 1965, becoming a division of the massive conglomerate known as the American Home Products Corporation. Maybe because it brings back warm memories. Since then, we’ve developed bigger and better Ekco can openers, but we keep selling this one. ![]() And anybody who was tall enough to reach the kitchen drawer used it. “Just about every family got one of our can openers. And when you turned the key, it cut through the tin as easy as pie. It had a gear (of all things!) and long handles you could get a good grip on. “She used to work her fingers to the bone, opening those cans, until we invented the Miracle Can Opener about thirty-five years ago. “We taught your mother a new way to open chicken soup,” read the presumptuous tagline of a 1965 advertisement for the Miracle Can Opener-arguably the most recognizable of the thousands of utensils produced by the EKCO Housewares Company. 1960s) and EKCO Helmet Bottle Stopper (c. Museum Artifacts: EKCO Miracle Can Opener 885 (c.
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