Tommy tin launched

The first ‘Tommy Tins’ were sold on this day in 1946: special biscuits in a cylindrical tin with a soldier painted on the side and a lid shaped as a tin helmet. Different biscuits had different uniforms, and these would become highly sought-after in later years. Two pence from every tin sold was donated to services charities.

Biscuits were rationed and hard to come by after the war, and regarded as treats. A common piece of advice found in women’s magazines involved using the ‘Tommy Tin’ to fend off unwelcome advances from ‘frisky’ husbands. As Woman's Wisdom agony aunt Margaret Robinson wrote later: ‘The idea was that you tapped the Tommy Tin, and hubby would be so excited by the prospect of a biscuit that it would distract him. By the time he’d eaten it, he’d have forgotten all about the other business.’

This scene from Arnold Wakely’s Kipling and Custard (a satire on stifling suburban conformity, broadcast as The Wednesday Play in 1965) said he chose the tin as a ‘symbol par excellence of frigidity and repression'…