Squeeze me

The squeezable plastic bottle has got to be the saviour of the lazy cook. What could be easier or quicker than taking your hot toast from the toaster, squeezing a dollop of Marmite, or cheese spread, onto the toast and then eating it? There is no need to get a knife from the cutlery drawer, and no washing up to do (especially if you choose to negate the use of a plate too).

It seems that everything in the supermarket these days, from Heinz Salad Cream to Branston Pickle, has a squeezy alternative but the use of the squeezy bottle is not a new idea.

In the 1950s these FLIP milk flavours were housed in squeezable packaging making it an extremely quick process to make your glass of milk more interesting with strawberry (2), coffee (3), or blackcurrant (4) flavouring.  Small squeezy bottles like these (5 - 16) contained a variety of flavours for various uses.

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Again in the 1950s the tomato shaped sauce bottle (17 - 19) was designed by Morris Friedman for use in the home as well as cafés and restaurants. Decanting from a branded glass bottle into a plain tomato shape makes the contents anonymous; it becomes tomato sauce rather than Heinz Tomato Ketchup. With the fashion for retro designs in the domestic setting the tomato squeezy bottle has been reissued in the 2000s (20 - 25) in a variety of colours by the Big Tomato Company.

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The material used in all of these bottles is polyethylene which is one of the most basic and commonly used plastics. It is extremely light, and has a good balance between impact strength and flexibility. It is safe for use with foods as it gives off or absorbs very few chemicals, and it does not absorb or leach any moisture, both of which would contaminate any food stuff.

The bottle shapes are made by blow moulding: a small balloon of material is placed in a mould, then inflated and forced out to take the shape of the mould.

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