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Posted on Sep 12, 2015

This Is Why You Always Find Sewing Kits In Your Mother's Danish Butter Cookie Tins

A delicious worldwide mystery, now solved.

by Creatrix Tiara

Community Contributor

Swan @TheHOchies

Opening a Danish Butter Cookie Tin and finding black cake or a sewing kit not cookies. 😭😂. #CaribbeanProblems
12:07 PM - 25 Aug 2015
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Lebanese Rant @leb_ranting

When you see a butter cookies' box but it's filled with your teta's sewing kit
08:54 PM - 23 Jul 2015
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Jacqueline Nery @jaq_e

in a Filipino household you find either 1 of 2 things in this tin: 1. butter cookies or 2. a serious sewing kit. 😹

04:18 AM - 25 Jun 2015
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caroline @carolinexngo

This is a picture of _______ A. Butter cookies B. Grandmas sewing kit #AskRachel

09:20 PM - 12 Jun 2015
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Nimit Nilesh @NimitNilesh

Universal feeling: When you open the butter cookies tin box expecting cookies but see a sewing kit.

05:10 PM - 30 Apr 2015
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This Is Why You Always Find Sewing Kits In Your Mother's Danish Butter Cookie Tins

Kids around the world grew up with one thing in common: opening a tin of Danish butter cookies only to find needles and thread.

But WHY though? What is it about these particular cookies that make them so attractive for sewing kits? Turns out there is an answer for this - all based on the history of packaging.

See, back in the day, biscuit tins weren't very common. They were usually either sold loose in paper bags (which often led to breakage) or - thanks largely to Nabisco - sold in paper boxes.

National Biscuit Company (now Nabisco)'s Uneeda Biscuits, created in 1896, is often heralded as the "birth of consumer packaging" for its innovative and moisture-proof packages - waxed paper lining inside paper cartons.

Cookie tins, however, were not as common - until 1966, when Royal Dansk created their distinctive blue tins to keep their cookies fresh.

Besides being high-quality, the tins were also often very pretty, so people kept them as collectibles. (And they still do, to this day.)

During times of war, people were encouraged to reuse as much as possible, and not throw too much away.

Sewing supplies were universal, and they were often small, fiddly, and round - the perfect items to store in a large round tin.

And a new tradition was born.

Old habits die hard.

This information comes to you from my mother, whose tins always have cookies in them.

Thanks mum!

This Is Why You Always Find Sewing Kits In Your Mother's Danish Butter Cookie Tins

Kids around the world grew up with one thing in common: opening a tin of Danish butter cookies only to find needles and thread.

But WHY though? What is it about these particular cookies that make them so attractive for sewing kits? Turns out there is an answer for this - all based on the history of packaging.

See, back in the day, biscuit tins weren't very common. They were usually either sold loose in paper bags (which often led to breakage) or - thanks largely to Nabisco - sold in paper boxes.

National Biscuit Company (now Nabisco)'s Uneeda Biscuits, created in 1896, is often heralded as the "birth of consumer packaging" for its innovative and moisture-proof packages - waxed paper lining inside paper cartons.

Cookie tins, however, were not as common - until 1966, when Royal Dansk created their distinctive blue tins to keep their cookies fresh.

Besides being high-quality, the tins were also often very pretty, so people kept them as collectibles. (And they still do, to this day.)

During times of war, people were encouraged to reuse as much as possible, and not throw too much away.

Sewing supplies were universal, and they were often small, fiddly, and round - the perfect items to store in a large round tin.

And a new tradition was born.

Old habits die hard.

This information comes to you from my mother, whose tins always have cookies in them.

Thanks mum!

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