Gypsy Creams

Heinz Tomato Ketchup

Woman's Weekly / 4th April 1969

Well, this is interesting. I don’t recall the 12-oz jar being in supermarkets when I grew up, probably because it must have surely caused the sauce to go EVERYWHERE, especially if the consumers had the habit of giving the end a sharp slap, developed by the regular design. It wasn’t until my teens that I saw the squeezable bottles of ketchup, which at last gave some control over the contents. Of course, there was an option of decanting the sauce into the iconic tomato-shaped squeezers, but this probably wasn’t something which caught on in a domestic setting.

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10 Comments

Martin Fenton on 4 September 2010 @ 2am

Quite popular in mainland Europe to this day, those ketchup jars are. I like them – you can get a teaspoon in them, and they fit on shelves easily. Interesting to see the tall ketchup bottle with a traditional screw cap – pretty much every bottle I’ve ever seen has had one more like the one on the jar.


Tanya Jones on 4 September 2010 @ 10am

Ooh, good point about the cap! I quite like the idea of spooning the ketchup out, but it’s not something I would have been used to.


Jobrag on 8 September 2010 @ 10am

You can get the Tomato shaped dispensers on E-Bay, surprisingly cheap.


elmsyrup on 14 September 2010 @ 1pm

I think that jar looks brills, I like the idea of being able to spoon out the ketchup. They’re right too… I have been trying to economise lately and buy value brands. Nothing else seems to be a problem, ie 9p beans are fine, but value brand ketchup tastes very peculiar. Heinz really is the tastiest which I hate to admit.


Col on 24 September 2010 @ 7pm

The Eastern European food store down my street sells Polish-sourced ketchup in 1kg and 500kg jars, as well as the style of bottom we are used to nowadays.


UriGagarin on 7 October 2010 @ 10pm

its a weird thing , at work its obvious when the ketchup isn’t heinz, its either watery or just tasteless. think there is somerhing we all grew up with that meant that Heinz was the premium and so we all mde it the standard we all compared tomato sauce to . Similar to HP and brown sauice I guess.


Tim HJ on 26 July 2011 @ 9pm

Those little dumpy jars make so much more sense. I think it was the complete lottery of having to smack a ketchup bottle on the arse, not knowing whether you were going to get a teaspoonful or a veritable tomato torrent, that turned me off the stuff all those years ago.

Which reminds me – who else finds the shape of the standard Nutella jar completely infuriating? My son loves the stuff but because the sides aren’t straight, you always end up having to leave about 2oz of it in the jar and buy a new one!


Mike on 9 January 2012 @ 11pm

Dug a few of these where the caps have 57 on in red, Not sure when they switched to using the plain white metal cap, may have been mid 70s??. The 30s ones had a thicker screw thread an the bottle was slimmer to.


dl on 1 February 2012 @ 1pm

Col, I really need to get a few 500kg jars of Polish ketchup; where is this shop?


Col on 5 February 2012 @ 7pm

dl, I live in York; is it within your reach?


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