When did matchbooks start having the striking surface mounted on the back side of the cover?

I don’t think that I noticed that as a general rule until much later – maybe the mid-to-late 80s.

Perhaps the ones you saw in the 60s were the innovators who realized that, whatever the tiny decrease in convenience, the increase in safety far outweighed that.

I noticed that in about 1967.

Come to think of it, when did the matchbook itself arrive? I’m old enough to have the depressing feeling that it may have been sometime within my lifespan.

@stanleybmanly don’t worry, it was in the 1890’s

Yeah I lucked out. The best bet (google) is Binghamton NY 1893.

Seems to me the smokers would be much more apt to be cognizant of the matchbook thing, particularly those acquiring the habit at the time of the front to back transition. For the pipe and cigars I was into strike anywhere wooden matches. I still keep a big box in the kitchen, one in the shop, and in each of the vehicles.

I think it was in the sixties too, or maybe early seventies. You used to be able to one-hand it by bending the match over and scraping it on the striking surface, and I know that was still true into the late sixties.

I think there were stories of fires started by accidentally bent matches. As with so many other things, it probably got changed on legal advice, with safety being the impetus but not the motivation.

As a young teen in the mid-70s I could light a match one-handed, without tearing it out of the pack. I think those had to have the sandpaper on the front.

i figured there would be some set date resulting from some ruling by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, but I can’t find anything.

@LuckyGuy Like @Call_Me_Jay I remember plenty of matches with the scratch pad on the front when I started smoking in 1972, and all through the 70s and 80s. I have a match book at home that I picked up within the last ten years that still has it on the front.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission was a Nixon Administration creation in 1972. Before that, everything sold in the US was safe from the efforts of the “invisible hand.”

This is somewhat of a non-sequitir, but I always liked the European way of dealing with matches – in their own little slide-out box, instead of the matchbooks we use here.

The biggest permanent change in design came in 1973, when all matchbooks were federally mandated to have the strikers put on the back panel, for safety.

Just be glad matchbooks still exist.

@Cruiser You found it!!! Thanks!!!

@LuckyGuy Kind of a fun link too! Isn’t this around the same time seat belts were mandated and metal monkey bars on play grounds were banned? The Nader years?

The reason i asked…
An elderly friend gave me a bag of matchbooks that her late husband collected over the decades. About ¾ are front strikers.
She said I should use them for lighting my wood burning stoves but the sentimental fool in me finds that difficult. Gaaahhh!

@LuckyGuy: The cool thing about a matchbook collection is seeing the businesses that were around and are no longer.

As for the OP, I was a smoker when I enlisted in the Navy in 1967. I remember knowing the one-handed trick of striking a match without removing it from the pack. By 1970 (the year I was transferred back to the US), I noticed that the front-facing strikers were becoming less common.

@jca I just saw one from Pep Boys. it is going to be hard to use these…

@Strauss That sounds like a neat bar trick. Skill. I wonder how many packs caught on fire. :-)

I do remember it happening, but it was more likely when lighting a pipe or cigar. It kind of a james Dean kind of thing like opening and lighting your Zippo® with one smooth motion. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t practical. It meant you could use one hand do do something else (like hold a steering wheel, for example) while you would take the pack of cigarettes out of your shirt pocket, shake it to extract the mouth end of one (sometimes two or three) cigarettes, take the cigarette in your mouth, put the pack back in your pocket, get the matchbook out of the same pocket, open and strike, light the cigarette, all the while holding the steering wheel, and your eyes would never leave the road.

@LuckyGuy, a phillumenist would probably covet that collection.

@Jeruba Do you know any? I’d gladly send some!

@LuckyGuy Make sure they are considered “safety matches”, otherwise they cannot be mailed.

Most matches in books are safety matches, which can be struck only against a specially prepared surface. The alternative, “strike-anywhere” types are usually stick matches, which come in boxes.

I heard this story from my dad:

His sister had gotten a job in a match factory. I think this must have around 1920, give or take a couple years. Her job was to gather the matches from the manufacturing line and place them manually into the boxes.

After a few days, she came home one night, eager to demonstrate her job to her family. She got a couple boxes of matches, placed the empty boxes on one end of the dining room table, and spread out the contents on the other end, to simulate her work station. She then began to rapidly gather the matches by handfuls, preparing to place them into the boxes. When she started to handle the matches, the “strike-anywhere” heads ignited, giving her a handful of blazing matches! Evidently, the matches in the factory were still a moist enough from the manufacturing process that this was not an issue on the line.

Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.

@Strauss Wow. That could have been disastrous!
When i was a kid we’d fill metal lipstick container tubes with strike anywhere match heads and tape them closed with electrical tape. A well placed shot from a pellet gun would produce a spectacular result.

(PETA Statement: No children, pets or animals were harmed during this activity.)

@LuckyGuy. I did know one. He’s gone now. I once sent him a large box of pristine matchbooks and boxes that I’d collected from all over. He thanked me very sweetly and then told me I’d better not do that again. I had just packed them in an ordinary box and sent them by U.S. mail without a second thought.

I asked him how collectors would know if the boxed matches were complete and untouched, as they had to be, by collectors’ standards. He said it was on the honor system. Back then, small matchboxes were common at American hotels, restaurants, and clubs, and I collected a lot of them as souvenirs. They had more class than the cardboard matchbooks. I even had some with gold tips.

I used to have a collection – a really big collection. When I moved almost 20 years ago, I got rid of it as I was moving from a place with a lot of space to a place with limited space. I wish I still had it. Not many places give out matches any more. If I go to a restaurant that has matches (usually match boxes now, maybe because they’re classier), I’ll take a few but those places are few and far between, and I don’t have the collection in any one spot as it’s not really a collection. It’s just a few in my kitchen for emergency use.