I wrote about America’s can opener crisis 5 years ago here. The under-cabinet electric can opener that came with our house had died long ago, a new one would cost $225, and they don’t make ’em like they used to anyway, so I decided to try something else.
What followed was frustrating to the edge of tears. I went through many can openers. They either didn’t work or quickly broke. Usually both.
The simple military can opener remains the most reliable of all, and doesn’t require electricity, but does require flexing your wrist, is a bit slow, and leaves jagged can edges. (You don’t care about this in a foxhole, but I live in a house now.)
By poring over countless reviews, I discovered a can opener some consumers actually praise, and even better it costs only $35, which is $3.50 in real money. (If I may digress for a moment, a $100,000 house in Seattle still is worth $100,000, but you have to fork over a million of what they call “dollars,” which actually are dimes, for it now.)
It’s this one. So far, I like it. It seems to work, and hasn’t broken yet.
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t get paid by manufacturers for pitching their products, nor do I get kickbacks from Amazon for linking to their website. I pay for stuff like everyone else, and have to wait 10 days for free delivery, if I don’t want to pay shipping charges. This article is a commentary, which is what I do on this blog, not an advertisement. I’m only trying to solve a problem.
In any case, you can’t order it from Amazon right now, and for all I know, the manufacturer doesn’t even make it anymore. That’s what always seems to happen to products that work.
However, I was farsighted enough to buy one before it went off market, and so far it works fine. Unlike **normal** can openers, this one opens the can from the side, which means there’s no cutting blade to dull, and no sharp can edge to slice your fingers when pushing down the contents of the garbage pail so you can stuff more into it so you don’t have to take the garbage out for another week.
I said it cost 35 dollars. That’s not precisely accurate. On Amazon, it was 34.99 dollars, which meant I had to order something else with it to get free shipping, because of their 35.00 dollar minimum order for free shipping. Sneaky how they do that. So I languished without a functional can opener for months, subsisting on fresh and frozen foods and the contents of pull-top cans, before I deployed it because I had to wait until I identified a book I wanted to read that I haven’t read yet, otherwise I would’ve had to pay for shipping, and I never pay for shipping if I can avoid it. It’s bad enough to pay $35 for a $3.50 can opener.
Postscript: Nothing lasts forever, and like everything else, these can openers wear out. If it won’t open cans anymore, get another one.