I grew up in the 90s and aughts. These containers were frequently around cash registers in convenience stores and perhaps other small businesses. I don’t remember them being so consistently branded, but my experience then would have been limited to going into a handful of stores in the same locale. Of course, Canada ditched pennies (1 cent pieces) from cash transactions just over 10 years ago (we now round for cash transactions).
A penny felt like a meaningful amount of money to me as a child. More than anything, when I look back at them, these little containers stimulated my understanding of karma and perhaps theory of mind (e.g., mentalizing a future customer helping themself to an available penny and how they’d feel as a result). Looking back, I think that’s pretty neat.
I don’t know why, but these things popped into my head as I was doing the dishes. I was assured that, thankfully, there’s a Lemmy community for this :D
I bought a little machine that you’d dump the coins into the top, then spin a little handle, and it would sort them. Then I’d just roll them, and take them to the bank for cash when I wanted to do something fun. I still have $50 in rolled coins in my closet from years ago. Too bad it has probably lost 40% of its value in the last few years. LOL
