Why Don’t We Use These Anymore?
October 8, 2025
source: Reddit
If you grew up in the golden age of soda fountains, plastic pitchers of Kool-Aid, or backyard barbecues that featured sun-warmed coolers, undoubtedly you have seen or sipped from this neat little device: the ice guard glass that keeps ice from your mouth.
To all appearances it is a regular old drinking glass. But look again and you will see something clever molded into it: a ring of inward jutting tabs about the inner rim. These small bumps serve one but most clever purpose, which is to keep the ice from sliding into your mouth when you drink from the classic ice guard glass.
Shrewd Ingeniousness with Everyday Use.
In the old days, no one thought much of it. Pour cold lemonade or iced tea into the ice guard glass, take a drink, and—voila!—no erratic ice cubes banging against the teeth nor splashing down on the front. It worked. You did not need to tip the glass inordinate distance or utilize a spoon to hold the ice back. The glass took care of itself.
These glasses especially became common in the 70’s and 80’s. They were found about lunch counters, cafeterias, and homes where practicality was the main object. They were manufactured either of hard glass or glassy plastic, made to endure both children and clumsiness. While new drinkware made the leap to nifty insulation or sleek minimalism, this glass quietly brought a universal solution to light. The ice guard glass had no moving component, no fuss and no cost.
But why don’t we see them more often? Morality speaking, why in Sam Hill not?
Somewhere along the line, the glass that keeps ice out of the mouth began to be eliminated. Maybe the present manufacturers maintained it was too clumsy. But it certainly could have been eliminated in the mad rush for styles. Possibly, too, we all began using straws and forgot how annoying it is when an ice block crashes into one’s face with each little sip. The absence of the ice guard glass definitely shows.
Whatever the reason, there is no gainsaying the fact that it is a design sadly lacking today—it is human in its usefulness!
A Trifle Charming in Its Nostalgia
One runs at this late date across one of these glasses often it brings a smile. It is a sort of time capsule. One sees one at a second-hand store or languishing in the back of Grandmother’s closet. Possibly, too, one has one and did not know forayed. But the bars were there or what purpose was served by that tab on an ice guard glass.
The funny things of life are the small things like this which cling to the memory the years through. A simple drink of water always seems so much more sympathetic to the gustatory apparatus. Especially when the glass was designed to appeal there. In a way it is a reminder that by their eye in the bygone days, all life, even the small detail about the home, was built to last, and built so as to load.
For What It Is Worth
Of a truth, we have insulated tumblers and double-walled all in any event. But there is a joy about this old-fashioned solution to drinkware. It did not use any ultra-modern materials or new-fangled apparatus or gags. The ice guard glass was an honest-to-God design plan which did its duty without coramoreum for itself or asking for distinctions.
And let’s face the fact that not only the trifles of life need reformation at the hands of man. In very truth, all we wish is a cold drink that is drinkable. No geste and conversation slapped on, and no water in the mouth. Just a smooth course down the gullet and a gentle, sweet moment of satisfaction in the reclining recliner.
So here’s to the oft-spoken heroes in the family cabinet of kitchen products. The antiquated ice guard glass serves as a friend to the human at the moment of need. It may not be a spectacle, but like Mars Hill it hath to fall in order that good may be done.