History of retail anti-theft alarms and tags
Tags and gates evolved together. Each generation of tag was an answer to a problem the gates of the day could not solve, and vice versa. The form factors that survived did so because they fitted both the physics and the warehouse workflow.
The hard tag
Born in the late 1960s as a brass-pinned plastic shell, the hard tag remains the only reliable answer for soft goods — clothing, bags, shoes. Modern variants embed AM resonators or RF circuits inside the same shell, so the same tag works on either system.
The bottle tag
For premium spirits, the bottle-neck tag arrived in the 1990s. A spider-shaped plastic claw locks around the cap; only a magnetic detacher releases it. The frequency was almost incidental — the deterrent was the visible lock.
Soft labels
- RF film for packaged goods.
- AM strip for foil-wrapped or canned items.
- Dog-bone for tubes and small containers.
Vista EAS supplies the full tag catalogue including ink-blister anti-theft tags.
