The company was established in 1920 as a unit of Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Co. and produced gun parts and molded plastic articles including buttons, buckles, valve packaging, and valve discs. Colt molded phenolic products including tobacco humidors, pipe racks and electrical outlets and plug sets.

In the 1930's Colt's plastics division manufactured and marketed a wide variety of products for other companies and the consumer market. These included tube caps, jar caps, bottle caps and special packaging items; doorknobs, streetlight components, roller skate wheels and costume jewelry (Coltstones); jars used to package powders, creams, lipsticks, purse make-up kits and travel beauty kits. Increasingly, the company focused on products for the growing cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. Colt developed of a line of "featherlite" jars used to package powders, creams, lipsticks and travel beauty kits. In the 1940's, however, like so many other American molding companies, Colt turned its attention to producing plastic products for the war effort. After 1945, Colt re-started its design and production of plastic bottle caps; and the first all-plastic aerosol dispenser.

In 1958, the company was purchased by Charles W. Bentley but retained the Colt identity in its new name: Colt's Plastics Company, Inc. The new company continued to play a key role in cosmetics packaging innovation- including the first all-plastic aerosol dispenser--and unique packaging for Elizabeth Arden (which formed the basis for the Colt-ainer® line of jars) and Yardley.

In the 1960's and 1970's, Colt's developed see-through caps, known as "Coltview" caps, used on Yardley's "Pot-o-Gloss" line of lip gloss. During this time, Colt's also built six fully automated, high-efficiency compression molding machines for IBM, each producing 100,000 plastic parts per day.

The company moved to its present Dayville, Connecticut site in 1978.

During the following decades Colt's extended its product lines to include household and kitchen items such as spatulas, compartmented jars, ColtKits®, stackables, as well as a range of various styled closures. More recently, polypropylene jars and caps, PETG jars, the Colt-ainer III jar line, panel-sided jars have all been added.

Today, the Bentley family continues to carry on the Colt tradition, emphasizing its successful packaging lines for the cosmetic, pharmaceutical and personal care product industries. The newest product additions include the Colt-View lines of elegant pots, and an array of large diameter jars in 75mm, 83mm, 89mm, and 100mm diameters. The company strives to remain efficient, and many labor intensive molding, assembly, and machining operations have now been fully automated.

Keeping ties to its roots, Colt's continues, however, to mold pistol grips for certain special edition guns.

Adapted from: Colt's Plastics company website