No, I'm not talking about operations on my knee, of which I've had none so far. I'm talking about "applied color label" soda bottles. Those old bottles take me back to the days of my childhood when vending machines actually contained bottles and the bottles featured all kinds of pictures and designs. These illustrations were not paper labels nor decals, but applied directly to the glass.
ACL bottles are hardly made any more, but I did find two different bottles at Godfather's Pizza in New Market. Sun Drop soda has been around for some time and I have an older bottle in my collection as you may see from the photo below. As for the soda itself, it's not bad stuff; sort of a poor man's version of Fresca for those of you who remember that soft drink. (Does anyone call them "soft drinks" anymore? Is my age showing again?)
Big Red soda is the kind I really would have been attracted to as a child since it is very, very red and it looks delicious. Looks are, indeed, deceiving. Big Red seems to contain all of the red flavors including cherry, watermelon, and bubblegum. There may be some raspberry in there too, but the bubblegum flavor tended to overwhelm everything. Anyone of those flavors would have been superior to the combination, but Big Red is at least much better than cough syrup and was worth drinking to get the bottle. I will not be adding a six-pack to my collection, however.
One nice aspect of collecting ACL bottles is that there is no such thing as a "complete set" and therefore, folks can collect what they want and not feel compelled to obtain every known bottle because no one knows how many different ACL bottles are out there. This is a relief since collectors can be a pretty (okay, very) compulsive bunch.
Did anyone out there have a favorite soft drink as a child that is no longer available?
Some favorites. The new Sun Drop and Big Red bottles appear at center.
Wow nice post!...i love collecting different kinds of bottles too.Great job!Hurray to you!
Posted by: Nursing pajamas | April 28, 2010 at 04:51 AM