Poppin’ Off

How many of you fine folks remember returnable pop bottles?  Yep, pop came in glass bottles.  When you bought ’em at the grocery store, you paid a deposit (2 cents in our 1960s town) on each bottle.  When you went back to the store, you took back your empties for the money back, or a one-for-one swap if you got more pop.

That’s because these glass bottles were returned to a regional bottler, washed, sanitized, refilled, and re-capped.  See my memories of working one summer at our local Coke plant here.

But what if you didn’t drink it all at once?

            Why, you used an after-market cap to try and hold in the fizz!  Above are the ones we still have from the storied times of refillable bottles.  Sometimes you’d have ads for grocery stores or filling stations printed on top of the caps.

                                

            And here’s the underside of the same toppers.  The loops apparent on the top row of cappers was to loop over the bottles neck, then curl over to snap the cap onto the lip of the bottle.  These were so fumble-finger types wouldn’t lose the cap after flipping it off!

            In the top left of the group pictures, are rendered in super-high contrast, is one from Tupperware.  The stamped words are:

TUPPERWARE ®

MADE IN U.S.A.

TUPPERWARE

ORLANDO, FLORIDA

198-22

 

See you Thursday, fellow consumers!