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the Soda Fizz e-Zine for Soda Memorabilia Collectors Worldwide

29th March, 2003

ISSN: 1541-776X

The Weekly e-Zine for Soda Memorabilia 
Collectors Worldwide

 
Up for Grabs

Only a few days left! From Blair Matthews, Editor of Soda Pop Dreams Magazine : For the month of March, I am doing a special for new subscribers to subscribe to Soda Pop Dreams Magazine for only $14.95 US funds with PayPal at the website.. This is a cool savings of $6 off the regular subscription price. Don't miss out!

From Richard Mix : Please be sure to check out our eBay auctions - lots of great stuff ending Sunday.  We went for quality and not quantity with Tuesdays auctions - with only 16 items (several of which already sold with buy-it-now - hurry!!) - including old clocks, thermometers, pocket knifes (50-100 year old Coke items!!!).   Lots of great bottles also ending soon - including several PROTOTYPES and rarely seen on ebay bottles!! --click here to see --

Also, we are offering the following new 8oz bottles for sale at $3 each or 6+ (mix and match) at $2.50 each plus shipping (which can be combined with your eBay auction also):

  • Tampa Bucs Super Bowl Champions
  • Tony Stewart NASCAR
    2002 Home Depot Champion
  • Mens Final 4 - New Orleans
  • Mardi Gras 2003
  • Detroit Red Wings
  • Women's Final 4
  • Lance Armstrong - Tour de France
  • Carnival Miami 25
  • Fresno Grizzlies
My Missing Items

Do you have a particular item, or items, that you have been looking for a long time to complete part of your collection, or something you want - but have not as yet been able to find? Send it so all of us can help you look. You never know where it may turn up! E-mail it to My Missing Item

Links
Pepsi Central  the SODAMUSEUM.COM  the Dew Collector
  
Painted Soda Bottle Collectors Association ~ The Soda Fizz Magazine
Click here for Back Issue's Contents List ~ Includes Sample Articles
 
Q & A Post your questions online @ the Question Forum

Send your questions, best deals, favorite items, collecting stories, best deals or trades etc. and comments to My Item
They are always welcome.
 
What's New?

SoBe’s new Long John Lizard’s Grape Grog sails into stores next month as the newest addition to the popular 20 oz. SoBe beverage line, and is the company’s first grape offering. Flavored with real grape juice, Grape Grog is enhanced with grape seed extract, zinc and vitamin C to give it SoBe’s "better-for-you" halo. The packaging will feature fun, colorful, "pirate lizard" graphics.

SoBe isn't the only one with a new grape flavor - Slush Puppie's has introduced its new ‘Polar Purple Shiver'. Slush Puppie Brands, a division of Plano, Texas-based Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc., began rolling out Polar Purple Shiver earlier this month. An Internet component has been developed and includes a Polar Purple Shiver ‘blast' e-mail that will be sent to the site's registered visitors, introducing them to the new flavor. 

According to a regulatory filing, PepsiCo Inc. paid its chairman and CEO, Steven Reinemund, a US$3.2m bonus last year, 8.5% lower than the US$3.5m bonus he received the year before. PepsiCo paid Reinemund a basic salary of US$1m in the 2002 fiscal year which was slightly higher than the US$984,615 he received in 2001. Reinemund also received options for 758,357 common shares last year, compared with options for 2.1m common shares in 2001. The options have an exercise price of US$50 a share. They expire at the end of January, 2012 and are exercisable from the beginning of February, 2005. 

New bottles or cans, or anything soda, in your area ?
Please send the info so all of us can know @ Whats New

Upcoming Event Reminders:

April 5 (Saturday) Jacksonville, Arkansas
Little Rock Antique Bottle Club's 33rd Annual Show & Sale
(Sat. 9 AM - 3 PM) at the Jacksonville Community Center
5 Municipal Dr., Jacksonville, Arkansas
INFO: PH: (501) 771-0624 (no calls after 8 PM), E-mail: coxcurt@swbell.net 

April 6 (Sunday) Rochester, New York
Genesee Valley Bottle Collector's 34th Annual Show & Sale
(Sun. 9 AM - 3 PM) at the Monroe County Fairgrounds, Minett Hall
Route 15A & Calkins Rd., Rochester, New York
INFO: TERRY WOODHAMS, 931 Chili Ave., Rochester, NY 14611, PH: (585) 436-5893
or TOM WHIPPLE, 4595 County Road #1, Canandaigua, NY 14424, PH: (585) 554-3964
E-mail: jvbcadealerstables@hotmail.com 

Springtime in Atlanta - April 16-19, 2003
at the Crowne Plaza, Atlanta, GA
For information, E-mail Karleen : GACOKE@aol.com 
Events will include: Regular Auction, Silent Auction, Swap Meet, Brunch & Banquet.

Branson: Fall Fever in the Ozarks October 23 - 25, 2003, at the Settle Inn Branson, MO
Arkansas & Oklahoma's Green Country Chapters will be co-sponsoring the first ever Coca-Cola event in Branson. For information email Ken: beartul@earthlink.net 

Annual Heart of Ohio Bottle and Jar Show, November 16, 2003, from 9:30 to 3:00. Held the same weekend as the Springfield Antique Show at the world's largest antique mall, the Heart of Ohio Antique Center, I-70 at US 40 (Exit 62), just East of Springfield, Ohio. 60 tables. Free admission. For information, write John Bartley, PO Box 53, North Hampton, Ohio 45349, phone (937)964-8080 or email jbartley@woh.rr.com

Any new events  in your area? E-mail it so all of us can know, to: Upcoming Events

From me, CG

Next week, if the war and the outbreak of some deadly disease does not cancel my plans, I will be returning to US for a few months. I suppose you may have noticed that this newsletter is not as full of its usual information. This is due to the untimely death of my computer's motherboard, which did not want to go alone and decided to take both of my hard drives with it. I did have some of my files backed up, but some others were not, and it is hard to remember what may, or may not, be missing. If any of you sent information in the past couple of weeks, may I request that you please send it again. If I have it, that is fine - I'd rather have it twice, than not have it at all. Also, if you requested any changes to your subscription, such as a new email notification, etc., you will need to send that again too.

Also, when it rains - it pours. It seems that part of the archive listing of 'the Fizz' archive (from the first newsletter in March of 2000 until August 2002) are no longer available online, due to some problems with my "previous" host. (Emphasis on "previous") After two weeks of "fighting" with them about it (and receiving no response from their side), I am in the process of obtaining a more reliable service, and will have things back up and running soon - one way or the other - as I do have all the newsletters backed up to disc. I apologize for any inconvenience caused during this "down" period, and if anyone is in urgent need of any of the "missing' newsletters, just let me know - and I'll email a copy to you. In the meantime, all the links included in this newsletter have been updated and should work fine.

Upcoming FYI articles will include information and histories about other bottling companies and perhaps a show report here and there, plus more...as always.

From me, CG

FYI : Kentucky’s Royal Cola 

By Alicia Carmichael

Estle Hughes sat in an office at Royal Crown Bottling Corp. on Adams Street in Bowling Green, Kentucky and talked about his first days there in 1957, when he was just 17 years old. “I started out on a route,” the now semi-retired safety director said. “I learned all the territory and if anybody was off, I’d take that route.” He went to mom-and-pop stores and tiny restaurants. 

“When I started here, Pepsi Cola was nothing,” he said. Now, ads featuring celebrities like Michael Jackson, Madonna and Britney Spears have made Pepsi a pop of choice around the world. It has joined Coke as a soft drink superpower. 

“They have a lot of money to spend on national advertising,” said Anthony McDougle, the sales manager at the Bowling Green RC plant. “And we don’t. But we are the number one RC bottler, per capita, in the nation. “This is the heartland of RC Cola.” 

And the plant doesn’t even bottle pop these days. It stopped for good in 1996. 

“We do bag-in-boxes and premix,” McDougle said. The bag-in-box is the pop you’ll drink at a restaurant, the syrup that is mixed with water as it leaves the fountain. The premix is prepared at the plant and is what you’ll be served from a fountain at a Little League game, a small festival, the Balloon Classic or a county fair. 

But RC isn’t all that is mixed at the plant. About 40 snowcone and slushy flavors are mixed there. “We have banana, bubble gum, blue raspberry, anything you can think of,” McDougle said. “We ship it all over the U.S.” 

In January, at the local RC plant, 7UP became a staple, as are Big Red, Sunkist, Sundrop, Diet Rite, root beer and most recently, dnL, which if read upside down, says “7UP.” “Unlike 7UP, it’s caffeinated,” McDougle said. “It’s a very unique, berry-flavored drink.” 

Royal Crown Cola is owned by Dr. Pepper/Seven Up, and McDougle thinks that company’s introduction of dnL could help boost the national image of RC. Hughes thinks so, too. 

“RC had some good growth in the ’60s and ’70s,” he said. “Art Linkletter and John Glenn were spokespeople. ‘Me and My RC’ was the slogan.” 

Hughes credits RC’s maintained popularity in south-central Kentucky to C.R. Middleton, the 91-year-old former owner of the Bottling Corp. In the early 1960s, Middleton bought the plant from the family of Harry Hoover, who had opened it in 1935. 

“Mr. Middleton had the number one bottler for years in Harlan,” where he was bottling plant manager, Hughes said. “He came here, bought this and turned it into number one.” 

For years, Middleton’s enthusiasm for RC rubbed off on his employees. “He didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Hughes said. Employees admired Middleton’s drive, and many have worked at the plant for years. 

McDougle has been at the plant for nearly 23 years, and said he’s one of the “babies” there, because those at the place are like family, he said. But he also believes what an old RC route man told him when he first started working at the plant as a teen, fresh out of Edmonson County High School. “He said, ‘RC’s like baby bear soup,” McDougle said. “Coke’s too strong. Pepsi’s too sweet. And RC’s just right.” 

If you have a soda-related subject that you would like to see here as an "FYI" article, or have information you yourself would like to contribute, don't be shy, send it to: FYI Idea

Until next week, Happy Collecting! CokeGirl


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