The 7Up Story 

[Note:  this page originally was under the url http://www.nostalgiapubs.com/articles/7upstory.html - In February 2001, the that url led to an apparently unrelated webpage.]

Charles Leiper Grigg was born in 1868 in Price's Branch, Missouri. When Grigg was 22 he started a small general store, but soon after that he decided to move to St. Louis and try his hand at advertising. Working for a number of local agencies he became acquainted with the carbonated beverage business. By 1919 Grigg was a top salesman for a manufacturing company owned by Vess Jones. Grigg created and marketed an orange drink called Whistle. It soon became the company's biggest seller and Grigg became sales and marketing manager. Grigg' and Jones could not get along so Grigg left the company and his creation, Whistle. Grigg went to work at the Warner-Jenkinson Co. of St. Louis developing flavoring agents for soft drinks. Grigg invented a new carbonated orange drink with a 14% sugar content called Howdy. He teamed up with Edmund G. Ridgway to help finance his new drink and they formed the Howdy Company. Joining them in the company was attorney Frank Gladney. With a good product and financing Grigg's orange soda "Howdy" the company grew quickly, and added bottlers who were anxious to bottle the product. 

In the mid 1920s Howdy's biggest competitor was Orange Crush. They began a nation wide sales campaign claiming that any orange soft drink should contain a minimum percentage of orange pulp or juice, While crush stressed the fact that their drink was the only true orange flavor, Grigg pointed out that Howdy was produced with concentrate based on the essential oils of the orange peel, and that they did not make orange juice". Grigg considered Howdy the purest, finest orange flavored soft drink in America. By the mid 1920s Howdy had 400 franchised bottlers however, Orange Crush continued to gain in popularity and Howdy was struggling for their piece of the market. Grigg decided to formulate an entirely new soft drink to broaden their market share. They decided against cola, rootbeer or ginger ale but really wanted a new taste. While most bottlers had some type of lemon or lime flavored drink there was nothing that was outstanding or distinctive. Trial extracts of a new lemon and lime flavor with lithia were developed in the late 20s, and sent to a number of Howdy Franchise Bottlers for a reaction. The response was enthusiastic. The Howdy Company debuted it's new drink "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Sodas in October 1929, two weeks before the stock market crash that started the great depression. But his timing was bad and the name of the product was even worse. Too long and too complicated he quickly changed it to 7Up Lithiated Lemon-Lime and then simply 7Up. Grigg never explained how he came up with the name but several theories have remained popular. One legend is that Grigg saw a cattle brand that resembled 7Up and thought it would be a distinctive name for a soft drink. Another insists Grigg while playing dice or poker thought up the name. In any case Grigg believed his new drink as a cure for hangovers and marketed it as such. Well it became a lot more popular than just a drink you drank after drinking too much, and the rest is history. 
 

In the early years of organized soda-pop collecting 7Up, as a collectible brand was not very popular. While soda-pop collectors would buy signs and some interesting advertising most 7Up collectibles were either hard to sell or very cheap. All that began to change in the late 80s as collectors began to appreciate the advertising produced by this company. While most of it is not flashy it has a nice look and some very interesting pieces started bringing very respectable prices among sodas-pop collectors and brand loyalists alike. 

7Up used some neat flange signs in the late 40s and early 50s with a very nice series of cardboard cutout bottle toppers highlighted by a beautiful peacock display. The 1940s and 50s also saw a large number of cardboard signs while most were family oriented subject matter they are all very collectible. Nice groups of clocks and thermometers also are sought after by collectors, Bottles have always been a 7Up strong point, a very nice variety have been produced in embossed, paper labels and ACL. Of course the cream of the crop is the very difficult to find squat amber paper label bottle which in choice condition is a real prize by bottle and soda-pop collectors alike. For those who have been collecting 7Up for many years the news is both good and bad. Your collections have appreciated in value, big time, however trying to find quality 7Up advertising is very difficult. For those starting to buy 7Up the news is all bad, high prices for pieces that have been traditionally inexpensive with good pieces being few and far between. 

History of Barq's Root Beer 

[Note:  this page originally was under the url http://www.nostalgiapubs.com/articles/barqhistory.htm#top - In February 2001, the that url led to an apparently unrelated webpage.]

Edward Charels Edmond Barq was born in New Orelans Vieux Carre district in 1871. His French father, died when Ed was only two years old. His widowed mother headed to Nice, France, where she taught children of wealthy Americans. It was in France that Ed learned the art of flavor chemistry from masters in Paris and Bordeaux.

To avoid French military service, Ed returned to New Orelans about 1890, and with his brother Gaston opened garqls Brothers Bottling Co. in the French Quarter. He continued the business a few years Gaston's death. At the chicago World's Fair in 1893 ED won a gold medal for one of his first soft drinks, orangine. 

After marriage to Elodie Graugnard, he moved to Biloxi,Miss., known in 1897 as "The Seafood Capitol of the World." In the winter he was employed as a chemist on Louisana sugar plantations, and in the summer, he would return to Biloxi to bottle artesian water and experiment with his pop flavors.

Though he sometimes used archaic business practices, Braq proved a diploma wasn't necesary to forge a soft drink empire. He invested heavily in real estate and banks, bought a yacht, and even open a car dealership in Pascagoula,Miss. But always his Biloxi sodas came first. In 1931 at the urging of his son Edward II, Barq was the first to break away from the traditional six and eight ounce bottles. He convinced the Fabachers, a New Orleans brewery family, to sell him clear 12 ounce bottles that would give "a sense of satisfaction which comes with getting more of a good thing than the price seems to warrant." The 12 ounce bottle price remained at 5 cents for many years. 

The first franchise came in 1934 with a Mobile AL. firm, soon followed by another one in New Orleans,LA. The New Orleans plant was operated by Jesse Robinson, whom Barq had taken from a broken home,raised like a son. Barq helped launch him in the industry with special contracts to make syrup himself. Because of Robinson's success, many New Orleanians mistakenly think of Barq's as their hometown drink. 

The drinks popularity was unstoppable. By 1937, 62 bottling plants had been established in 22 states. The numbers peaked in 1950 at about 200, but by that time the "root beer" had been forced to undergo changes. The first came in 1938 when the federal government banned caffeine in root beer. Barq simply changed the name of his drink to Barq's Sr. and then set about developing a caffeine free root beer.

When the government reversed it caffeine ban in 1960, Barq's Sr. disappered,and the original recipe once again appeared,as root beer. This created some confusion about what to call the drink. Many had inadvertently called it Barq's Root Beer, but it wouldn't take long for the old man to gracefullly straighten one out by saying "Barq's,son. Just Barq's."

Believing the product would sell itself, advertising budgets remains small. The popular slogan "Drink Barq's. It's Good" appeared on restaurant boards used to chalk up daily lunch specials and on pencils and rulers handed out to school children. The blue and orange logo that appeared on clocks, therometers and tin signs was never produced in large numbers, and the overall promotion of Barq's was quite small as compared to other soft drinks such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola and Dr. Pepper.

In 1976 John Koerner and John Oudt bought the company from the Barqls family and moved the headquarters to new Orelans. The Orange and blue-logo was dropped and replaced with a silver background. Barqls is bottled in over 400 plants, most of them are affiliated with Coca-Cola and Pepsi. This move has placed Barq's in a second place position behind number one A&W. 

Clicquot Club Soda 

[Note:  this page originally was under the url http://www.nostalgiapubs.com/articles/CLICQUOTCLUB.html - In February 2001, the that url led to an apparently unrelated webpage.]

The Clicquot Club Company (pronounced Keek-0) was established in 1881 by Lansing Millis. The little country town of Millis, Mass. was named after him. Millis was a retired railroad man of considerable means, who went into the soft drink business. Millis decided to make his ginger ale the way he would make it for his personal friends and guests. He made it from the finest, purest, costliest ingredients money could buy. He selected the highest grade of pure Jamaica ginger and used pure refined Cuban can sugar. The quality standard by which Clicquot Club Ginger Ale was made was set by Millis from the very beginning. Because of this, Clicquot Club was a stand out of quality in the field of ginger ale 

Millis added other beverages to his Clicquot Club family, sarsaparilla, rootbeer, cola, orange and others, all of which became very popular. Clicquot Club Ginger Ale as well as other flavors quickly became local favorites which soon spread to Boston and then to Rhode Island. These were the days before telephone and motor cars and modern advertising, when news of good things was spread slowly, by word of mouth, from town to town, city to city and state to state.

The turn of the century brought modernization of manufacturing, new machinery and buildings, salesmanship and advertising. But the same high standards of quality were unchanged. During the early 1900s bottle and label designs changed as well as methods of packaging, distribution, and advertising. However Millis was a stickler for maintaining the quality he felt was the hallmark of this product.

During the teens and twenties Clicquot Club took advantage of every form of advertising. Tin and cardboard signs, point of purchase material, magazines, newspapers, billboards, car cards and novelty items of all types were used. With the constant growth of Clicquot the plant at Millis, Mass. became huge, extending more than 1/3 of a mile, with it's own private siding and railroad station. But, by 1938 it proved to be inadequate to meet the demand for Clicquot Club Beverages. More manufacturing facilities were needed to meet the demand for the product that the public recognized as a "super value". 

By 1952 Clicquot Club was bottled in more than one hundred cities in the United States. Bottled by a network of Clicquot Club Bottling Plants from Maine to California, from Minnesota to Florida and was also bottled in South America, Nassau, Jamaica and the Philippines.

One of the advertising images of Clicquot Club was an Eskimo Boy, appropriately named (Kieek-0).' This cheerful, happy kid with a sparkling smile in a white arctic parka, often with his sled load of cool, refreshing beverages drawn by his team of Eskimo Huskies. Kleek-0 appeared on the label of every Clicquot Club bottle for many years as well as appearing on company advertising, billboards, radio and television.Millis claimed that his most important development was'Flavor Aging". The long slow process by which the choice flavor ingredients are allowed to blend and ripen for many months before being bottled. 

With the consistently growing popularity of this soda pop as a collectible, collectors are beginning to appreciate the company's long history as well as it's advertising. Many neat pieces of Clicquot Club advertising have turned up over the years, including a nice selection of bottles, paper labels, embossed and ACL. The ever popular signage including tin and porcelain, clocks and thermometers have increased dramatically over the years. 

I personally like the nice selection of bottle displays that have turned up, the best of which is a cardboard cutout dog sled that a bottle sits in. Kleek-0 the Eskimo was featured on most company advertising and his image is so recognizable with the product. A series of easel back cardboard cutouts of Kleek-0 in a number of sizes are very interesting. So, if you are familiar with Clicquot Club, or you have never heard of it, I hope this quick background of the company will bring added attention to this interesting and neat advertising. 

Frostie Old Fashioned Root Beer 

[Note:  this page originally was under the url http://www.nostalgiapubs.com/articles/frostierootbeer.html - In February 2001, the that url led to an apparently unrelated webpage.]

Beginning with a soft drink association that dates back to his early youth, George Rackensperger, president of The Frostie Company, decided in 1939 to open his own bottling plant. Renting an abandoned jailhouse in Catonsville, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore, he used the garage that formerly housed the police wagon for setting up his bottling equipment ... and the various cells were employed to store sugar, crowns, and other supplies. In this small and unassuming enterprise, there was born a product which rapidly forced the elimination of the many flavors being bottled by Mr. Rackensperger. Full capacity of equipment was needed to handle the demand of this simple item. 

Frostie Old Fashion Root Beer had dwarfed all other plant products in sales. 

Consumer acceptance and volume sales rapidly brought about the need for much larger quarters and larger machinery to handle the continuing growth. Mr. Rackensperger left thejailhouse .... and a new modern plant was built. 

During the interim between 1939 and 1947, numerous distributors in nearby counties requested and were given the authorization to sell Frostie in their territories. As Frostie grew, the distributors requested the opportunity to bottle the product themselves. Thus, without previous planning or thought of licensing, Frostie had become a franchised beverage. 

In 1947, bottler interest reached a new peak, and The Frostie Company was organized as a parent organization to handle the appointment and servicing of soft drink manufacturers and to expand the franchising beyond the Maryland borders. So began the growth of a product--which by its taste-appeal and word-of-mouth advertising--soon began making itself known throughout the industry. 

Frostie began methodical and deliberate invasion in all sections of the country ... moving state by state. As bottler representation increased, new personnel was added, so that the planned expansion could continue in accordance with the sound and stable growth pattern used in guiding The Frostie Co. in its early stages. 

After 10 short years, Frostie was represented in a majority of the states. The sales staff and specialty force were being increased to better service its franchised bottlers throughout the nation. 

Concurrent with the growth of The Frostie Co., and the number of bottlers now manufacturing the product, the services offered by the parent to its bottlers have also been constantly expanded and improved ... including its advertising policies. Another important development has been the allowance to bottlers to handle syrup for vending and fountain sales--rather than delegate it to outside sources or manage it as a parent operation. 

Thomas M. De Corse was vice president and general manager of the organization. Warehouses are based in Camden, NJ; Atlanta, GA; and St. Louis, MO.