From Saidler : I am looking for a embossed Crystal Springs bottle. The bottle is 6-8oz in size and sold from Waupaca, Wisconsin until Pepsi bought out the plant around 1920 or so. Please send picture and price.

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

The Coca-Cola Company has announced a new marketing platform for all Coca-Cola products worldwide. "Coca-Cola ... Real" will be the new slogan initially launched in the US on January 13, 2003 and subsequently worldwide. New Coca-Cola ads will feature appearances by R&B singer Mya, hip-hop artist Common, actors Penelope Cruz, Courtney Cox Arquette, David Arquette, talk show host, Craig Kilborn, boxing champion Muhammad Ali, Le Tour de France cycling champion Lance Armstrong, Winston Cup champion driver Tony Stewart and other members of the Coca-Cola NASCAR Racing Family.

Burger King has signed up the PepsiCo bottled water brand, Aquafina, as the exclusive bottled water supplier for its 8,200 US outlets. The financial details of the deal have not been disclosed. 

Following a review of several agencies over the last few months, Pepsi-Cola North America named Spike DDB its multicultural advertising agency of record. Spike DDB is a minority-owned, full-service advertising agency founded by world-renowned film director Spike Lee and DDB Worldwide. The agency’s first commercial work for PCNA will be a TV ad starring music and film sensation Beyoncé Knowles. The new TV ad is scheduled to air sometime in early 2003. Spike DDB’s new arrangement with Pepsi may go beyond creating TV advertising to include development of radio, print and Internet creative. 

Mecca Cola Challenges Coke
Tawfik Mathlouthi hopes to make Mecca Cola the soft drink of choice for Muslims everywhere...read the full story

From me, CG: In the past couple of weeks, I have been hunting down Harry Potter. The Boy Wizard? No, but the Coca-Cola bottle that bears his name, but not his likeness. I have found there are at least three "variations" of this bottle. One which is missing the "In theatres this November" under "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets". Another which is missing the bar code and then of course, the one which has both. A conversation with a local Coca-Cola "dude" baffled him regarding the missing bar codes. His reaction was that if he was not holding my bottle in his hand, he would not have believed there was such a bottle. However, the "bottle can" from Japan for Harry's Chamber of Secrets is my favorite. Check out the graphics for it <<CLICK HERE>> And if you didn't know there was one last year for the Sorcerer's Stone, <<CLICK HERE>> to see it.

What else is new with me? Well, this weekend, I will attend my first board meeting of the Federation of Historical Bottle Collectors (FOHBC) as the brand new editor of Bottles and Extras, which with my first issue (January-March, Winter 2003) goes quarterly as a journal-type publication. As the first issue is at the publishers as I type this, I am quite excited at the prospect ahead of me, and the opportunity to acquire new experiences. Wish me luck!

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

The Lone Star Chapter of the Coca-Cola Collectors Club will be hosting the 12th annual Tex-Fest from February 7-9 (Friday - Sunday), 2003 at the Radisson Hotel in Richardson, Texas. Events will include welcome banquet, silent auction, bingo, swap meet and room hopping. For more information, please call +1-214-749-2474. Hotel room rates are $69 per night and reservations may be made by calling +1-972-644-4000. Radisson Hotel is located on Central Expressway (I-75) at Campbell Road. 

The largest gathering of Coca-Cola collectors on the west coast will be held February 13-16 (Thursday - Sunday), 2003 at Jackie Gaughan's Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Great Get-Together events will include silent and regular auctions, raffle, swap meet, banquet and room hopping. For more information, please contact Janeen Davis, 25607 Firebrand Place, Hayward, CA 94541-5711. For hotel reservations, please call 1-800-634-6575. Room rates are $65 per night for Friday and Saturday and $45 for Sunday through Thursday. The Plaza Hotel is located at One Main Street, Las Vegas, NV 89101. 

Any new events  in your area? Mail so all of us can know, to: Upcoming Events

While other kids in his high school graduating class (Old Town High, class of 1938) wrote in their yearbook that they wanted to be doctors and lawyers and such, Percy O'Keefe wrote that he wanted to be president of Butterfield Bottling Company. And you know what? He made it. Of course, he had a slight advantage, his father and uncle owned the company.

In 1910, W. L. "Mort" Butterfield founded what became the Butterfield Bottling Company in the Great Works section of Old Town, Maine. Mort operated the firm until 1922, when he transferred ownership of the bottling works to his brother-in-law, Harold Spruce. In an ironic twist, Harold had teamed up with another brother-in-law, Donald O'Keefe, to make the purchase. The total paid was $2000.

The new partners maintained Butterfield Bottling as their company name, but elected to add more zing to their product name. They called it S & O'K (for Spruce and O'Keefe). With Donald handling the bottling, and Harold the deliver, the pair built up a steady trade in central and Down East Maine all through the 1920s and 1930s.

Percy O'Keefe joined his dad and uncle full-time upon graduation from high school in 1938. Apart from a five-year period working for a Portland boiler firm during WWII, Percy was a bottler for the next 50 years. He achieved his dream of someday becoming Butterfield's president in 1961 when he bought out the Spruce's half-share.

During the heydey of the 1930s, Butterfield Bottling sold a solid 30,000 cases of S & O'K a year. By 1988, however, volume was down to 7,000 cases a year. It became harder and harder for a two-person company (S & O'K was truly a "Mom and Pop"; Percy did the bottling, selling and delivering, while his wife Orisa handled the book-keeping) to survive in a soft drink world dominated by giants. 

In February of 1988, Percy and Orisa sold their formula and rights to the S & O'K name to Jim Moore and several associates. Moore moved operations to the University Mall in Orono, having big ideas - started big, but the results were not good. Jim and his associates simply "spent more than they made," according to Dick Mobarry, a bottling industry veteran, who was brought in as a consultant in the fall of 1990, about the same time as the operations were being moved again, this time to Hildreth Street, in Bangor, Maine.

In the end, quoting Dick Mobarry again, Moore and his group "didn't even have enough money to bankrupt." The result was that Bob Flynn of Maine Distributors, the biggest single creditor, took over the label and the firm's few assets in the fall of 1991.

Although Bob Flynn had pledged to keep S & O'K in operations, Dick Mobarry admits it will be a "tough road." Fans of old-time flavors, such as sarsaparilla, birch beer, cream, lemon-lime, and others, are rooting that they make it.

Pictured above: S & O'K Brand quart ACL bottle from 1935. Right: Movie theatre ad, 1932.

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