Coke Are It...

Do you ever feel like you've reached the end of the information superhighway? Sometimes when I'm surfing around looking for collector sites for Coca-Cola bottles or cans all I come up with are sites that haven't been updated for 5 years or countless links and sites that just don't work. The Net is clogged with a zillion of them. I figure sooner or later I'll be searching Google and a great big graphic with a 'Do Not Enter' symbol will suddenly flash on the screen indicating that I've reached the end of the road - there's nothing to do but turn back from whence I came.

And then I discovered the world of blogging. Reading a person's blog, no matter what the topic, is a bit surreal. And the best ones are the blogs that are written to no one in particular. It's a bit like peeking into someone's diary or reading their personal mail. But I digress.

Today was a weird day... I was interviewed by a reporter from the National Post (Sarah Lazarovic) about the return of The Pop Shoppe to the Canadian market, and the rich history that it had in the 1970s and early 80s. She found it a bit ironic that I never drank soda pop as a kid (my parents never kept pop in the house and we were rarely aloud to have it), but now I have a large collection of Coca-Cola and Pop Shoppe stuff... and I drink Diet Coke like it's water. The story she's working on about Pop Shoppe will appear in the Saturday section of the N.P. in a couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for that.

The other day I took a stroll through the beverage section in Wal-Mart and also my local grocery store as I do every so often. A few things surprised me. First, at Wal-Mart, 2L bottles of most Coke products were $1.69 but a 2L bottle of Diet Coke with Lime was $2.29. Huh? What's up with that?

Meanwhile over at Sobey's, the Star Wars Pepsi promotion is gearing up (minus the commemorative cans this time around) and for once, Pepsi has beat Coke to the punch in something: the release of the 355mL plastic bottles. Of course, my first question would be - what's the point? You can buy a case of 8 355mL plastic bottles for the same price as a 12 pack of 355mL tins. Does this make logical sense to anyone? If it does, maybe you can explain it to me since I'm obviously a little slow. Apparently Coke understands it totally since a press release crossed my desk last week promoting THEIR new 355mL mini bottles that will be available here in Canada shortly.

Issue #37 of Soda Pop Dreams (print edition) is already shaping up to be one of our best. A few stories already submitted about some old bottling companies, a story about returnable glass bottles (with great photos), and some tidbits about RC Cola, what Bill Gates' beverage of choice is, a Pepsi glass bottling line that's throwing the towel in, and so much more!! For those of you in the Toronto area, I'll be at the annual Ontario Chapter of the Coca-Cola Collectors Club Yard Sale on Sunday, June 12th - admission is free and there will be tons of Coke memorabilia there for sale. Look for a write-up and photos about this event also coming up in Issue #37 of Soda Pop Dreams (http://www.sodapopdreams.org).

That's it for now. Take care, visit our site often, and Happy Collecting!