Memories of Corona

[Kitty]

On a thread about paint, we started to wander off topic about Corona.  My memories were of my Mum buying the stuff from a lorry at Christmas and me taking the glass bottles back to reclaim 2d (tuppence).  Years later, as a summer job, I went to work in the Corona factory near Southampton.

Sweet 17 said that it rotted your teeth and Limousin Lass said:

Nothing better on a hot summers day than cream soda with a blob of ice cream in.  The Corona man and the Walls ice cream man on his bicycle used to follow each other around where I lived as a child in Salisbury.

What are your memories?

 

[Pierre ZFP]

Fizzy drinks were only for Christmas and birthdays, never all year round as it is now.  Corona was the favourite but it was more expensive so sometimes we had another make that I can't remember.

Do they still make Dandilion and Burdock?

Oh yeah, Idris lemonade was definitely the best.

When did Coke Cola start to be sold everywhere?  I'm sure it wasn't around when I was a kid.

 

[Tony F Dordogne]

Warm saspirilla from a stall in Petticoat Lane Market on Sunday!!!

Corona was good, what was the one with the clip top bottles?  'I drink Idris when I's dry', blast from the past!!!!!

And Tizer, not the new style but the old stuff, sold in fish and chip shops, used to have fish, chips and tizer when I stayed with my grandparents.

[Gluestick]

The Corona lorry used to call round to our house once a week, just like many others. This was circa 1955.

Remember the old flip top bottles with the ceramic top?

Mum would buy about six per week which with three thirsty boys and many visitors didn't last too long!

Our favourite was ginger beer.

All of which reminds me that most towns, even small ones, had local aereated mineral water companies; soda, tonic, ginger beer, Dandylion and Burdoch, Orange, lemon, whatever. Who remembers Sarsparilla?

As first Hunts and later Schweppes dominated the market, these old local bottling plants died. Shame.

Anyway, circa 1955/57 ish, a new rage hit! Ginger Beer Plants!

Anyone else remember those?

You were given a "root" which lived in a large jam jar or similar. And you fed it with sugar and powdered ginger and water. And once a week you divided it and took the licquor and boiled it up with lemon juice and sugar and more ginger and bottled it.

Et voila ! A week or so later, you had bottles of wondrous thirst quenching ginger beer! And fizzy, too.

We used spare non-returned Corona bottles for the ginger beer production.

 

[Weedon]

I used to sell Corona at one time.  I used to keep the empty bottles where some little oik used to bring in a few at a time to get the money back.  It took me a little while to twig what he was up to. That was back in the days where I thought everybody was a good guy.

My earliest memories are buying Neptune (similar to Corona) drinks from a chap who used to come round our estate with an old army truck with the drinks on. Yes I am that old!

Cream soda with a slice of Walls ice cream in it, Mmmm.  The man with the bicycle had the sign "Stop me and buy one."

A the time that I sold Corona I also had a machine that somebody (probably the kid who kept pinching the empty bottles) wrote on it "Buy me and stop one!" Somebody else wrote on it "This is the worst chewing gum I have ever tasted"

A customer of mine once used coke to clean the acid corrosion from the terminal of her battery.  That was most probably the day we stopped our kids drinking coke.

[Cendrillon]

"Anyone else remember those?

You were given a "root" which lived in a large jam jar or similar. And you fed it with sugar and powdered ginger and water. And once a week you divided it and took the licquor and boiled it up with lemon juice and sugar and more ginger and bottled it.

Et voila ! A week or so later, you had bottles of wondrous thirst quenching ginger beer! And fizzy, too".

I remember it well!

My mother made ginger beer until one day a bottle exploded resulting in a sticky mess everywhere. I think that was the end of home made ginger beer for our family.[:(]

 

Corona: That was a treat that we children had with Sunday lunch especially if we were visiting my granny.

[Kitty]

Corona had screw tops.  On the production line where I worked for my holiday job, they gave me the responsibility of checking that the machine had put all the tops on properly.  If I didn't do it tight, when the men lugged the cranes onto to the lorry, there woudl be one h*ll of a mess.

Before that, when I was a young teenager, we used to go on holiday in South Wales.  My brothers and I would go along the beach on the first day, collecting the discarded empties for pocket money.

[Catalpa]

[quote user="Pierre ZFP"]

When did Coke Cola start to be sold everywhere?  I'm sure it wasn't around when I was a kid.

 [/quote]

Depends when you were a kid. [;-)] My first "proper" job was with Coca-Cola - in the marketing department - so I used to be able to quote vast tracts of the history verbatim. [:P] It first arrived in England in 1900 but it was only sold in limited quantities in the posher emporia of the time. In reality, I don't think it became well-distributed / well-known until after 1944... after availability to GIs had introduced it to a wider population.

http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/Company_History/

[Kitty]

Thanks for the history page.  Amazing how many brands Coca-Cola own.  Malvern Water, for example.

[TWINKLE]

[quote user="Pierre ZFP"]

Corona was the favourite but it was more expensive so sometimes we had another make that I can't remember.

[/quote]

Alpine?

[AnOther]

Sure remember the Corona lorry on Saturday morning. We also used to get Kiora orange squash in 1/2 or 1/3 pint bottles, v-similar to milk bottles and with a similar top.

And who remembers the Jubbly

[img]http://www.lightstraw.co.uk/faded/f_jubblyoj.gif[/img]

[TWINKLE]

Blackcurrent Jubbly - it used to make me go a bit asthmatic [8-)] and Rainbow Drops

http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/rainbow-drops-p-171.html

[Pierre ZFP]

[quote user="TWINKLE"][quote user="Pierre ZFP"]

Corona was the favourite but it was more expensive so sometimes we had another make that I can't remember.

[/quote]

Alpine?

[/quote]

No I don't think so.  Maybe it was Silver Spring which was (still is) made in Folkestone.

[Valleyboy]

Corona was originally made by a firm in South Wales called Thomas & Evans; my dad knew the man who started the Corona business for them ( or so he told me ).

[Gluestick]

[quote user="TWINKLE"]

Blackcurrent Jubbly - it used to make me go a bit asthmatic [8-)] and Rainbow Drops

http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/rainbow-drops-p-171.html

[/quote]

That's the Sulphur Dioxide that they used to act as an anti-oxidant, Twinks.

Quite a number of cheaper squashes did that to me, too.

 

[Weedon]

[quote user="Gluestick"][quote user="TWINKLE"]

Blackcurrent Jubbly - it used to make me go a bit asthmatic [8-)] and Rainbow Drops

http://www.aquarterof.co.uk/rainbow-drops-p-171.html

[/quote]

That's the Sulphur Dioxide that they used to act as an anti-oxidant, Twinks.

Quite a number of cheaper squashes did that to me, too.

 

[/quote]

There you are Twinks, that's what you get for your parents buying you cheap squash.[:-))]

Mine made me eat brawn (sp)[+o(] I'm still waiting for the muscles, seems it all went to my paunch.

[Renaud]

Cathy used to do holiday work for Corona. A friend of mine at art school worked in the holidays for Brazils, in Amersham, who made sausages and pork pies. They had a staff day and she won their beauty contest becoming Miss Brazils (a fact that she kept pretty quiet about.)

At the end of each day the 'broken' pies got put into the mixture for the next day. So she maintained, there could be elements of the first batch ever, still circulating in the mix.

[Cendrillon]

"At the end of each day the 'broken' pies got put into the mixture for the next day. So she maintained, there could be elements of the first batch ever, still circulating in the mix."

 

YUK ! I don't think I will ever eat a pie again [:(]

 

One holiday job I had was working  in a factory packing sweet cigarettes and love hearts. It was on an industrial estate with lots of grass around the building, this attracted the slugs which sometimes got into the sweet mixture. This was enough to put one off sweets for life!!![+o(]

[TWINKLE]

[quote user="Weedon"][

There you are Twinks, that's what you get for your parents buying you cheap squash.[:-))]

[/quote]

All our teeth fell out and my mother stopped buying us pop[:(]  

Then one day a big lorry pulled up outside and she went inside and came back out with a juice maker[:@]  All my friends mums boycotted the pop man at the same time and we would complain about this in the dentist waiting room. Then one day my friend Lisa came screeching across the road to my house to tell me that her mother had bought................................

A Soda Stream[+o(]

[Tony F Dordogne]

Frozen Jubblies from the shop in Romford Market place and Lucky Bags from the Tryst at the top of the Market, none of which are there now :(

[Catalpa]

[quote user="Cathy"]Thanks for the history page.  Amazing how many brands Coca-Cola own.  Malvern Water, for example.[/quote]

Then more recently there was Dasani... which Coca-Cola got dramatically wrong.

http://www.beveragedaily.com/news/ng.asp?id=50947-coke-admits-defeat

Twinkle! Yes... I'd quite forgotten the Alpine lorry that used to deliver to us. [8-|]

[Just Katie]

Who remembers Cresta advertised by a polar bear who said "It's frothy man"!!

[TWINKLE]

http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=DkTL-g32vjI

What about the Humphrey ads?

[AnOther]

[quote user="Tony F Dordogne"]...and Lucky Bags from the Tryst at the top of the Market, none of which are there now :([/quote]Do you mean Jamboree Bags ?

 

[cooperlola]

[quote user="ErnieY"]

[quote user="Tony F Dordogne"]...and Lucky Bags from the Tryst at the top of the Market, none of which are there now :([/quote]Do you mean Jamboree Bags ?

 

[/quote]No - Lucky Bags, Ernie!

Or a bag of cayli - what you would call sherbert - (from a big jar, not pre-packaged) with a stick of liquorice to dip in it.

Talking of which, here's a nostalgia trip for you:

http://www.pennysweetshop.com/index.htm