smacky and bucky

I'm posting this because there's a neat story behind these bottles. They're Galaxy Syrup Bottles, made by Space Foods Company in Baltimore, Maryland in 1953. You would purchase a bottle of syrup and add it to carbonated water to make your own sodas. The company went out of business after the bottles were manufactured but before they could be filled and distributed. As a result, there are cases of unused bottles out there.

The company made bottles for ten different flavors of syrup, with each flavor represented by a different color. The neat thing is that the bottles are shaped like spacemen, and each flavor also had a rank: Space Scout, Space Sentry, Space Admiral, Space Bombardier, Space Ace, Interplanetary Commander, Orbit Admiral, Space Navigator, Space Commander, and Asteroid Commander. Each bottle has a metal screw-cap with a slot in the top. The idea was that when you finished the syrup you could punch out the cardboard under the cap and use the bottle as a bank!

I stumbled across one of the bottles at an antique store I had been dragged to in the middle of nowhere , and they wanted $20 for it. That was a bit much, so I did some research and discovered someone in Maryland selling entire cases of unused, like-new bottles in their original shipping box (which has cool retro Flash Gordon-type graphics on it. Picture of the box here). I purchased the case, and now I have them displayed with Silver Surfer in the front, just cruising by.

I suspect the current auction on ebay is by the same seller from whom I purchased my case, though the price has gone up a lot in two years (with a "Buy it now" price of $125.) You can see that auction here.