Hoping to learn about Frostie-like bottle found in crawl space

[justonebottle]

We bought a 100-year-old house in the Baltimore area (maybe 30 minutes from Catonsville) in April, and we've been doing some removal of the ground floor flooring to address termites and encapsulate the crawl space. My husband texted me today that he found a soda bottle beneath our kitchen subfloor, which we plan to remove in entirety later this month. Per Google, it looks like a Frostie bottle from the Catonsville Bottling Company, but it doesn't say Frostie. There's some stuff on it (maybe some kind of compound from the floor?), but the label looks to be in good shape. I think it just has been sitting down there. For all I know, there may be others if they had a case or something. There's a good bit of trash we have found below the other floors.

Is this a Frostie bottle? Or rather, did Catonsville Bottling Company bottle what would later be Root Beer before adopting the Frostie name?
Does anyone know more about it?
Thank you

 

[HouTxSoda]

That is a Frostie bottle. It is a nice find, congrats.

 

[bottle-bud]

We bought a 100-year-old house in the Baltimore area (maybe 30 minutes from Catonsville) in April, and we've been doing some removal of the ground floor flooring to address termites and encapsulate the crawl space. My husband texted me today that he found a soda bottle beneath our kitchen subfloor, which we plan to remove in entirety later this month. Per Google, it looks like a Frostie bottle from the Catonsville Bottling Company, but it doesn't say Frostie. There's some stuff on it (maybe some kind of compound from the floor?), but the label looks to be in good shape. I think it just has been sitting down there. For all I know, there may be others if they had a case or something. There's a good bit of trash we have found below the other floors.

Is this a Frostie bottle? Or rather, did Catonsville Bottling Company bottle what would later be Root Beer before adopting the Frostie name?
Does anyone know more about it?
Thank you

View attachment 247366View attachment 247365

Nice early Frostie bottle. The Cantonsville Bottling Co. would have had a franchise for Frostie Root Beer. The Frostie Company was headquartered in Baltimore.

 

[justonebottle]

Nice early Frostie bottle. The Cantonsville Bottling Co. would have had a franchise for Frostie Root Beer. The Frostie Company was headquartered in Baltimore.View attachment 247369

Is that why it would be Frostie but not say Frostie anywhere on it? Did they have some issue with the Franchise?

 

[bottle-bud]

Is that why it would be Frostie but not say Frostie anywhere on it? Did they have some issue with the Franchise?

You know I seen lots of Frostie bottles in my day, so at first glance I assumed Frostie the name would be somewhere on the bottle, but clearly it not. So I am a bit stumped on this one. LOL

 

[justonebottle]

You know I seen lots of Frostie bottles in my day, so at first glance I assumed Frostie the name would be somewhere on the bottle, but clearly it not. So I am a bit stumped on this one. LOL

Me too!

 

[justonebottle]

That is a Frostie bottle. It is a nice find, congrats.

Do you happen to know how long they were bottling Frostie without the Frostie name? Or how that would happen?

 

[CanadianBottles]

That's a strange one. I wonder if they lost the Frostie franchise and decided to try to bottle a Frostie lookalike until they got sued for copyright infringement. I saw a former Subway franchise try that a few months ago, they kept the same fixtures, colour scheme, and almost the same logo, but with the word "Subs" instead of "Subway". They shut down after about three months or so, presumably sued into oblivion.

 

[shadeone]

This is definitely a Frostie Root Beer bottle and should be from around 1945 or maybe a little earlier. Are there any markings on the bottom?
It was originally just "old fashion root beer" before they named it Frostie. Not sure of when the switch was made but it was probably due to other brands having the words "old fashioned" in their name like "Dad's Old Fashioned" and "Ma's Old Fashioned".
I have more detailed Frostie info on my other computer, I'll check and post more here soon!

Here's an ad from the Montgomery County Sentinel, out of Rockville, Maryland from Thursday, October 05th, 1944:

Frostie's creator, George Rackensperger worked at Catonsville Bottling.
The earliest bottle I have personally had with the Frostie name was from 1946 and was bottled at Kelly Bottling Works in Frederick MD.

 

[shadeone]

Looks like Catonsville Bottling was Frostie "franchise number one" according to this little blurb from a 1953 issue of National Bottler's Gazette:

Melvin Zimmerman took over Catonsville Bottling in 1950.