I received my Tasty bottle today and it's in excellent condition with only minor case wear and a few scratches. It has some crud inside so I'm soaking it in distilled white vinegar which is good for all sorts of things including removing rust. It is embossed with ...
7131 = Some type of mold and/or catalog code*
B = Brockway Glass
41 = 1941
*Most of the bottle manufacturers had catalogs for their wares that salesmen used when they made their rounds. Each bottle shown in the catalog had it's own style code. Those same codes were often engraved in the molds that appeared on the bottles themselves. Hence, the 7131 was likely a code that only appeared on this particular bottle. The code on my other bottle is 7468.
I will post some photos of it this weekend. As far as I know it's still the only known example. Even though I can't say for certain, it might be one of the original "Tasty Flavors" as seen in the 1943 directory I posted. The typical flavors were Orange, Lemon, Grape, Strawberry, Cola, and Root Beer. The next thing on my list is to look for (and buy) the corresponding bottle caps.
The 1941 directory shows that Catonsville Bottling also bottled Zimba Kola at the time. I don't know very much about the brand, but there are about a dozen of the bottles currently on eBay. It appears the original trademark was registered in 1940 - but I'm not sure why it is in a foreign language. The number associated with it is 281,353. The earliest example I could find on the Internet is this one from 1941. The Triangle-R is the logo for the F.E. Reed Glass Co., Rochester, New York. I could not find one from Catonsville, nor one from Maryland.
You are the timeline expert, but I'm not sure if you listed "Old Fashion" as early as 1941. If not, this listing from the 1941 directory should confirm it.
Change that to sometime during the Winter of 1940 or the Spring of 1941 for "Old Fashion Root Beer." It took me all morning to find this but perseverance paid off. I don't know how to narrow it down any earlier than this.
I took another look at the 1940-1941 directory and found this at the bottom of page three. I can't say for certain but it sounds like everything in that particular directory was corrected / approved by April 3, 1941 - which may have been about the time it was first published and/or circulated. If so, then it might narrow down "Old Fashion Root Beer" to sometime between the Fall of 1940 to April of 1941. The 1940 Summer-Fall directory I posted earlier did not show "Old Fashion Root Beer." The main product in that one was for "Nichol Kola."
Bob
Attachments
1941 Catonsville Directory Corrected April 1941.png