Mountain Dew Collection

[whiskeyman]

Hillbilly Willie -ie... Stan Dismuke's collection of Mt Dew memorabilia in Wartrace Tn.

This is the Raleigh Bottle Club newsletter...pdf file...may load slow:

http://www.raleighbottleclub.org/home/images/forms/0909.pdf

 

[morbious_fod]

A collection like that makes my sticker peck up!

 

[madman]

hey charlie thanks for sharing that link!

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

whiskeyman ~

The link you posted was a real treat ... it "Tickled My Innards." I wish Mt. Dew would go back to the Hillbilly theme instead of the "New Generation" stuff they do now. Exactly what year was Mountain Dew first introduced? I remember it well as a kid, and believe I was about ten years old at the time, which was in 1962. I grew up in the country, and all of my buddies and I (who thought of ourselves as hillbilly's) would drink nothing else. In fact, that same year I dressed up for Halloween as a hillbilly, and remember coloring my face with the burned cork of a bottle cap to look like I had a beard. Man-o-man, those were the days!

Thanks again,

SPB

 

[SODAPOPBOB]

P.S. ~

I found this cool link showing a basic timeline for Mountain Dew. Just slide the bar at the bottom. Check it out.

SPB

Link : http://www.mountaindew.com/#/aboutdew/history.php

 

[morbious_fod]

Trademark applied for in 1948 by the Hartmans. The M. Licht bottling company of Knoxville, Tenn. had a Lithonated Lemon drink in 1928 named Mountain Dew as well, same name, same flavor, coincidence? The Hartmans came to Knoxville in 1932 while Licht was still bottling, and were looking for a mixer to replace one they had left behind in Alabama. First franchise was Tri-City Beverage in 1954. Trademark transferred to the newly restructured Tip Corporation of America in 1957. Then things start getting fuzzy.

Legend one, Bill Bridgeforth gets permission from Bill Jones President of the Tip Corporation to put their local flavor Tri-City Lemonade, formulated by Bill Jones, into the Mountain Dew bottles in 1960 and creates a television commercial touting the "new" Mountain Dew. Legend two, the majority of the Tip Corporation's franchises being Pepsi bottlers, and Pepsi's rule that no competing flavor could be bottled along side their own, the original Mountain Dew being a Lithonated Lemon drink like 7-UP competing directly with Pepsi's recently introduced Teem, forced Bill Jones to completely change the formula to the Orange Lemonade flavor we have today in 1962. Legend three, the Minges, Pepsi bottlers in North Carolina and stock holders in the Tip Corporation demanded a new flavor due to the introduction of Teem. They wanted a flavor like Sun Drop. When Bill Jones didn't move fast enough for them they took it upon themselves to change the formula, and thus also claim to be the creators of the drink. Lot's of different stories, which one is the real story, that is the question.

So apparently any of Bill Jones' franchises could just do what they want with the formula of the drink they were bottling. If you believed every story involved in this mess known as the Mountain Dew legend, then Bill Jones was too busy trying to herd cats instead of doing what every other franchiser did with their drinks, you monkey with the formula then you won't be bottling that brand any longer. Most of these origin stories for the new flavor don't make any logical business sense, no franshiser would allow their franchises just do whatever they wanted with their brand. If a customer gets Lithonated Lemon Mountain Dew in Knoxville, drives to Johnson City and gets Tri-City Lemonade in a Mountain Dew bottle there, then drives into the Minges territory and gets yet another formula there then you are just wasting your time trying to crate a brand with one flavor. I don't think that Bill Jones could have kept the Tip Corporation alive for twenty years being an idiot, someone is not telling the whole truth, and unfortunately nearly all the main players are long gone.

Bill Jones sold the Tip Corporation to Pepsi-Cola in 1964 and the rest is history.

I'm not even going to get into the "Who bottled first the franchiser who trademarked the brand six years prior to Tri-City becoming a franchise, the Hartman's of Knoxville, or the franchisee, Tri-City Beverage?" question. The Mountain Dew story is a mess mainly, because we have a lot of anecdotal evidence, and very little actual written record of what went on. Anecdotal evidence is very sketchy at best, give me the cold hard facts. I would dearly love to find the Tip Corporation's records, but apparently Pepsi no longer has them or just isn't interested enough in their past to find anything out. They are a "forward thinking company" after all.

 

[madman]

hey morb yep its a mess great info!

 

[Anthonicia]

Hey morb, your insight into the Mountain Dew story is very intriguing. I am a relatively big fan and collector of Mountain Dew and Pepsi. I just kinda took Dick Bridgforth's story as being true since he is the only "real, living" member of the Mountain Dew lineage. I don't believe we will ever get the truth unless a Hartman diary or something like that is discovered.

What do you think the real story is? I believe a little about the whole Teem beverage contributing to the change in formula, if that indeed did happen. I don't know why people would lie about what happened, unless there were a number of things that happened which led to different a perception of events.

 

[morbious_fod]

It's more a battle over bragging rights, and you know how those who were involved with a historic event have their own take on what happened, usually centering around their own involvement in it. The facts tend to degrade further with each telling of the story. This only gets worse and the facts get even more massaged when the decedents of the individuals involved start getting involved in the story. While they may not be outright lying, maybe a fudging/mis-remembering of the facts, there is certainly a bias towards their particular ancestors' role in the historical event.

I'll give Dick Bridgeforth much credit for at least giving space to all the stories; however, the bias toward his father's creation of the new formula is fairly obvious in his book, which has now become the "official" history of Mountain Dew. I have read Bridgeforth's book, and have even discussed my misgivings about the story with him, and the newspapers articles that Bill Jones' Grandson has posted on his site which of course are biased toward Marion, VA, and Bill Jones being the location of the creation of the brand, which is true....from a certain point of view; however, the one that I give the most creadance to is the account of Wythe Hull in his book The History of the Marion Bottling Company. Hull not only was around during this period, but he was one of the stockholders in the company, a successful bottler in his own right, and a friend of Bill Jones himself.

Hull actually states that it was the Minges who ask for the formula change, and to be used in their pre-existing bottles, due to the introduction of Teem. You can't deny that there is a commercial out there from Tri-City Beverage for the "New" Mountain Dew, Bridgeforh does have it in his book, and no matter what happened none of the main fueders could have actually done any formula changing without the express permission of the franchiser, Bill Jones. So no matter what happened the new formula was created in Marion, VA by Bill Jones. Whether the formula started out as Tri-City Lemonade and Dick Bridgeforh, Tri-City being only a franchise bottler and owing no stock in the corporation, came up with the idea of using it in the existing Mountain Dew bottles, or if the Minges used their power in the Tip Corporation, being stockholders, and suggesting the change themselves and putting forth the idea to use the existing bottles, in the end it all comes down to Bill Jones and Marion, VA.

And that's just the feud over the new formula. We haven't even gotten into the "first to bottle the brand" which brings in the Hartmans VS Tri-City Beverage, the Franchiser VS the Franchisee, but that's a whole other monkey. I'm going to have to quit goofing off and post that article I've been working on where I share my own unbiased logical businessman point of view of the feud examining all sides of the argument and mostly saying "that makes no frigging sense". After we are talking about competent businessmen here. May have to work on that over vacation.

Trust me if we could get our hands on either the Hartman Beverage records, or the Tip Corporation records, I bet we could resolve this feud, because there would have been correspondence to either back up or refute these stories; however, it appears that these hard facts may be long gone, and we are just left with a few snippets of fact and a whole lot of anecdotal evidence. Memory is a funny thing as we humans get old and our views of what happened tend to change shape, that's why relying upon anecdotal evidence is not preferred in my work.

 

[morbious_fod]

Darn short edits.