{"product_id":"1960s-hires-draft-root-beer-bottle-cap-collectible-vintage-treasures","title":"Vintage 1960s Hires Draft Root Beer Cork Bottle Cap • Baker Bottling MO 🟠 American Icon RIP 2022","description":"\u003ch2\u003eWhen Did Hires Root Beer Start to Fade? 🟠 Vintage 1960s Hires Draft Root Beer Cork Bottle Cap, Baker Bottling MO\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1 1\/4\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/61zICSv-Y1M\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHires is gone — and this cap comes from the decade the ground started moving under it.\u003c\/strong\u003e In 1960 the founder's family let go of the business Charles Elmer Hires had started in 1876, and that same year the government banned the ingredient root beer had been flavored with from the start. Look at the small print on this cap: \u003cstrong\u003e\"Naturally \u0026amp; Artificially Flavored.\"\u003c\/strong\u003e That is the change, in four words.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe root beer itself is gone now too. The cans stopped, the brand dropped off its owner's list, and in August 2024 the last company still making Hires fountain syrup sold out. Collectors say it plainly: \u003cstrong\u003eAmerican icon, RIP 2022.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🟠 What This Is\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAn unused Hires \u003cstrong\u003eDraft Style\u003c\/strong\u003e root beer crown cap — new old stock, never crimped onto a bottle. Hires orange, with DRAFT \u003csmall\u003eSTYLE\u003c\/small\u003e across the top in white, the chunky white \u003cstrong\u003eHires\u003c\/strong\u003e logo with its orange dot set in a dark brown panel, ROOTBEER beneath it, and around the lower edge \u003cstrong\u003eCARAMEL COLORED · NATURALLY \u0026amp; ARTIFICIALLY FLAVORED\u003c\/strong\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAround the skirt it carries the bottler's name — \u003cstrong\u003eBaker Bottling Co. Inc., Cape Girardeau, Mo.\u003c\/strong\u003e — and inside, the original \u003cstrong\u003enatural cork liner\u003c\/strong\u003e is still pressed into the fluted crown. The rest of the skirt is the bit I like best: \u003cstrong\u003ePRODUCED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE HIRES DIVISION, 2201 MAIN ST., EVANSTON, ILL. 60204\u003c\/strong\u003e. That was Crush International's American office, in Evanston, just north of Chicago. Crush made its concentrate there and in Trenton, New Jersey, and sold it to the bottlers franchised for Orange Crush and Hires — more than 300 of them across the country in 1968. Baker, down on the Mississippi with its own 63701 printed on the cap, was one of those bottlers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e📅 How Old It Is\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e1960s.\u003c\/strong\u003e The flavor line printed on the cap belongs to root beer after 1960, when artificial flavor replaced what the FDA had just banned, and the bold panel logo is the Hires look of those years. The cork liner puts it before plastic liners took over the industry. And both addresses on the skirt carry a five-digit ZIP code, which the Post Office only brought in on 1 July 1963 — so this cap was printed no earlier than that.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🌿 1960: The Year Root Beer Changed\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFor most of its history root beer tasted the way it did because of \u003cstrong\u003esassafras\u003c\/strong\u003e. The oil from sassafras root bark is mostly \u003cstrong\u003esafrole\u003c\/strong\u003e — 80 to 90 percent of it — and in \u003cstrong\u003e1960\u003c\/strong\u003e the Food and Drug Administration banned sassafras in foods and drinks after laboratory studies linked safrole to cancer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEvery root beer maker in America had to reformulate. After the ban, root beer was made with sarsaparilla, with safrole-free extracts, or with \u003cstrong\u003eartificial flavor\u003c\/strong\u003e — which is why a cap like this one tells you, right on its face, that the drink under it was \"naturally \u0026amp; artificially flavored.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏢 The Family Lets Go\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe same year, the Hires family sold the company to \u003cstrong\u003eConsolidated Foods\u003c\/strong\u003e. Two years later, in \u003cstrong\u003e1962\u003c\/strong\u003e, it went to \u003cstrong\u003eCrush International\u003c\/strong\u003e. From there it passed to Procter \u0026amp; Gamble in 1980, Cadbury Schweppes in 1989, Dr Pepper Snapple Group in 2008, and finally Keurig Dr Pepper — one brand among dozens, in the company of the brands it had once outsold.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🎶 Fifty Cents And Two Bottle Caps\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHere is the piece of Hires lore that makes a cap like this one worth a second look. In the early 1960s the jazz singer \u003cstrong\u003eBlossom Dearie\u003c\/strong\u003e — the small, girlish voice behind a string of cult records — sang Hires Root Beer's television commercials, and the jingle she recorded in 1962 was a hit.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHires turned it into a premium: in \u003cstrong\u003e1963\u003c\/strong\u003e it put out an LP, \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eBlossom Dearie Sings Rootin' Songs\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e, with jazz versions of the day's standards — \"Days of Wine and Roses,\" \"I Left My Heart in San Francisco,\" \"Fly Me to the Moon.\" You could not buy it in a record shop. You sent in \u003cstrong\u003e50 cents and two Hires bottle caps.\u003c\/strong\u003e For a little while, caps like this one were money.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🚚 Baker Bottling Co., Cape Girardeau\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBig soda brands did not bottle their own drinks everywhere; they sold syrup to regional bottlers who put the brand's name on local bottles and caps. In Cape Girardeau, Missouri, on the Mississippi, that bottler was \u003cstrong\u003eBaker Bottling Company\u003c\/strong\u003e — which also traded as Baker Carbonic and bottled Hires alongside the likes of Double Cola and Canada Dry. Its name on the skirt of this cap is the part that makes it a Cape Girardeau piece.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eCape Girardeau was an old river town long before it was a bottling town. It takes its name from a French trader, Girardot, whose post stood on the rocky cape that juts into the Mississippi; the town itself was founded on \u003cstrong\u003e4 January 1793\u003c\/strong\u003e on a Spanish land grant to \u003cstrong\u003eLouis Lorimier\u003c\/strong\u003e, whose \"Red House\" trading post became the best-known stop between St. Louis and Memphis. \u003cstrong\u003eLewis and Clark\u003c\/strong\u003e called there on 23 November 1803, and once the steamboats arrived in 1835 it grew into the biggest trading town on that stretch of river — the kind of place where a local bottler could put a national brand on every cooler for miles.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🍺 \"Draft Style\"\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe best root beer was never supposed to come from a bottle — it came from a soda fountain tap at the drugstore or the five-and-dime, foaming into a heavy glass, often with a scoop of vanilla on top. \"Draft Style\" on the cap was the bottler's promise that the root beer under it tasted like the fountain pour.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🥤 Where Hires Began\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCharles Elmer Hires\u003c\/strong\u003e, a Philadelphia pharmacist born in Roadstown, New Jersey, in 1851, was selling 25-cent packets of root beer powder at the \u003cstrong\u003e1876 Centennial Exposition\u003c\/strong\u003e and handing out free glasses to win customers. The legend says a preacher, \u003cstrong\u003eRussell Conwell\u003c\/strong\u003e — founder of Temple University — steered him to call it root \u003cem\u003ebeer\u003c\/em\u003e rather than root tea, so hard-drinking Pennsylvania coal miners would order it. It worked well enough that \"root beer\" became an American word, and Hires the name that set the standard for every root beer after it. And it was a Philadelphia business through and through: he first sold his root beer at his drugstore at Sixth and Spruce, the first factory was on Arch Street, and by about 1905 the company was in the Hires Building on North Broad Street.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🕯️ How Hires Disappeared\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBy 2023 Keurig Dr Pepper no longer listed Hires among its brands. The last canning had been done at the American Bottling Company in \u003cstrong\u003eOttumwa, Iowa\u003c\/strong\u003e, and the last Hires fountain syrup came from \u003cstrong\u003eKalil Bottling Company of Tucson, Arizona\u003c\/strong\u003e, which sold its operations to Keurig Dr Pepper on \u003cstrong\u003e9 August 2024\u003c\/strong\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e✅ Condition\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eNew old stock.\u003c\/strong\u003e Unused, never crimped onto a bottle. Colors bright, the white lettering crisp, cork liner intact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🖼️ What People Do With These\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cul\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eFrame it next to a copy of \u003cem\u003eBlossom Dearie Sings Rootin' Songs\u003c\/em\u003e — the cap that paid for the record\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eAdd it to a Missouri or Cape Girardeau collection alongside local bottles and signs\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eSet it on a board of soda caps, where the orange Hires cap is the one people point at\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003eGive it to someone who grew up on Hires and cannot buy it anymore\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003ePut it in a shadow box with a root beer float glass\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏭 WHS — the Mark of W. H. Hutchinson \u0026amp; Sons, Chicago\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne small mark near the edge reads \u003cstrong\u003eWHS\u003c\/strong\u003e. It identifies the manufacturer of the cap rather than the bottler or the brand: \u003cstrong\u003eW. H. Hutchinson \u0026amp; Sons of Chicago\u003c\/strong\u003e, whose route into the crown cap business is a story in itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWilliam H. Hutchinson\u003c\/strong\u003e was a Chicago soda bottler and a maker of bottling plant. In \u003cstrong\u003e1879\u003c\/strong\u003e his son \u003cstrong\u003eCharles G. Hutchinson\u003c\/strong\u003e patented the \u003cem\u003eHutchinson's Patent Spring Stopper\u003c\/em\u003e — a wire loop and rubber disc that sealed a soda bottle from the inside, and that you opened by thumping it down with your thumb. It swept the trade and made every rival closure obsolete. By 1882 the family had sold the bottling side to the Hayes brothers so the firm could concentrate on manufacturing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThen William Painter's crown cap arrived and did to the Hutchinson stopper exactly what the stopper had done to everything before it: cheaper, more sanitary, quicker to apply. Painter was a Baltimore man — he patented his \"crown cork\" in 1892 and started the Crown Cork \u0026amp; Seal Company of Baltimore to make it. Rather than go down with their own patent, \u003cstrong\u003eW. H. Hutchinson \u0026amp; Sons went into making crown caps\u003c\/strong\u003e, shipping them out of Chicago by the gross in wooden barrels stencilled W H HUTCHINSON \u0026amp; SONS CHICAGO and marked to be kept dry — because of the cork. The mark on this cap belongs to the people whose own invention the crown cap destroyed.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch2\u003e❓ Questions People Ask\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCan you still buy Hires Root Beer?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo — the brand is off Keurig Dr Pepper's list, and the last Hires fountain syrup was made in 2024.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWhy does it say \"Naturally \u0026amp; Artificially Flavored\"?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1960 the FDA banned sassafras, the traditional root beer flavor, and root beer makers reformulated with artificial flavor.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eWho was Baker Bottling?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe regional bottler in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, that bottled Hires under license; its name is on the cap.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHow old is it?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1960s.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eHas it been used?\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo. New old stock, never crimped, cork liner intact.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/1960s-hires-draft-root-beer-cork-bottle-cap-rip-2022-treasures-antique\"\u003eAntique Hires Root Beer Cork Bottle Cap 🥤 American Original, Brand Discontinued 2022 (1930s)\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1950s-tru-root-beer-cork-bottle-cap-baltimore-md\"\u003eVintage 1950s Tru Root Root Beer Cork-Lined Bottle Cap 🥤 Baltimore Soda Advertising, Delicious and Creamy Mug Graphic, Beverage Collectible\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1930s-hires-r-j-root-beer-label-rip-2023-american-icon\"\u003eAntique 1930s Hires R - J Root Beer Label 🥤 RIP 2023 American Icon!\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44275380257000,"sku":"VAG-8128636715240","price":6.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.4646710667_s0h4.jpg?v=1785359394","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/1960s-hires-draft-root-beer-bottle-cap-collectible-vintage-treasures","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}