{"product_id":"coach-four-tonic-water-label-philadelphia-pa","title":"Vintage 1970s Coach and Four Tonic Water Label 🐎 from Philadelphia","description":"\u003ch2\u003eWho Mixed With Coach and Four Tonic Water? 🐎 Vintage 1970s Soda Label, Philadelphia\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 3 1\/2\" x 2 1\/2\" ~ little to no wear\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\/NFSx6C0XnpU\" 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\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eOf all the Coach and Four labels, I think this Tonic Water one is one of the sharpest: that little stagecoach, those clean colors, and two words on it, CONTAINS QUININE, that carry about four hundred years of history. Here's the story.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🐎 What's on it\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eCOACH AND FOUR ®\u003c\/strong\u003e across the top in cream letters on black, then a bright red band edged in cream with a black coach-and-four silhouette on it, \u003cstrong\u003eTonic Water\u003c\/strong\u003e in big white script below, then \u003cem\u003e\"Contains quinine. Preserved with sodium benzoate.\"\u003c\/em\u003e and along the foot, \u003cem\u003e\"Bottled under authority of Coach and Four Products Co., Phila., Pa. 19117.\"\u003c\/em\u003e The back is plain paper.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e👬 The people behind the stagecoach\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe name was first used on soft drinks on \u003cstrong\u003eJune 26, 1956\u003c\/strong\u003e, spelled COACH'N FOUR back then. \u003cstrong\u003eSheffield Bottling Co.\u003c\/strong\u003e, a Philadelphia partnership doing business as \"Coach 'N Four Products Co.,\" filed it with the U.S. Patent Office that July and had it registered on \u003cstrong\u003eJanuary 29, 1957\u003c\/strong\u003e (trademark No. 640,759, for \"maltless soft drinks and carbonated waters\"). \u003cstrong\u003eHarry Labovitz\u003c\/strong\u003e signed as a partner.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn \u003cstrong\u003eJuly 11, 1969\u003c\/strong\u003e the name and its goodwill passed to \u003cstrong\u003eCoach and Four Products Company\u003c\/strong\u003e, a partnership of \u003cstrong\u003eHarry Labovitz and Arthur Labovitz\u003c\/strong\u003e, then on North 6th Street in North Philadelphia, ZIP 19140. In January 1971 the registration was amended to the new owner and to the COACH AND FOUR form printed on this label. The trademark was renewed in 1977 and lapsed in 1997.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🏠 The family bottling works behind the stagecoach\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCoach and Four was a brand of \u003cstrong\u003eSheffield Bottling Co.\u003c\/strong\u003e, a family soda works at 3727-3729 North 6th Street, listed there in a bottlers' trade journal as early as 1945. Sheffield told the Patent Office it had used its mark on soft drinks since \u003cstrong\u003eOctober 6, 1931\u003c\/strong\u003e. In 1949 Mr. Labovitz of Sheffield was president of the Philadelphia Manufacturers of Carbonated Beverages and sat on the board of the Pennsylvania Bottlers Association, and in 1950 Sheffield was packing Logan Beverages for the Penn Mutual Grocery Co. A 1974 Philadelphia industrial directory still lists the Sheffield Beverage company at 3729 N. 6th St., ZIP 19140, making soft drinks with 20 employees, \u003cstrong\u003eHarry and Arthur Labovitz\u003c\/strong\u003e partners.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA grandson of the family got in touch with me about this brand, and the way the family tells it, Coach and Four was meant to be the more polished line next to the everyday Sheffield label. Sheffield's own flavor list had quinine water on it. On the Coach and Four label it's Tonic Water, the dressier name, which is just what the family says the brand was for. A big part of the business was filling seltzer bottles for Philadelphia's hotels and bars and for the dining cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad, headquartered right here in Philadelphia, and when Sheffield bought out smaller bottlers it kept their labels, Girard and Rising Sun among them, running on the old routes so the customers got what they were used to.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e⚖️ The milk company that wanted the name\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn November 1961 Sheffield applied to register its own label: SHEFFIELD on a red-and-gold pennant with a chess knight and the word \"Tingly.\" \u003cstrong\u003eNational Dairy Products Corporation\u003c\/strong\u003e, the company behind New York's Sheffield Farms milk, opposed it, and its own Sheffield Farms carbonated drinks, ginger ale and club soda among them, came up in the case. The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board dismissed the opposition on \u003cstrong\u003eJune 7, 1967\u003c\/strong\u003e. National Dairy appealed to the U.S. Court of Customs and Patent Appeals, and that appeal was dismissed on \u003cstrong\u003eMay 9, 1969\u003c\/strong\u003e. Two months later the Coach and Four name went to its own company. The family remembers the legal bills of fighting for the Sheffield name, with more still coming, as the reason everything moved over to Coach and Four. And that chess knight? The grandson says his dad loved carved chess pieces.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNow look at the ZIP on this one: \u003cstrong\u003e19117\u003c\/strong\u003e. That's Elkins Park, in Cheltenham Township, just over Philadelphia's northern city line. Most of the Coach and Four flavors carry 19140, but this Tonic Water, the Ginger Ale and the Club Soda carry 19117, so the company printed labels from two different addresses over its life. Two printings, two addresses, one little stagecoach.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe whole Coach and Four line ran to ginger ale, ginger beer, tonic water, bitter lemon, club soda, sarsaparilla and black raspberry, a full lineup of mixers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e📅 How old is it?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA five-digit ZIP can't be earlier than \u003cstrong\u003eJuly 1, 1963\u003c\/strong\u003e, when ZIP codes began, and the name printed here, Coach and Four Products Co., is the company the brand passed to in July 1969 - before that, the partnership signed its papers under the Coach 'N Four name - and the COACH AND FOUR form across the top only went onto the registration in January 1971. That makes this a 1970s printing, a real vintage Philadelphia mixer label.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🌿 Quinine, the reason tonic exists\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eQuinine comes from the bark of the cinchona tree. The Spanish learned to use it in the 1600s from the Indigenous peoples of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, and it became the first real treatment for malaria. In early 19th-century India, British officers and soldiers were told to take their quinine every day, and it was so bitter that they mixed it with soda and sugar to get it down. That was tonic water.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first commercial tonic water was patented in \u003cstrong\u003e1858\u003c\/strong\u003e by Erasmus Bond of Pitt \u0026amp; Co. in London. Soldiers were already adding their gin ration to it, and the gin and tonic shows up in print for the first time in the \u003cem\u003eOriental Sporting Magazine\u003c\/em\u003e in \u003cstrong\u003e1868\u003c\/strong\u003e. Medicine became a cocktail.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eModern tonic is much gentler than the old medicine. In the United States the FDA caps quinine in tonic water at 83 parts per million. And here's my favorite bit of tonic trivia: put a glass of it under a blacklight and it glows blue, because the quinine soaks up the ultraviolet and gives it back as visible light.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🎨 A coach and four\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA coach and four is a carriage pulled by four horses, driven four-in-hand by one driver holding every rein. Philadelphia's most famous one is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: Thomas Eakins's \u003cem\u003eThe Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand\u003c\/em\u003e (1879 to 1880), which shows the engineer and coachman Fairman Rogers driving a coaching party through Fairmount Park. Eakins posed the horses from Eadweard Muybridge's 1878 photographs of horses in motion, so it's one of the first paintings to get a horse's stride exactly right. There's an old legal saying too, that a clever lawyer can drive a coach and four through any Act of Parliament, meaning there's always a loophole. A good name for a Philadelphia soda.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🏡 Display\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis looks great framed behind a home bar, especially next to an old tonic bottle or a gin bottle, and it's even better with the rest of the Coach and Four flavors as a set.\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\/coach-four-sarsaparilla-soda-beverage-label-philadelphia\"\u003eVintage 1970s Coach and Four Sarsaparilla 🍺 Soda Bottle Label Philadelphia PA Coach \u0026amp; Four Products Co.\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/coach-four-black-raspberry-soda-label-philadelphia-pa\"\u003eVintage 1970s Coach and Four Black Raspberry Soda Label 🐎 from Philadelphia, PA\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/coach-four-sarsaparilla-label-philadelphia-pa\"\u003eVintage 1970s Philadelphia Coach and Four 🐎 Sarsaparilla Soda Label\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":42127808790760,"sku":"VAG-7480507924712","price":5.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.3501092008_kxek.jpg?v=1785356459","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/coach-four-tonic-water-label-philadelphia-pa","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}