Vintage 1950s Royal Canadian Tom Collins Mixer Labels 🍸 Combo, Chicago, IL

Who Made Royal Canadian Tom Collins Mixer? 🍸 A Mountie on the Bottle: Mixer Labels from Chicago, Body and Neck

Size: 5" x 4" ~ and the neck label 4 1/2 x 1 inches ~, unused.

This is a combo, the big body label and its matching red neck label. Very neat image of a Royal Canadian Mounty riding in the middle of nowhere apparently. He seems so alert maybe he is hunting someone. He sits his chestnut horse in the red serge coat and broad-brimmed hat, with tall evergreens on one side, a river winding through the valley behind him and red banners hanging down both sides, all under a big yellow sky with ROYAL CANADIAN arched across the top.

🏷️ What's Printed on Them

• ROYAL CANADIAN TOM COLLINS MIXER
• EXTRA FINE
• CONTENTS ONE QUART, on both sides
• BOTTLED UNDER AUTHORITY OF ROYAL CANADIAN DISTRIBUTING CO., GENERAL OFFICES, CHICAGO ILL. U. S. A.
• NON-ALCOHOLIC and REG. U. S. PAT. OFF. along the bottom edge
• Neck label, in red: the brand again, with CONTAINS CARBONATED WATER, SUGAR, FOOD ACID (CITRIC), OIL EXTRACTED FROM CHOICEST LEMONS.

Bottled under authority means local bottlers filled it for the Chicago company. The backs are blank.

🍋 Have You Seen Tom Collins?

The mixer was the lemon, the sugar and the fizz, so all you had to add was the gin. The drink has a funny history. In 1874 people in New York, Pennsylvania and elsewhere started a hoax, asking "Have you seen Tom Collins?" and telling the victim that this Tom Collins was nearby talking about him, until the poor fellow went off hunting for a man who didn't exist. The earliest published Tom Collins recipe is in Harry Johnson's 1882 bartender's manual, with sugar, lemon or lime, ice, Old Tom gin and soda water. One theory traces it back to a headwaiter named John Collins at Limmer's Old House in London, and it may have turned into "Tom" once the recipes started calling for Old Tom gin.

🐎 The Mounties

The North-West Mounted Police were established in 1873 by the government of John A. Macdonald to police the Canadian West, and in 1920 the Royal North-West Mounted Police and the Dominion Police were combined to form the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Their motto is Maintiens le droit, "uphold the right," and these days the famous red serge, Stetson and boots come out only for ceremonies. A Chicago mixer company putting a Mountie on its bottles tells you how much that red coat meant to folks south of the border too.

🏡 Display

Imagine this vintage advertising as home decor in any room you choose! The pair would look great framed together over a home bar, right next to a tall Collins glass.