Vintage 1960s Frostie Root Beer Cork-Lined Bottle Cap 🥤 Elf Mascot Soda Advertising Crown Cap, Catonsville Maryland

Whatever Happened to the Little Elf on the Root Beer Bottle? 🧝 A Vintage 1960s Frostie Root Beer Cork-Lined Bottle Cap, Catonsville, Maryland

Size: 1 1/4"

Drink in white script on a red band across the top, Frostie® in big bouncy red letters, root beer underneath, and the Frostie elf grinning out from a grey circle. Around the edge runs the old ingredient line - CARBONATED WATER, SUGAR, NATURAL & ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, CARAMEL COLOR, CITRIC ACID, LESS THAN 1/10 OF 1% BENZOATE OF SODA (PRESERVATIVE) - plus the small WHs mark, and inside is the original composition cork liner. These were never crimped onto a bottle.

🏛️ Root beer from a jailhouse

Frostie started in 1939 in Catonsville, Maryland, just outside Baltimore, when George Rackensperger began brewing and bottling his own root beer - and the building he found to do it in was Catonsville's old town jail. The company's own history tells it that the old police garage became the bottling floor and the cells held the sugar and the glass. It caught on fast, and Frostie Enterprises grew into a real soda company: in 1971 it bought a competing root beer and drive-in chain, Stewart's Restaurants, and in 1974 the Dog n Suds root beer drive-ins and brand, carhop trays and all.

At the end of 1979 the Frostie brand went to the Monarch Beverage Company of Atlanta, in 2000 to Leading Edge Brands of Temple, Texas, and in 2009 to Intrastate Distributors of Detroit. The elf was the brand's face the whole time, on Frostie signs, labels and caps.

🧢 The cap

The crown cap was invented right up the road, by William Painter of Baltimore, who patented it in 1892. The little WHs on this skirt is W. H. Hutchinson & Sons of Chicago, one of the big crown makers, listed by the Crowncap Collectors Society. Cork liners like this one were the standard until plastic took over around 1965, and the ® after Frostie could only go on once the elf-and-script trademark was registered, on January 8, 1957. The very same cork-lined Drink Frostie crown turns up with the Pioneer Valley Ginger Ale Co. of Northampton, Massachusetts and a ZIP code on its skirt - 1963 or later - and this one is a 1960s cap.

🥤 About these

They're unused, 1 1/4 inches, cork and all. It's a fun one for a cap collector, a root beer fan, a Baltimore-area kitchen, or anybody who remembers the elf. The supply is finite - nobody's lining Frostie caps with cork anymore, and once these last unused ones are gone, they'll be very difficult to acquire.