Antique 1930s Marbert Cola Beverage Label ✨ Newport, NH, "Please Daddy"

"Please Daddy": The Baltimore Cola That Coca-Cola Took to Court, Bottled in Newport, New Hampshire

A curly-headed toddler perches on the letters of MarBert and grins, and the whole sales pitch is two words long: "Please Daddy." MarBert was "The Distinctive Cola," a Baltimore brand filled and capped by local bottlers under their own names, and within a few years of this label's 1937 copyright the Coca-Cola Company had MarBert Products in federal court. This label was printed for Budd's Beverages of Newport, New Hampshire, a mill-town bottler that got its start as a grocery for Polish immigrants.

4" x 3" ~

What the Label Prints

Everything sits inside a big yellow panel shaped like a footed bowl, set against a dark brown field:

• "Please Daddy" in dark script at the top right
• MarBert in tall red Art Deco letters, the B swinging down into a long flourish, with a halftone photograph of a smiling toddler sitting on top of the letters
• The Distinctive COLA Beverage
• CONTENTS 12 FL. OZ.
• BOTTLED AND DISTRIBUTED BY / BUDD'S BEVERAGES, Inc. / NEWPORT, N. H.
• Along the top and bottom edges, in small type: TRADE MARK REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. COP'R. 1937 BY MARBERT PRODUCTS, INC. BALTIMORE, MD.

Printed in yellow, red and dark brown on paper. The back is blank, with the front design faintly showing through.

MarBert, "The Distinctive Cola," in Court

The label shows how MarBert worked. MarBert Products, Inc. of Baltimore, Maryland, owned the trademark and the copyright on the design, and the bottler's name went on the bottom line; here it is Budd's, up in New Hampshire. MarBert sold its cola syrup to distributors and bottlers, and it had bought up the assets of the Apola Extract & Syrup Company, a New York syrup maker that was no longer in business.

Coca-Cola did not take kindly to it. Coca-Cola Co. v. Marbert Products, Inc. was decided in federal district court on November 3, 1939. The fight went on appeal alongside the case against Dixi-Cola Laboratories, a Maryland corporation, and on January 11, 1941, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit wrote that fraudulent conduct had been established against Dixi-Cola Laboratories, certain Maryland men trading as Marbert's, Inc., and the Apola Extract and Syrup Corporation. The court drew a line worth remembering. The name itself, "MarBert the Distinctive Cola," did not infringe Coca-Cola's trademark. The fraud was in the selling: distributors in Baltimore pushed the syrup on customers with the understanding that the drink made from it would be served as Coca-Cola.

Budd's Beverages: From a Newport Grocery to Two States of Soda

Alexander Budnitz founded Budd's in Newport in 1916, first as a grocery store serving the town's Polish immigrants. In 1922 the business began using the Newport Bottling Works and started making carbonated drinks, and by the 1930s Budd's sodas were known across New Hampshire and into Vermont. Its own brands included Dartmouth Dry, Fruit Bowl and Old Sol, and Budd's was also a distributor for Moxie, Coca-Cola, and Ted's Root Beer.

Two of those names are New England legends in their own right. Moxie was created around 1876 by Augustin Thompson in Lowell, Massachusetts, and sold at first as "Moxie Nerve Food." It is bitter with gentian root, its name gave American English the word "moxie" for nerve and guts, and Maine made it the state's official soft drink in 2005. Ted's Root Beer was "The Kid's special brew," named for Boston Red Sox slugger Ted Williams and made by Moxie until it was discontinued in 1967. A Budd's bottle from 1962, now in the collection of the New Hampshire Historical Society, still carries the company's line: "Since 1916. Quality Products. The Taste Tells." Budd's closed its doors for good in 1972.

Newport, New Hampshire: The Mill Town on the Sugar River

Newport was granted in 1753, named for the English soldier Henry Newport, and got its first permanent settlers in 1766, families from Connecticut who settled near the Sugar River. The first factory followed in 1768, and water power made it a mill town: by 1859 it had three woolen mills and two tanneries, and the Sugar River Railroad reached town in 1871. The Sibley Scythe Company, founded in 1842, made blades that the story goes cleared jungle for the Panama Canal, and it closed in 1929. Newport is the seat of Sullivan County.

Sarah Josepha Hale was born in Newport on October 24, 1788. She wrote "Mary's Lamb," the rhyme everyone knows as "Mary Had a Little Lamb," edited Godey's Lady's Book for forty years, and campaigned for seventeen years until Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving in 1863. The Newport Opera House, built in 1886 after a fire took the old town hall, was called the largest stage north of Boston in its day. And the Newport Winter Carnival, first held in 1916, the same year Budnitz opened his grocery, is billed as the oldest continuously celebrated winter carnival in the country.

Display and Collecting

At 4" x 3" it frames small and bright: a soda fountain wall, a kitchen, a New Hampshire or Baltimore collection, or a run of cola advertising next to its better-known rivals. It belongs with anyone who collects the independent colas of the 1930s, New England bottlers, or the paper trail of the cola trademark fights.

Questions People Ask

What was MarBert Cola?
A trademarked cola sold as "The Distinctive Cola" by a Baltimore syrup company and filled by local bottlers, Budd's among them.

How old is this label?
It is from the 1930s; its small print carries a 1937 copyright.

Who bottled it?
Budd's of Newport, N.H., the soda business Alexander Budnitz started in 1916. It bottled from 1922 and shut down in 1972.

Did Coca-Cola sue MarBert?
Yes. The district court ruled in November 1939, and the 1941 appeal found fraud in the way the syrup was sold, while holding that the MarBert name did not infringe.

How big is it?
4" x 3" ~

Is the back printed?
No. Only the front is printed; the design ghosts through from behind.