{"product_id":"vintage-1960s-1970s-coach-four-ginger-beer-soda-beverage-label-philadelphia","title":"Vintage 1960s-70s Coach and Four Ginger Beer Label 🐎 from Philadelphia","description":"\u003ch2\u003eGinger Beer or Ginger Ale? 🐎 Vintage 1960s Coach and Four Ginger Beer Label, Philadelphia\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 3 1\/2\" x 2 1\/2\"\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\/hLEXXcGhj9U\" 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\u003cp\u003eThis label is very collectible. Really cool stagecoach and colors! And the story behind that little stagecoach turned out to be a good one, so pull up a chair.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🐎 What's on it\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA small paper bottle label for Coach and Four Ginger Beer. Across the top, \u003cstrong\u003eCOACH AND FOUR ®\u003c\/strong\u003e over a black silhouette of a coachman driving four horses at full trot. Then \u003cstrong\u003eGinger Beer\u003c\/strong\u003e, and the fine print, word for word: \u003cem\u003e\"Contains carbonated water, sugar, Jamaica ginger, citric acid and citrus oils. Preserved with sodium benzoate.\"\u003c\/em\u003e Along the foot: \u003cem\u003e\"Bottled under authority of Coach and Four Products Co., Phila., Pa. 19140.\"\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\u003eThis is my favorite part. The name COACH AND FOUR went on soft drinks for the first time on \u003cstrong\u003eJune 26, 1956\u003c\/strong\u003e, and a month later it was filed with the U.S. Patent Office by \u003cstrong\u003eSheffield Bottling Co.\u003c\/strong\u003e, a Philadelphia partnership doing business as \"Coach 'N Four Products Co.\" It was registered on \u003cstrong\u003eJanuary 29, 1957\u003c\/strong\u003e as trademark No. 640,759, for \"maltless soft drinks and carbonated waters.\" That's the little ® you see on the label. Signing for Sheffield, as a partner, was \u003cstrong\u003eHarry Labovitz\u003c\/strong\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn \u003cstrong\u003eJuly 11, 1969\u003c\/strong\u003e, Sheffield handed the name and all its goodwill to a new partnership, \u003cstrong\u003eCoach and Four Products Company\u003c\/strong\u003e, made up of \u003cstrong\u003eHarry Labovitz and Arthur Labovitz\u003c\/strong\u003e, on North 6th Street in North Philadelphia. That is the exact company name printed on this label. The trademark was renewed in 1977 and finally lapsed in 1997, forty-one years after that first bottle in 1956.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Bottled under authority of\" is franchise talk: the company owned the name and the recipes, and the bottles were filled and capped under its label. Two Labovitzes, a stagecoach, and a lineup of mixers. The Coach and Four line ran to ginger ale, ginger beer, tonic water, bitter lemon, club soda, sarsaparilla and black raspberry, the kind of set you'd find behind a Philadelphia bar or in a family's basement fridge.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e📅 How old is it?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe label dates itself two ways. That five-digit ZIP, 19140, can't be earlier than \u003cstrong\u003eJuly 1, 1963\u003c\/strong\u003e, the day ZIP codes began. And the maker's name reads exactly the way the 1969 Labovitz partnership was named. So this is late 1960s into the 1970s, a true vintage piece of Philadelphia soda history.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🫚 Ginger beer, the real thing\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGinger beer is older and fiercer than ginger ale: more ginger, less sweet. It was first brewed in Yorkshire, England, in the mid-1700s and reached North America around 1790. The old brewed kind could run about 11 percent alcohol until England capped it at 2 percent in 1855. It was fermented with a \"ginger beer plant,\" which isn't a plant at all but a living partnership of a yeast and a bacterium, first described by the botanist Harry Marshall Ward in 1892. In the United States ginger beer hit its peak around 1920, before Prohibition pushed the milder ginger ale to the front.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTwo ginger beer stories every collector should know. On \u003cstrong\u003eAugust 26, 1928\u003c\/strong\u003e, May Donoghue sat in the Wellmeadow Café in Paisley, Scotland, and poured out a ginger beer float. Out came, she said, the remains of a snail. Her case, \u003cem\u003eDonoghue v Stevenson\u003c\/em\u003e, reached the House of Lords in 1932, and Lord Atkin's \"neighbour\" principle, that a maker owes care to the people who will use what he makes, became the foundation of modern negligence law. A bottle of ginger beer changed the law across the English-speaking world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnd in \u003cstrong\u003e1941\u003c\/strong\u003e ginger beer met vodka. Jack Morgan, whose company made Cock 'n' Bull ginger beer, got together with John G. Martin of Heublein and Rudolph Kunett of Smirnoff, and the Moscow Mule was born: two ounces of vodka, a squeeze of lemon and Morgan's ginger beer. (A bartender named Wes Price later claimed he invented it to clear dead stock out of the cellar. Take your pick!)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🇯🇲 Why \"Jamaica ginger\"?\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe label names its ginger: Jamaica ginger. It's a proud line on a soda label, but those two words carry a dark bit of American history too. During Prohibition, \"Jamaica ginger\" was also a patent medicine, an extract that was 70 to 80 percent alcohol and sold legally while liquor wasn't. In 1930 Harry Gross and Max Reisman of Hub Products swapped in a cheap industrial plasticizer to get their extract past government tests. Somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 people were left partly paralyzed, lifting their feet high with the toes flopping, a tap-click walk that became known as the \"jake walk,\" and blues singers like Tommy Johnson and Ishman Bracey sang about it. That was a different product entirely from the ginger in this soda, but it's why \"Jamaica ginger\" still makes an old-timer's ears prick up.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🎨 A coach and four\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA coach and four is a carriage drawn by four horses, all four driven \"four-in-hand\" by one driver holding every rein. Philadelphia has the most famous one in American art. Around 1879 to 1880, Fairman Rogers, a Philadelphia engineer and devoted coachman, had Thomas Eakins paint him driving a coaching party through Fairmount Park. The painting, \u003cem\u003eThe Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand\u003c\/em\u003e, hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Eakins posed its horses from Eadweard Muybridge's 1878 photographs of horses in motion, which makes it one of the first paintings to show exactly how horses move. A Philadelphia soda company choosing a coach and four for its label was picking one of the city's own great images.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e🏡 Display\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eImagine hanging this vintage advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! It's right at home in a bar, a kitchen or a game room, and it pairs up nicely with the rest of the Coach and Four flavors if you want the whole set together.\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\/vintage-1960s-coach-four-ginger-ale-soda-beverage-label-philadelphia-pa\"\u003eVintage 1960s Stage Coach and Four Ginger Ale Soda Beverage Label 🥤 Philadelphia, PA\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1960s-coach-four-sarsaparilla-soda-beverage-label-philadelphia\"\u003eVintage 1960s 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\/vintage-1960s-1970s-coach-four-sarsaparilla-label-philadelphia-pa\"\u003eVintage 1960s-70s 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":42130625790184,"sku":"VAG-7484407480552","price":5.5,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/antique-vintage-1960s-coach-four-ginger-beer-soda-beverage-label-philadelphia-pa-gifts-305.webp?v=1746001883","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/vintage-1960s-1970s-coach-four-ginger-beer-soda-beverage-label-philadelphia","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}