Vintage NOS 1940s–1950s Kar’s Tom Collins Mixer 🍸 Cork Bottle Cap — Detroit, Michigan

Who Mixed a Kar's Tom Collins? 🍸 Vintage NOS 1940s–1950s Cork Bottle Cap, Detroit, Michigan

Size: 1 1/4"

🆕 New Old Stock (NOS), unused and uncrimped, with the original cork liner.

🍸 A vintage Kar's Tom Collins Mixer cork-lined bottle cap from the John Kar Bottling Co. of Detroit, Michigan, 1940s–1950s. Kar's in big silver letters on a black band, and TOM COLLINS MIXER in green on a silver panel, with …tling Co. Detroit running around the skirt. Inside, the old pressed-cork liner from the days before plastic. Like every uncrimped crown it measures 1 1/4" across.

🏭 John Kar and Delray

John Kar was running the John Kar Cafe, a saloon on West Jefferson in Delray, by 1909. In 1922 he bought the A. R. Andrews and Son Bottling Works and set up at 8559 West Jefferson Avenue, and his pop was an instant hit. Delray was Detroit's Hungarian neighborhood, a mix of Hungarian, Slovak and Polish families down by the river, so plenty of Kar's ads ran in Hungarian: Kar János és Fiai, John Kar & Sons. Besides his own Kar's label he bottled O-So pop, one of Michigan's favorite sodas, in creme soda, lemon-lime, cherry, grape, strawberry, root beer, orange and Rock and Rye.

The neighborhood remembers it well. One woman recalled the plant smelled like bleach and sugar water; another worked there as a kid and got paid in pop; and the story goes the employees used to fish right out the back window. John Kar died in 1951 and his son Ed kept it going; the business later passed to other owners and closed for good in the early 1990s. Delray itself emptied out after the 1967 riots, as its families moved Downriver to Allen Park, Lincoln Park and Wyandotte.

🍋 Who was Tom Collins?

Nobody, and that was the joke. In the Great Tom Collins Hoax of 1874, you'd ask a friend, "Have you seen Tom Collins?" and when they said no, you'd tell them he was just around the corner in a bar, saying things about them. Newspapers joined in and printed made-up sightings of Tom Collins, and music halls wrote songs about him. The drink with his name, gin, lemon, sugar and soda water, was in print by 1882 in Harry Johnson's bartender's manual, and a bottled Tom Collins mixer like Kar's put the soda and the sour in one bottle so you only had to add the gin.

Condition
🆕 New Old Stock (NOS)
🔧 Unused and uncrimped
🟢 Original cork liner