BIRTHDAY CAKE WITH PEPSI, PITTSBURGH, PA, 1957
Cat-eyed teenage girls consume chocolate frosted white sheet cake in a less than dainty manner sure not to please their charm school teacher. Their painted lips match the traditional print on the slip-covered sofa they are gathered on. Plastic straws in several pastel shades emerge from mostly empty bottles of Pepsi, America’s second favorite refreshing cola beverage,. The beautiful bottles share the coffee table with festive napkins, forks and plates of uneaten remains of hot dogs and pork and beans.
The South gave us soft drinks! We have North Carolina to thank for Pepsi, the sparkling cola beverage with the peppy name. A pharmacist there first concocted it in 1898, several years after Coca Cola was first consumed in neighboring Georgia where it was invented in 1885. The Coca Cola we drink to day is a bit different than the original formula. But it’s still addictive. No, the Coca name didn’t come from coconut, it came from cocaine. Scandalous! The granddaddy of all soft drinks began, according to the legend, as refreshing, attitude altering beverage called cocawine, a blend of cocaine and wine. How festive!
Speaking of Coca Cola… have you seen the NEW Coca-Cola can shaped like the classic coke bottle? You won’t believe your eyes! And it’s SO adorable! I hadn’t seen it until I opened up my hotel room fridge in Seattle and there it was. I could believe it! It’s as though a can and a bottle had a baby. I was a FOOL not to grab one… and of course now I can’t find one anywhere.
Speaking of cake have you made a Cherpumple yet? I DARE YOU TO TRY! Click here to see how!
Here’s to cake with Pepsi, Coke with coke, and YOU!
January 7, 2010
Los Angeles
Charles,
The special aluminum coke bottle designs you commented on were designed exclusively for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games Torch Relay. Available in Canada.
Hope this helps,
Steven
The girls look absolutely beautiful.
The colors and entire atmosphere of this slide is positively divine.
What a wonderful slide.
The girl in front looks like Carol Burnett.
That lipstick must be radio active! It stayed on through Pork ‘N’ Beans, cake and Pepsi!
I do remember using my granma’s old lipsticks back in the 80′s. It did stay on for hours. Probably had lots of red dye #2 in it!
Oh yeah, try Galco’s in Eagle Rock! They have an insane amount of candy and sodas from the past and more!
“THROWBACK!!!”
For “ONE MORE, LIMITED TIME PERIOD”… Real PEPSI is being released!
Made WITH REAL CANE SUGAR (“C&H. C&H. The pure cane sugar that Hawaii makes! It’s the only pure cane sugar… FROM HAWAII!” Vintage C&H advertising JINGLE).
For 7-YEARS, I was a “Certified Soda Pop Scientist” at The Arizona Canning Company”. I knew TASTE WOULD NEVER BE THE SAME after we swapped to the Demon & Dull Tasting Corn Syrup from the SPARKLING, SPRECKLES, SPARKLING, LIQUID DELICOUSNESS… R E A L SUGAR!
This is PEPSI’S second release of their “THROWBACK” formula. And, just like the FIRST (a couple months ago)… I BOUGHT & STOCKED UP ON EVERY CASE OF PEPSI (AND THEN, MOUNTAIN-DEW) I COULD GET MY HANDS ON!
Corn-syrup is sour and bland compared to REAL CANE SUGAR’S BRIGHT TASTE.
My parents are avid Pepsi collecters, they will love this!
Long Live Charles
You can still get glass soda bottles in most taquerias, and they get them from Mexico, where they still recycle the glass bottles. Oh yeah, and they still use sugar in the Coke, not corn syrup, and it tastes way better. ¡Viva Free Trade…!
Sorry Charles – That’s white frosted chocolate sheet cake!
Mmm. Pepsi and cake. Those glass Pepsi bottles make me weep with longing.
(The Pittsburgh in PA has an ‘h’ at the end. The one in CA does not.)
I love the traces of “things I haven’t seen in a long time” in these old photos:
*Sofas with floral patterns
*Tin(?) T.V. trays with raised, decorated outer lip.
*glass soda bottles
As always, I wonder who the people were, and what became of them.
Alright, if these girls each had 2 Pepsi’s AND that cake, then clearly they are totally hyped up on refined sugar – which is apparent anyway from the look on White Shirt’s face! I had a cousin who was addicted to Pepsi in the fifties-every picture shows him carrying a bottle, and the rumor was he would pitch a fit if he couldn’t get his fix every day. He was 8 or 9. A child junkie! Oh, those naive, carefree years when one could eat sugar and fat with no guilt!