This week's find taught me multiple ways to date Pepsi bottles and a bunch of other stuff I didn't know about Pepsi.
A Brief History
Online listings call this logo a “double dot” or “two dot” logo (but really it’s just a colon) and is one of the first logos Pepsi came out with. Pepsi switched to one dot (an early form of a hyphen, I suppose) as well as a different font in the 1950’s.
According to my research, if you see Pepsi Cola logos with a colon, it's probably from the 1940’s ¹ and worth more than other Pepsi paraphernalia that features different grammar choices.
The only two listings of this I can find online are, in fact, on a Cuba collectibles website.
This is an exact match (but a little worse)
And here's one that's a little different.
So I really couldn't tell you how this ended up in a garage in OKC, but I’m not complaining.
*how could this end up in a garage in okc?
Here’s what else I learned
I couldn’t find a lot of information on Pepsi in Cuba within the 1940-50 time frame. I did however find a little bit of history leading up to the 1935 formation of Compania Pepsi-Cola de Cuba.
In 1931 Charles G. Guth, president of a New York-based candy and fountain store called Loft Inc. revived the dying Pepsi-Cola company by offering Pepsi-Cola as his new in-store soda.
He also acquired 80 percent of the shares, modified the syrup formula, and canceled his previous contract with Coca-Cola in the process.
Guth soon took steps to internationalize Pepsi-Cola, establishing the Pepsi-Cola Company of Canada in 1934 and in the following year forming Compania Pepsi-Cola de Cuba. ²
Pepsi also made the wise decision to purchase a sugar plantation in Cuba in 1940 to avoid any more issues with sugar shortages! ³
And I guess the final takeaway is that some punctuation marks are more expensive than others: