Faygo Friday #2

This week's Faygo flavor is Mandarin orange.

At a large botanical garden near where I work, there is a section with flora and fauna of Japan. Once a year they have a Japanese Festival where traditional Japanese music is played along with other Asian goings on.  What does this have to do with this can?  The bridge on the can makes me think of the bridge at the botanical garden that leads to the Japanese Island.  And it was on that bridge that I proposed to my wife many years ago.  We visited the real bridge earlier this week for the first time since the 1999 proposal.

Memorial Day 2013

Meanwhile, the two geisha on the can are serving up a basket full of delicious looking oranges.  Why don't they make scratch-n-sniff cans?

The can is from 1977 when Faygo was celebrating its 70th anniversary.

Come back next Friday for the next Faygo...

Cans with Pizzazz

Last week I received a package of cans from a fellow collector out East.

 I really like these cans.  The colors are so vivid and the pattern is so funky.  The brand name really is a good descriptor of the can design... Pizzazz.

(As usual, seltzer is the boring flavor, haha)

Thanks, Steve!

Faygo Friday #1

This week's Faygo flavor is Caribbean cola.

As summer weather teases us, I figured this warm-looking tropical can was a good place to start this weekly feature.  With islands in the background and palm trees up front, the steel drum band is ready to play some Caribbean music on the beach while you drink your soda.

The can is from 1977 when Faygo was celebrating its 70th anniversary.  As you will see in the weeks to come, they had a whole series of cans with this painting-style artwork.  And they had some unique flavor names during that time, too.

Come back next Friday for the next Faygo...

World's Most Boring Can

...boring because it has no label.  I got this newborn in one of the groups of cans I bought.

It's made of aluminum and has a pull top on it.

And the bottom is nice, too.

Unopened, unlabeled, unclassifiable.  I guess this silver bullet is headed for my "novelty" shelf.

Faygo Fridays

During the two years this blog has been up, I've never had a regular weekly feature.  So because Faygo cans, in my opinion, have had some of the most interesting designs/artwork, I am going to start up Faygo Fridays!

Faygo was founded in Detroit, Michigan, in 1907 as Feigenson Brothers Bottle Works by immigrants Ben and Perry Feigenson. The original flavors of Faygo (fruit punch, strawberry, and grape) were based on cake frosting recipes used by the Feigensons in Russia. As the company expanded, they felt the company's name was too long and changed it to Faygo. The brothers ran the company until the mid-1940s, when they turned it over to their sons. In the 1950s, the company created a series of radio and television advertisements featuring a fictional cowboy called the Faygo Kid, who was portrayed in animation for television commercials for Faygo Old-Fashioned Root Beer.

Faygo Kid

Because the drink had a limited shelf life, Faygo was only sold in Michigan until the late 1950s. Company chemists later resolved this issue by installing a filtration system to remove impurities from the plant's water. In the 1960s, the soda's regional popularity expanded when the company began advertising during broadcasts of Detroit Tigers games. Commercials produced in the 1970s featured "everyday people" on the Bob-Lo Boat singing the "Faygo Boat Song". Tree Sweet Products Corp. sold the company to National Beverage Corp. in 1987. In 2007, Faygo celebrated its 100th anniversary.

Come back every Friday morning for a new Faygo can featuring an interesting design or name.  Buckle up, the ride begins next week...

1984 Big Ten

In 1984, this Sports Soda set was created for the Big Ten Conference.  Each of the ten cans features one of the teams' mascots on the front and their 1984 football schedule on the back.  A cardboard display and carrying case were also produced, but I don't have those.

Occasionally one of these sets appears on eBay.  And sometimes they even have the carrying case with them.

During my online research, I found another set of cans released in 1984.  It was called the Big Eight Collection.  * The pictures below are from other websites, I do not have that set.

Another Can, Another Expansion

Two years ago my can collection started out in a couple of cardboard boxes in a closet.  Soon I built a wooden shelf in the basement for them.  Then I built another shelf.  Then I added some plastic shelves.  And then some metal ones.  Eventually I also had boxes in a couple of corners of the basement.

In the recent relocation of the company I work for, I acquired some nice heavy-duty shelving and decided to put it in the garage and move some cans out there.  I finished the can migration this evening.  I still have plenty of cans in the basement, but now I also have a corner of the garage dedicated to my hobby.

Basement shelves - front

Basement shelves - back

Doubles, foreign and 16oz cans

It may not look like it, but my cans are well-organized.  I obviously have many brands on display on the wooden shelves.  The cardboard trays I use hold 50 cans each.  In the above pic, I have some trades in the trays on the left.  The trays in the middle on the plastic shelves are my foreign cans and the trays on the plastic shelves on the right hold my 16oz and 24 cans (along with some other miscellaneous can stuff).

New can corner in the garage

Cans along the wall are trades, boxed cans are in the collection

My new Can Corner in the garage has more trades on the left-hand wall.  The cans straight ahead are in trays and alphabetized (each tray holds 1-3 letters).  The cans on the right are waiting to be added to my website.  The boxes on the top shelf are empties for shipping and the boxes on the bottom shelf are full of more cans waiting to be processed.  It's not climate controlled and I need to add some lights, but at this point I have to take what space I can get.

After taking the above pictures tonight, for the first time in two years I had to stop and consider, "Maybe my family is right and I do have a problem..."  haha

Kickstart the Day

I heard about Mountain Dew's new "energy drink" a couple of months ago and now it's here.  I got home from work yesterday and saw the orange citrus can in the kitchen.  My wife brought it home from work after one of her co-workers was done with it.

Kickstart is a "morning soda" that was released on February 25, 2013.  It comes in energy drink sized cans but has less caffeine than other energy drinks.  It launched with two flavors: citrus orange and fruit punch.  And I'm surprised to see the 16 oz can is one serving with only 80 calories.

I will be driving around this morning looking for the fruit punch variant.  If I find it, I'll try it out and post an update with my critique.

05/04/13 Update - I headed out this morning in search of the red Kickstart.  I had a few free hours if I needed it.  I had my list of grocery and convenient stores to check.  I told the family if I wasn't back by midday not to worry, I was out hunting.  And then I checked the store one block from my house and found it.  They've had both flavors for a while, I just didn't know it.  Silly me.

I bought it and tried it out.  Eh.  Carbonated fruit punch is kind of a weird experience, but I guess it could help wake one up in the morning.  I'm not a big fruit punch kind of person to begin with, so I probably couldn't have expected too much out of this.  Overall, it wasn't too bad.  Give it a try.

And the good news is that during my abbreviated can hunt I found a couple other cans I didn't have.  Maybe I'll write about those some day...