Historicist: "The city that nobody loves"
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
It may not have had the comedic potential of a banana phone, but imagine the looks bypassers may have given to anyone grooving down the street with a pop can nestled next to their ear...or not, given the number of novelty promotional portable radios produced during the pre-Walkman/iPod era. The manufacturer took no responsibility for anyone who mistook the radio for an actual can of locally brewed ginger ale and discovered the lovely fizz of leaking battery acid.
Charles Wilson began bottling ginger ale and other sodas at a plant on Sherbourne Street in 1875. The signature on the company's bottle belongs to his son Sam, who expanded the business in the early 20th century and introduced a cash deposit bottle return system. Two years after today's ad appeared, the Wilson family sold the firm to Crush International. The name lingered until low sales and an old-fashioned image resulted in its disappearance from store shelves in 1985.
Just before the fizz went away for good, Toronto Star columnist Joey Slinger described the sensations experienced while drinking Wilson's:
Wilson's ginger ale used to have bite, zest, sparkle. It made your whole mouth want to put on its dancing shoes. Taking a swallow of Wilson's was like getting new batteries in your pacemaker. And it came out in a boldly marked can that seemed to shout, "Ginger ale and proud of it." At least it did until some genius decided boldness was the wrong approach for ginger ale.Source: The Toronto Star, September 2, 1971. Additional material from the February 21, 1985 edition of The Toronto Star.
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At home, we always had a 12 bottle wooden crate of
Wilson's 25 fl. oz. Ginger Ale in the garage where
it was kept cool.
Wilson's was as good as Schweppes and Canada Dry and, since it was local, it stimulated the local
economy.
Kingsway Pharmacy would deliver to homes for free.
It also helped that one lived in the tony part of Swansea.
"Taking a swallow of Wilson's was like getting new batteries in your pacemaker."
I'll take his word for it. I do agree that ginger ales arn't what they used to be. It's hard to find a good ginger beer around these days too, but I recently tried the PC Jamiacan Style Ginger Beer. Was surprised to find it has a good bite to it, like it should.
wilson's used to make the becker's house brand ginger ale too. awesome @ 10 cents a can.
One of my favourite Canadian movies, "Goin' Down The Road", has some great scenes in the Wilson bottling plant where the two newcomers to Toronto worked.
Does anyone still have rights to the Wilson's brand name? Now, there's one dead brand that may be worth reviving, perhaps with a little built-in McSweeney's/Trampoline-Hall-axis appeal...
Anyone remember getting Vernor's ginger ale
in Toronto?
It's been yonks since I last saw or tasted
any.
Don't know who would own the rights (possibly Cadbury Beverages Canada, the current producers of Crush flavours) but according to a newspaper article around the time of the brand's demise, the recipe was stored away by Crush.
From the May 7, 1985 edition of The Toronto Star:
"...the Wilson's formula will be stored in the company vault and, although it isn't likely, the product could be brought back in the future, possibly with a new name and glitzy image."
Vernor's and Diet Vernor's are available - I've bought both at Loblaws and Sobeys within the past year.
I'm surprised to see the word "ridiculously" in an ad from 1971. Ad copy was pretty bad-ass for a while, wasn't it?