Bottle Radio Is Beverage Ad (Jun, 1934)
Bottle Radio Is Beverage Ad
NOVEL are the uses to which radio has been put. Here is one that deserves a place near the top of the list of clever tie-ups. A large beverage manufacturer approached the maker of a well known low priced radio set, and got him to adapt a set to a case that looks like the bottle the advertiser’s beverage comes in. The result was a dummy case which resembled a large bottle of the well-known drink, with the added novelty of containing a radio set.
My dad brought one of these home to repair once, must have been in the late 60s.
I’m pretty sure it was a Zenith radio inside, maybe a Philco. That doesn’t help much does it?
That thing was the coolest Coca Cola premium I ever saw, it was made from a thick maroon bakelite material.
I had pretty much forgotten about being in the presence of it until I saw this, thanks Charlie for posting!!
Tacky radios are older than I thought.
I wonder who the “large beverage manufacturer” with the “well known drink” might be?
I’ve got a copy of a book that’s a bunch of radio related reprints from Popular Mechanics. It seems that every other article is building a radio into something that’s not a radio. Kitchen cannisters: flour, sugar, radio. A radio frying pan to hang on the wall, radio in a pole lamp, radio in a walking stick (I think that one’s on here someplace), radio in a doll, and on and on.
Oh, almost forgot, a radio built on to a postcard you could mail. Like most of the miniature radio projects it was small; until you added 1 1/2 volt and 45 volt batteries, earphones, and a 50 foot wire antenna and ground connections.
The holy grail of home construction projects was a small radio that ran a speaker and didn’t need an external antenna, and preferably not super-heterodyne — hobbyists were terrified of alignment procedures.
Myles: I’ve been trying to figure that out all day!