Chicopee Soda Company

[Johnny Rocky]

I was just going through some of my great-grandparents bottles and this was one of them I'm a little curious about. What type of soda was it, I'm assuming just tonic or club, but correct me if I'm wrong. And how much does something like this usually sell for?

 

[Step Back In Time]

I've never heard about that company, but my guess on the age would be early 1900s. Maybe around 1910?

 

[Johnny Rocky]

Yeah the company itself is pretty local to my area of Western Mass. I know there was another soda company in Chicopee called Chico-Club, which in its name was club soda. I thought maybe this might be a precursor?

 

[CanadianBottles]

Yeah the company itself is pretty local to my area of Western Mass. I know there was another soda company in Chicopee called Chico-Club, which in its name was club soda. I thought maybe this might be a precursor?

This sort of company would have produced a wide variety of flavours. The whole idea of branded sodas was still in its infancy at that era, most soda companies worked the way the store brands do now where they carry all the standard flavours and don't really have one signature product. "Club" in a name doesn't usually denote club soda either, in those days it was usually meant to give a product a sense of being high class, but in this case I think they were probably trying to rip off the similar-sounding Clicquot Club, which was a popular ginger ale brand.

 

[Johnny Rocky]

I'm thinking that it may have started with multiple flavors and eventually isolated to just club sodas as that was that most popular? Here's the later bottle for Chico club that I found online, I myself can only ever find pieces of these of varying appearences.

 

[Johnny Rocky]

Well I actually have just found the fruit flavored one, found it funny that there is no flavor name actually on the bottle, maybe used to be on the cap?

 

[CanadianBottles]

Well I actually have just found the fruit flavored one, found it funny that there is no flavor name actually on the bottle, maybe used to be on the cap?View attachment 257623

Yeah usually the flavour was listed on the cap. The club soda one is a bit unusual to have the type of soda marked on the bottle, maybe at the end of the company's life it was the only thing they produced? Or maybe they were sued by Cliquot Club and had to stop producing ginger ale.

 

[HunterTheFox59]

I did a little bit of research on this company a while back, and it seems they were using the "Chico Club" name as early as the 1920s, maybe even earlier, and they were gone by the 1970s. I've got 2 bottles from them, a 28 ounce paper label, and a 7 ounce bottle, both from the early to mid 1940s.

 

[Johnny Rocky]

Thanks for the help. I always find pieces of these bottles around my area, but every time they have a different texture or embossing on them. I remember one was textured glass but had similar embossing as far as I could tell to the bottle I have now.