Odd Ball Items

One of the fun things about collecting Root Beer advertising items is when you come across some of the odd items.  Here are some of the items I have recently found.

First up we have matchbooks covers.  I have no idea why you would use a matchbook to advertise root beer, but I guess so many people smoked back in the pre-50s that it was an effective way to get your brand in front of them.

I have found two wooden nickles that are for root beer.  These are not so easy to find. You really have to look at all of the detailed items when you go through a flea-market

or antique mall.

Here are a couple small stickers I found on eBay. They are not real brands but a knock off of existing brands. Obviously Hires and MUG.

This is a way cool item.  It is one of these 3D reflector pins. As you move it back and forth you see Dennis drinking his root beer. This was found in a freeway flea market in Kansas.

Many of the root beer brands made functional items like thermometers. Here is a Hires one I found in Grand Island Nebraska.

This is a bag that held around 100 new bottle caps.  I assume this is how they were shipped to the bottling company for use when bottling Hires Root Beer

This is a sandwich wrapper. I am not sure what came in it.

Here are some cool A&W straws for kids. I found these in a flea-market in Cheyenne Wyoming.

Lots of companies made bottle toppers.  They would stick them on one of the bottles in a six pack to draw people attention while they walked by.

I love these cones and little root beer items.  The cones were typically found at sports events.  You drank the root beer and then removed both ends and used it as a megaphone.