1950’s Esso Tiger Advertising Statue “Put a Tiger In Your Tank”
These pictures and video are of the Esso Tiger we restored a few years back and that still guards the Retroplanet.com world headquarters. The pictures show the ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ stages. At Vintage Vending we restored 3 of these over the years. This [...]

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1960 Coca-Cola Vendo Soda Machines
This is a Vendo Company brochure announcing their available soda vending machine line for the year in 1960. Note the Vendo 44, which was introduced in 1956, was still being manufactured. This was a very popular model, and tens of thousands of these were manufactured.

As the Vendo soda machines were [...]

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Pictorial Decalcomanias, or Diner Signs
Although a little hard to read, the photo title reads “Dual Purpose Pictorial Decalcomanias”. In other words, decals. These images were transferred using heat to a non-porous surface, such as glass or ceramic. The process is an offset process, meaning the image is reversed when placed onto the surface. The first [...]

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Mobil Oil
“At the Sign of Friendly Service”
In 1870 the oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller and his partner, Henry Morrison Flagler incorporated the Standard Oil Company. By 1878 Standard Oil had control of $33 million of the total $35 million refining business in the United States and in 1882 Rockefeller reorganized his company into the [...]

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Coca-Cola Vending Machine Conversion Kits
Beginning in the 1950’s, the trend among soda machines was to offer vendors with multiple flavor selections. What was to be done with all of the single-selection soda dispensing machines already in use? The Selectivend Corporation came up with a solution. They introduced conversion kits for the more popular Coca-Cola Vendo [...]

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Gulf Oil “Stop at the Sign of the Orange Disc”
Gulf Oil was established in 1901 by a group of investors after a discovery of oil at Spindletop, Texas. The largest investor in the company was William Larimer Mellon, who became the head of the corporation and continued in that position for 45 years. In 1907 [...]

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