This is a vintage TruAde picnic cooler in original, un-restored condition. TruAde was a non-carbonated fruit drink available in orange, grape, grapefruit and chocolate, as well as other flavors. The TruAde company was based in Chicago, Illinois, but the drink was bottled in Washington D.C. Although it was very popular, the drink disappeared about [...]

[Read more →]

This is an Atlas 18 Picnic Cooler that was manufactured for the Royal Crown Company Inc. by the Atlas Tool & Manufacturing Company of Missouri. We restored this cooler some years ago at Vintage Vending. It is embossed with the Royal Crown Cola logo and painted in the Royal Crown colors. This model was manufactured [...]

[Read more →]

This 1950s picnic cooler was manufactured by the Progress Refrigerator Company of Louisville, Kentucky. It has been restored and painted with the colors and graphics for the Hancock Oil Company of California.

This picnic cooler has an enameled steel exterior as well as a galvanized liner. On the interior there would have been a [...]

[Read more →]

This is a vintage ad for a soda cooler manufactured by S & S Products Co. of Lima, Ohio. This cooler, referred to as the “All-Syze” Bottle Cooler, was introduced in the mid-1940s. This soda chest was designed to promote better sales of bottled soda by displaying the bottles very prominently for potential customers. According [...]

[Read more →]

These photos are of a restored Universal Container built for a 7-bottle capacity. These were made between the 1940s and the 1950s. The soda bottles were cooled by being surrounded with crushed ice. These picnic coolers were painted a mint green by the manufacturer.

The Universal Cooler Corporation was a division of the International Detrola [...]

[Read more →]

This is an advertisement for several Coca-Cola coolers manufactured by the Glascock Brothers Mfg. Co. This ad is dated August 1931 and illustrates all of the Glascock coolers available at the time. There is the Standard, which was the first standardized ice box they made for the Coca-Cola Company in the late 1920s. The “Counter” [...]

[Read more →]