Save The Bottle

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a great book. The first movie version was pretty great, the second one, not so great.  There are many messages in the story about greed, status, innocence, and enough more to make a long list.  However, the part that always pulls me in, is the factory itself.  I have always wondered about how things are made and why they are made the way they are.

 A few years ago,I visited the Anheuser Busch Brewery and took the beer tour. It may seem a little odd for someone who doesn't drink to take this particular tour.  I grew up about 100 miles from St. Louis and Anheuser Busch and St. Louis are almost synonymous; it was only natural to want to see the Brewery. It was a very interesting tour. The best part, for me, was at the end when all the bottles are being filled and capped as they zoom by on a conveyor. 

I also took the visitor's tour of the Aplets and Cotlets factory in Cashmere Washington.  I loved it! The candy being inspected as it passed on a conveyor in front of workers with white gloves and hats was very much like the classic episode of  I Love Lucy episode. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wp3m1vg06Q  (except they were good at their job)

I wonder about how everything is made, not just food and drink. If you look around you and see something, anything;  I wonder how that was made and I want to visit the factory.

Today while I was soaking in a hot bath and drinking a Diet Coke (TMI?),  I started thinking about the shampoo and body wash bottles sitting on the edge of the tub. ( I also wonder about the shampoo, but this time it was the bottles that caught my attention.) Why are they shaped the way they are shaped? I know someone put thought into that shape. People get and lose jobs over things like the shape of shampoo bottles or where the buttons are on a cell phone.
I imagine that the bottles with a bit of a curve are meant to give a feminine or sexy impression and the straight bottle more of a no nonsense appeal. That seems fairly obvious, even for someone like me who doesn't know anything about anything. What I really wonder about though are the "shoulders" of the bottle. I don't like bottles with shoulders because it is hard to use all of whatever is inside. Even if you turn the bottle upside down and let it sit a while, the ingredients get stuck on the shoulder. If this isn't making any sense, maybe the pictures below will help. I think the lower bottle with the blue cap it more consumer friendly.

After mulling this over for awhile, I began to wonder about Coke bottles, since I had one in my hand at the time. Later in the day I was still thinking about Coke bottles so I looked on-line and found a very informative site. http://www.historyofthings.com/history-of-coca-cola It has this very cool picture showing the evolution of the Coke bottle.

I apologize if this is the most boring blog post in the history of blog posts. I am sorry you can never get back the time you just spent reading it. Still, the truth is, this is the kind of stuff I think about. I would love to have one of those early coke bottles!