I like this cool set of wooden bottles, tinted in the colors of six common wine cooler flavors. They're made by Holgate, one of the earliest US companies to develop educational toys. Unfortunately, one of the bottle stoppers is missing; given the bottles' size [5"] and pre-CPSC vintage, I'll assume it was accidentally swallowed by a previous owner.
Vintage HOLGATE community Playthings WOOD soda bottles, first bid, $10+7 s/h, auction ends June 6 [ebay]
Related: an awesome array of vintage Holate toys [antiquetoycollections.com]
Plum?
Reminds me of getting soda pop as a kid from a local bottler. Pop was indeed sold in generic flavors, no brand name, and you returned the bottles to be washed and used again.
[from The Pop Shoppe, perhaps? Someone resurrected the brand a few years ago. -ed.]
Ha! I actually played with a set of these as a kid. They were either my father's or uncle's.
My Grandfather still has the set, although I believe ours is missing 4 of the tops (probably around somewhere in all the boxes of vintage toys that are still being played with by my son & nephews/nieces).
We had a place similar to what AJ describes, but it wasn't the Pop Shoppe, it was Consumer's Beverages; it still exists, but I don't live anywhere near it now, so I don't know if they still do the pop thing.
There were tons of flavors (or colors, anyway), but plum does not ring a bell!
Forgot to mention...
As a tiny devil myself, my grandfather used to take us to the local soda makers. They had about 45 flavors and you could get a (wooden, returnable) case for about $2US (this was in the late '70s).
Nothing like getting HIGH on 8-10 SOUR lemon sodas ('ala Buster from Arrested Development with the juice boxes) and running in circles around their levittown 'cape cod' copy for about 9 hours until my mother finally lost it (or we crashed and burned / stuffed my smallest sister into the in-floor laundry shoot in the hall closet - then the tears / punishments started).
Ah, family. You can't buy good times like that :)
Sadly, they were bought out about a decade ago and now just bottle crap in plastic.
My teufelskind has been screwed out of yet another great experience... poor little guy.
[whoa, I tried stuffing my younger siblings in my grandparents' laundry chute, too! -ed.]
Just an FYI that Holgate's still making rockin' lead-free toys in Pennsylvania...
http://www.holgatetoy.com/