Anyone remember the 'pop man' who used to deliver your favourite fizzy drinks to your home?
Alpine and Sykes used to deliver round our way BITD. I remember they were still going strong in the 80s but don't recall seeing them in the 90s.
Nice pop but probably not terribly good for your health. Surprised I have any teeth left, drinking fizzy pop and scranning * quarters of sweets like they were going out of fashion. 😆
* eating...
Used to come on the milk float in the North West IIRC, Barr's generally (and 10p deposit back on the bottles, cue a generation of Wombles).
We had the Alpine pop wagon come round once a week were I lived in the West Mids.
Dandilion and Birdcock FTW.
I can still remember the shape of the bottles with the ridges around the neck.
🙂
They use beetroot as flavouring now, we must have passed peak burdock years ago.
Yup, the Mineral Man and his shonky van, rotting the teeth of children everywhere.
The Corona man visited us in Surrey until perhaps the mid 70s when the milkman took over the job.
Co-op pop man in Wallsend
when i was kid at school we would walk past the CORONA POP depot, looked inside , huge array of various pops to taste, sadly got chased away, then it closed down.
Milkman delivered it where we grew up, Water' and Robson's pop made in the same town.
National.
We had one in Kent, Cresta, R Whites, Rola-Cola etc. We also had a coal man and a peanut man who had a bike (unshelled peanuts in a paper bag).
Believe it or not we have whippets and flat-caps too.
We had Corona Pop delivery during the 70's and early eighties and then Mom started getting it from Asda. This was in Wednesfield, West Mids.
These were common all over the central belt of Scotland.
Our milk man delivered ours in Norfolk. If we were lucky mum would order some as a treat at xmas
Yep - Edinburgh.
Our milkman also used to deliver orange squash (already diluted) in the wee milk bottles.
For added points, our milk was delivered by horse and cart. The stables were just around the corner from us and as kids we used to play in them. The dairy horses were also used to pull the Queens state carriages, which were kept in the same stables so we used to play in them too!
Mam dropped us off at grandparents Sat am
mince and tatties for dinner (lunch)
Corona man would knock on door,pick flavour (lime or cherry)
Spend pm watching WOS & wrestling.
Not though of that in 30+years
N.E. Lincs
One of my school friends worked on the Pop van. Not sure of the van, but it was Ben Shaw's brand pop. I used to take bottles back to the local shop so I could visit the arcade to feed my Kung Fu Master and Double Dragon addiction.
I remember going on a tour of the Garvies factory in Milngavie, north of Glasgow, in the mid 70s. Pineappleade was my favourite.
Remember it well in the north east. The pop man.
We also went through a phase of wandering down the back lane behind the local newsagent / sweet-shop, collecting arm-fulls of empty bottles from their crates out-back and then walking back around the front and collecting a bunch of 5p's off the shop-keeper, "ta mister!"
Certainly had them in Glasgow in the late 70s/80s looking at the number of fillings my wife has. We had them in Leeds, we were too poor to afford it. Kiora for me.
Bon Accord used to deliver to us., in Edinburgh. 12 bottles of shitey Bona Cola Elite every week, which we used to drink as fast as possible (and spill/pour away/"accidentally" break the glass bottles) because once it was done we were allowed to switch to pepsi and coke.
The milkman only brought milk but the creme boy also delivered eggs. Poor Scott, we got a lot of jokes out of that. And the fish man delivered fish, rolls, and fruit. Makes me wonder why my mum's so against using Tesco Direct as it puts local shops out of business. Oh wait. It's because by refusing to use it, she gets me to go to Tesco instead and saves a fiver.
Definitely national.
Used to get the pop lorry even in a rural village in Kent in the early 80's.
10p deposit on bottles too (although that was also true of Corona etc. in the village store).
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😉
I remember the Alpine pop lorry from my childhood in South Lancs.
I've not seen one in years,do they even make Alpine pop these days?
The rather humble looking Bedford TK was the vehicle of choice if my memory serves me right.
my uncle used to do it in the early 90s. We used to get the unsold bottles, which, unfortunately, were always cream soda. yuck.
We used to get it in Kent in 1981/1982. Only place I do remember it from though.
North west.
We had Underwoods lemonade -the pop van delivered to my Nana's* on a Wednesday .
The yellow lemonade was better than the clear one. 🙂
+1 for dandelion & burdock .
* also too poor for pop.& biscuits!
Alpine man in Bradford, fizzy pop was a luxury..
bottle of lemonade and bottle of D&B from the sykes lorry every friday for us (north east as well). my brother and i used to fight over who would answer the door and hand last week's empties back to them.
We had the Alpine van too, but my parents would never let us buy from it. 🙁
We also had Jameson's Vans that were a fleet of ancient purple and black painted mobile hardware shops. From memory they looked like oversized Morris Minors with a green house full of pegs, mops and detergents on the back. I used to knock about with the proprietor's grandson when I was about 8 years old. The vans lived on the bottom floor of an old barn with the upper floor as a store room. I guess that they went bump in about 1980.
[url= http://www.doyouremember.co.uk/memory/alpine-soft-drinks ]Alpine[/url]
Yep, south Leeds in the 70s. Don't recall seeing one in Wakefield after we moved there in 77
I've not seen one in years,do they even make Alpine pop these days?
Looks like they were liquidated.
Our milkie delivers cow juice and eggs and when he's not out delivering, he's a flying instructor.
Also in the NE, Teesside, 1960's.
Two bottles per week, usually cherryade or dandelion & burdock. I also remember a Rington's tea van, a black-and-yellow three-wheeler.
Barr's generally (and 10p deposit back on the bottles, cue a generation of Wombles).
I can pretty accurately place someone's home town in my local area by asking them how they would refer to an empty, glass, Barr's Irn Bru bottle.
I'd call it a Hector, others would call it a Rammy, some would spend their childhood days searching for Gless Cheques or Gingies or, somewhat less imaginatively , Empties.
If I found one as a kid, I would redeem it at the Tally Van in exchange for a Pokey Hat with Monkey Blood.
We had the alpine wagon too in Liverpool
@moses - ringtons still going strong; i understand they now supply 'coffee' 🙂
Tovali here in Carmarthenshire. The shonky yellow truck used to park up opposite every Friday.
I've not seen it for a while though.
Used to be Corona van as a kid round East Anglian air bases in the 70s and early 80s
Then the milkman took over.
Bon Accord van for me. Orangeade which made you run round in circles for hours !
We used to have Mister Bacon deliver pop in Maidstone. Fizzy limeade was my favourite.
Mr Bacons
I think that was the one in Kent
(edit, must type faster - Hoo for me)
Enfield North London, open backed lorry, stacked crates of different coloured pop. Lovely jubbly. We used to collect coroner bottles but I'm pretty sure only for the newsagents not the lorry dude.
Bon Accord as a kid kept in a cold larder it was good lots of fizz at the start but their fitba team were pish hold the record for lost goals
Coroner bottles?
10p off if you take them to laughing Len Gorodkin?
He used to be mentioned on Look North West nearly every night.
By Stuart Hall ironically.
Corona van here in the FoD in the 70;s
and the trucks where all open sided , the crates sloping inwards and strangely non got nicked, the driver would stack the empty crates at bottom and somehow knew where all the different flavours where above, even if you couldnt see the open tops of the crates.
Had them when I was a kid here in Chippenham, Wiltshire. There was a Corona van and the milkman brought round small bottles of orange squash, in one of those little electric milk floats.
Coal man brought the coal on a horse-drawn waggon, and there was a rag-and-bone man as well.
Corona wagon in ossett near Wakefield till I guess the early 70s my parents were either too middle class or too healthy or too money consciousness to buy from it " there's plenty of water in tap!" I loved going to the neibours and getting dandelion and burdock with my tea. Bizarrely the bottles were all returned for 5p to the corner shop not the wagon.
We had the pop man in North Cumbria, think it was Underwood's.
Cherryade so sweet it turned your mouth inside out!
Used to get the Apline vans round my way, we never used them though. Barr's were better as you could claim ye 8p back in the shops! Used to do the ganjy run, chapping everybodies doors asking for their barrs glass emptys, then troop round to the shops(with much effort, 2 bags of bottles for an 8/9 year old is blinking heavy!), then gorge or selves on sweeties! 🙂 Happy days!
Struthers lorry in Ayr during the 70s
Corona van in Worcestershire.
In my teens we would hunt down empties and take them to the local sweet shop for the deposit. Collect enough for a bottle of pop each.
As soon as Rod, the eldest in our group, turned 18 they were exchanged for bottles of Woodpecker cider or perry.
Good days.
I remember the Alpine pop lorry from my childhood in South Lancs.
Yeap - a 7.5t flatbed truck-load of pop. Really gruff, hairy, vest-wearing men doing the deliveries too
Pop deliveries seem more universal than any of us seem to have imagined. What did differentiate us town by town though was the colour of the Creme Soda. Inexplicably bright green in our case.
We used to have a guy doing the rounds hiring VHS videos out of the boot of a car too.
Pop Man's alive and well and living in barra
I worked briefly for Cruickshanks Soft Drinks out of Buckie. Early noughties business was dying a death.
Good to see Maine soft drinks on the go still grew up in Bangor NI.
Struthers lorry in Ayr during the 70s
Didn't know you were from the shire Gordi?.
Alpine where I lived too, but the real joy was a big old Bedford box van used by Girdwoods bakers. Lovely old chap, Peter. Had a proper bakers counter with big old wooden trays of cream cakes.
I can still smell it.....
Alpine in Wigan as well.
I remember my great uncle always saying how expensive their pop was. My mate next door but one was allowed alpine but we weren't. Can't remember it tasting any better than any other when I did have some at my mates.
There is still a guy I see around in a old Sprinter with " Sugar free pop 5 bottles £3 " splattered all over the side of it. Last saw him going onto the housing estate near me which is as rough as Jeremy Kyles waiting room 😀 probably a front to sell other stuff......
Another thing I remember at my great aunts was the " potato man " as she called him which was basically a mobile store like that one on Postman Pat. Bloke called Joe ran it and he only recently passed away. He must have been ancient as he was old when I was a kid. He retired about 2000, and his round got taken over so we must have been getting the mobile shop thing till about 2005 ish.
Could understand it somewhere rural, but this was Wigan. Told my great aunt to stop buying of the new guy as all his stuff was from Aldi and he was adding 20p to everything.
70's Gateshead we had the coal waggon, milk man (not many of them left), the bread van (cakes loaves and biscuits) rag and bone man (jam jars used to get collected for some reason and old newspapers, perhaps recycling has always been around?) the pop man was always a treat
We had a pop man in Bolton in the 80's, can't remember the brand tho...What is even better, where the girlfriend's dad lives in Bavaria they have a beer man who leaves crates of beer on your doorstep in the morning and takes your empties!
Waters and Robsons from the milkman for Sunday Lunch if we kids behaved. Money earned from collection of bottles (5p if I recall) was a positive gravy train as long as you switched shops every so often.
The orange Corona van was still going in the early 90's in the Beacons, driver was the son of the owner so it usually arrived very fast and had the latest chart songs blaring out of it 🙂
Replaced by the milkman in '94, there was a commotion locally big enough to make the local paper for some odd reason! The milkman retired last year so it was running until then.
We had a milkman, a bread man, a fruit and veg man and a pop man (north west)
I remember Tizer, Cream soda in bright green, dandelion & burdock, and Irn Bru.
Anther STW nostalgia fest.....when I was a wee boy in Coupar Angus it was Strathmore springs who delivered the goods - as a slightly bigger wee boy in Galloway, Curries did the rounds. Fizzled out in the late 70's I think.
The pop man used to come to my Nana's in Denton (SE Manc, for those not of the area). She used to buy me a bottle of Tizer. She'd also let me sit in her chair whilst we wathed The Sullivans, each with our cup of tea (with sugar in), sharing a packet of Ginger Nuts.
I loved my Nana.
It was the Schofields van for me in 80s Liverpool. I think they're still doing it, but the brand is Dayla (As in Have a Nice Day La) now?
She'd also let me sit in her chair whilst we wathed The Sullivans, each with our cup of tea (with sugar in), sharing a packet of Ginger Nuts.I loved my Nana.
And that is better than any fizzy pop ever.
Yup, Alpine off the back of a Bedford, later a long bed Transit. I always though they were a north Ayrshire thing as they operated out of Barrhead, never realised they were nationwide.
My Nan had a pop man in the early 80s, and a fish man - in South Wales.
Also a coal man. The smell of lovely shiny anthracite being burned takes me back.
My Nan had a pop man in the early 80s, and a fish man - in South Wales.
Also a coal man.
I'm sorry, I read that a completely different way..... 😳
She had a fizzy drink
She had a fishy drink
She had a... um.... sooty drink?
It doesn't really work
Heh. She had a coal man for 60 years...
Yep, remember looking for deposit bottles as a kid (had to have the screw top to get the 10p) also had a fish van, meat van, grocery van, rag and bone man! Also, ( as i dont drink these days ) do they still have a "mr cockle" round the pubs these days? crab sticks after several pints was always a fave!
Wood & Watson's pop wagons round Durham, their Ginger Beer was lush!
I also remember a Rington's tea van, a black-and-yellow three-wheeler.
Like Frank said, still going strong but they've progressed from 3 wheelers.
Underwoods delivered in our small Cumbrian town, loved their D+B and cream soda...especially when added to ice cream....nom
We had Davenport's beer at home deliveries and I'm sure they delivered Corona, etc back in the day. (Deepest Oxfordshire).
Rag and Bone man still calls round these parts. The bloke is as strong as an ox. I watched him lift and carry an old coal burner into the back of a transit tipper. Blimey!