As some of you may have heard through the Twitterverse we sent twelve 1960s glass bottles to the set of the AMC smash hit show
Mad Men to be featured alongside leading man John Hamm in an upcoming episode. Well, the episode aired last week and boy were those Dr Pepper bottles front and center! I think the main star in that sense was the vending machine, which, contrary to popular belief did not come from us. In an interesting twist, what one can assume was meant to be just another prop in the midst of some serious main plot action has actually garnered some buzz over the past week. People have come out of the woodwork to argue that Dr Pepper was not available in the area of Manhattan where the scene would have taken place at that time. One of those people is Stuart Elliott, Media and Advertising writer for the
New York Times, who was actually remembers Manhattan from that time period and has challenged Dr Pepper, and subsequently the Museum, to prove that it was available. That was certainly an interesting couple of days! We were able to prove that indeed, it was entirely possible that Dr Pepper could have been available at that time, and for the sake of continuity here is the quote from Greg Artkop, Director of Corporate Communication for the Dr Pepper Snapple Group from the article Mr. Elliott wrote:
"As for Dr Pepper’s presence in New York City in 1963, “it was distributed by independent bottlers in the area,” he added, and according to information in the archives, the top bottlers in New York included two located in the boroughs of the Bronx and Brooklyn."
The bottom line is, OUR STUFF WAS IN FREAKING MAD MEN. Here is the link to the article by Mr. Elliott:
On TV, a ‘Mad’ DrHere are some stills and a link to the recap of the episode entitled
Guy Walks Into An Advertising AgencyRecap
And here is a pic of the brothers and sisters of the ones that were sent. These were not in good enough condition to go, but it gives you an idea of what the bottles look like up close!
