Quacking the mystery of Donald Duck Beverages

The American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages convention came to Atlantic City New Jersey in November 1952 and among the multitude of brands was a new brand which was being introduced to the bottlers attending. This brand was built more on the mascot for it rather than upon the beverages themselves. I’m speaking of the Donald Duck Beverages line which included not only the flavor line, but a cola made with “the improved Pemberton formula.” That woke the Coca-Cola fans up. For those who don’t know John Pemberton was the inventor of Coca-Cola, so the company is claiming to have improved Coca-Cola essentially. The Donald Duck flavors were black cherry, grape, lemon lime, orange, root beer, strawberry, ginger ale, lime, cherry, cream soda, and of course the cola.

Before we get into who the owner of this brand was let’s examine what has become the predominant legend behind this brand, and that is the claim that the Donald Duck Beverages line was “Double Cola's gateway into the flavor beverage field.” I’ve seen this all over the internet, and was reminded of it when someone asked me about the connection between the two through my Vintage Soda Group on Facebook. I’ve done research into Double Cola, and my article on the early days of the brand has been published on this very blog, so I think I would have found a connection if there were one.

So I decided to give it a whirl, first stop was the November 11, 1952 edition of Bottling Industry, a period magazine format “newspaper” for the industry, which had a write up about the introduction of the brand at the aforementioned convention. Certain things troubled me about the connection to Double Cola, one of them being that in the very same issue of Bottling Industry they have an article on the Seminole Flavor Company’s building of a new plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and they name check not only Double Cola, but the Double Line brand as well. In other words Double Cola had no need for a “gateway into the flavor beverage field”. They’d had one since the Jumbo Beverages line in the 1920’s, and Double Line Beverages had replaced that one in the early 1930’s, and obviously was still going strong by 1952.

My next stop was of course the internet, where I found many cut and paste versions of the same line I noted above, and a few rewordings, but eventually I started hitting pay dirt. The corporation who owned the Donald Duck Beverages line was General Beverages Incorporated of Chattanooga Tennessee, the fact that they share the same town with Double Cola may have been the start of this legend. So the question became who was General Beverages? I found my answer in a court case where someone was trying to get money for a promissory note from the Lime Cola Company Incorporated of Montgomery, Alabama.

The Alabama Corporation had gone bankrupt in 1948, and in June of that year, pursuant to an order of the court, had transferred their assets to the Lime Cola Company of Chattanooga Tennessee. In July 1952 the Lime Cola Company of Chattanooga, changed its name to General Beverages Incorporated. It all makes sense when you realize that Donald Duck Cola was actually a Lime Cola, basically just an old brand with a new name. Double Cola wouldn’t be involved with a competing product of their leader brand from a former competitor. That just makes no business sense.
 

You have to give Donald Duck Beverages their due, they certainly were a hit, and promotion of the brand included Clarence J. “Ducky” Nash, the voice of Donald Duck, making a series of nationwide appearances to promote the new brand. When the brand was introduced at the convention they already had franchises in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Sumter, Greenville, Rock Hill, Spartanburg, and Aiken South Carolina, along with Augusta, Georgia. They were also on their way to introduce the brand to the rest of the United States and Canada. Like any large beverage producer they were ready with local distributors of bottler concentrate in Chattanooga Tennessee, Los Angeles California, Peoria Illinois, Syracuse New York, and Ottawa Ontario, Canada.

Quite possibly the largest contribution to the Beverage Industry by the Donald Duck brand may have to be General Beverages President Jack Harkins, formerly of Pepsi-Cola, who was determined to latch onto this new idea of producing soda in cans. In 1953 the corporation announced to its bottlers that they were going to make a huge push to canned products, and in September 1954 they opened their first of eight regional canning plants in Miami, Florida. This plant held the franchise for Florida, Southern Georgia, and Puerto Rico. One reason for Miami being the first was that it was an excellent stepping off point for the Central, and South American markets.
 

This was of course a step that was obviously taken as we do find that Donald Duck Beverages was being marketed there under the brand name Pato Pascual, or Pascual Duck, in the 1950’s by Embotelladora Pascual. This company had been founded in the 1930’s and 40’s by Victor Jimenez Rafael Samudio. The company took the Donald Duck logo from the bottles as their own after the brand disappeared in the United States, and were sued in the 1980’s by Disney which resulted to minor changes to the logo. That wasn’t enough for Disney who forced the logo to be changed again in 2007, now the duck has ruffled feathers with a baseball cap turned backwards.

There are several different versions of the Donald Duck bottles, and the cans come in cone top and flat top styles. There are many other items to collect from this brand as well including bottle cartons, crates, advertising, and bottle caps all with Donald’s face on them. The competition between soda and Disney collectors has meant that the prices of some of these can be at a premium especially the cone top cans. Don’t confuse the Donald Duck soda line with the Donald Duck Juice line, introduced in 1940, which is owned by Florida’s Natural Growers agricultural cooperative which was once known as the Florida Citrus Canners Cooperative until 1969, and Citrus World until 1998.

Unfortunately details of what became of General Beverage Incorporated are sketchy. According to a comment on one of the websites that claimed a connection to Double Cola, someone, whose father had owned stock in the corporation, found a hand written note with the stock saying that the corporation had their charter revoked for non-payment of taxes in 1957. This does track with the last mention that I can find for the brand in Google Books which is in a 1959 bulletin from the North Dakota State Laboratories Department who were testing the line from one of their local bottlers. I seriously doubt that, aside from the Pascual version of the brand, they made it too far out of the 1950’s. As an interesting side note, it appears that it was the, bankrupt and abandoned, Donald Duck Bottling Plant in Lynchburg, VA that was chosen for the permanent home of the first Baptist church headed by Jerry Falwell, the famous American television preacher, on June 25, 1957.

Clarence J. “Ducky” Nash, the voice of Donald Duck, appearing at the General Beverage booth in promotion of Donald Duck Beverages.

1952 bottling magazine ad for Donald Duck Beverages.

Donald Duck Lime Cola carton and bottles.

10oz Donald Duck Beverages bottle

Green Pascual bottle

Cone top Donald Duck cans.

Ad for Donald Duck Beverages

Donald Duck Lime Cola cap

Donald Duck Cola cap

Donald Duck Cola sign