Not all innovation is progress.

That picture to the right is of a bottle that once held Upper 10 soda (it looked something like this in its younger days). It caught my eye while I was walking Derby through the woods near my house last week, so I brought it home and learned that Upper 10 was (in some places still is) a lemon/lime soda from the Royal Crown Cola company. A little more digging around showed that this bottle dates from the late fifties, possibly 1958.

It’s not that strange to find old glass bottles laying around, but several details about this one struck me.

First, the label advertises it as a “King Size” drink. How many ounces did a king drink in the fifties? Ten.

Second, the glass is thicker and heavier than anything you’ll pluck off a shelf today. I’m assuming it was constantly being refilled, and as such needed to be durable.

What’s most interesting, though, is the ingredients list, still barely visible after fifty years of weathering. It looks like this:

Carbonated Water, Sugar, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, and Flavor from Lime and Lemon Oils

Today, a standard serving of Sprite is twenty ounces of Carbonated Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors, Sodium Citrate and Sodium Benzoate.

In fifty years, we’ve doubled the amount of liquid, replaced sugar with high fructose corn syrup, and added sodium benzoate.

Which makes me wonder two things: why make these changes at all, and wouldn’t we probably all be better off going back to the 1958 formula?

Depending on the success of Pepsi Raw, full circle might yet come.