05 August 2013

Old Bottle Caps Of Singapore

One of my blog readers from Italy by the name of Massimo is a collector of old bottle caps. He has commented on my post Framroz's Aerated Waters as follows:
"I've just bought this cap
Framroz
and you can find other bottle caps from Singapore in my site at the page (here). If you want to use any photos you are free to do it.
Pearl
Seahorse
 Can you tell me something about the caps with the pearl and the one with the sea-horse?"
This is a challenge which I cannot take up. Not knowing the answers to Massimo's challenging questions myself, I emailed my heritage blogger friends, hoping that someone would know.

YG, who blogs here, said:
"Victor,

Could the 'Seahorse' bottle cap be for some Chinese cooling water sold at medical halls? No idea about the 'Pearl' cap.....don't know how to read the Chinese characters.

Rgds,
YG"

Massimo followed up on the matter by sending me an email:
"Hello Victor,

I’ve found very interesting the news about Framroz in your blog and it’s been amazing to see the Eastern Aerated Water building. Its cap is one that I specially like in my collection.

Thank for forwarding my question in your blog to your heritage friends. Now I better explain my request. I would like to know if the caps that I display in my Singapore page are all really from there, as well as the ones that are in Malaysia and Hong Kong.

I’m mainly interested in these caps:
Pearl
What is written on it? The upper side should be something like Pearl Ring, but the rest?


Seahorse
Do you know this kind of drink?


Snowman
Snowman. The text should say Snowman Aerated Water, but where was used?

Anyway, any other info about the Asian caps in my site will be welcome.

Greetings from Italy

Hi Massimo, thank you for your compliments about my blog post on Framroz. You can find more articles on soft drinks in my blog by clicking on the following links:

1. Ice Ball Man (2) dated 9 Jun 07;

2. Old Singapore Quiz (2) dated 22 Sep 08; and

3. Phoenix Aerated Waters dated 26 Oct 09.

Regarding your questions, looks like my blogger friends have not been able help much thus far. So I hope you don't mind that I am inviting comments from my blog readers via this post. I can answer one of your questions about the Chinese characters on the Pearl cap though. Yes, the characters on the top, read the traditional way from right to left mean "Pearl Ring". Those at the bottom simply mean "Registered Trademark" and hence I am afraid that they do not say much about the product in the bottle.

One more comment that I would like to make is that Singapore and Malaysia are geographically very close to each other. Hence, they share many of the brands of bottled products, especially when Singapore was part of Malaysia before 1963. Therefore, many of the bottle caps classified as belonging to Malaysia in your website were also found in Singapore at that time, namely RC, Sinalco, Coca Cola, Fanta, Mirinda, F&N Sarsi and Green Spot. And I would certainly not be surprised if the converse turns out to be also true.

Readers, if you can throw more light on Massimo's questions, please leave a comment here.

11 comments:

ANDY: Pop Music Not Pills. © said...

Hi Vic,

My comment has nothing to do with bottle caps. It's just that I am surprised no reader (some may not have read this posting) has come up with answers.

I am no collector of bottle-caps but when I haunt Sungei Road looking for old vinyl records I meet more foreigners than locals hunting for Singapore ones.

A well-known vendor tells me that these people buy them by the dozens and take them home. They include those Hong Kong, Japan, Indonesia, the UK and US.

"Soon our local records will be gone," remarked the vendor, "taken by others. They seem more interested in our heritage than Singaporeans."

Bottle-caps, vinyl-records or otherwise, are we losing our treasures to others?

No offence meant, just an experience to share. But I am still wondering why.

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