Me For Yoo Hoo?

Whoa, guys. I know, I have been terrible about updating. Apologies!  But Michael and I were just at a baseball card convention over the weekend and we saw something that I couldn't NOT talk about. Check this out.

They're Yoo-hoo caps.  We saw a mint condition Mickey Mantle bottle cap (see bottom row, middle for a NON-mint condition bottle cap) at the show, in a little display box.

Now, I'm all for collecting, and baseball memorabilia is nothing to sneeze at. Michael is an avid collector of autographs and I wholeheartedly encourage his collecting (as he does for me!)

But, when we asked the guy who was displaying his Mickey Mantle Yoo-hoo bottle cap how much it was going for, he said, without blinking an eye: $1,000.

Michael and I looked at each other with disbelief. Did this guy actually think he was going to sell this bottle cap for $1,000? That is a LOT of money. For a bottle cap. Granted, Mantle seems to have a demand where prices for his memorabilia hasn't gone down, but still.  And it begs the question of my readers: how much are you willing to spend on a bottle cap? Is $1,000 a reasonable price? Is it outrageous? Is it more about the baseball aspect? Or are there bottle caps out there that are like, the holy grail of bottle caps and no price is too large to have it?

Honestly, Michael and I put a limit on how much we'll spend on our respective hobbies. We are collectors, but we also have a budget to keep.

Bottle cap blues

I know it has been forever since I've posted. I'm still around, still collecting, just been busy.  But thought you would enjoy this video.

I'll write more soon.

arnold palmer

ESPN "This Is Sports Center" commercials are hilarious. Michael and I have spent hours upon hours watching and deconstructing them.

So, what better excuse do I have than Arnold Palmer's Half and Half (Light!) bottle cap, to show a great Sports Center commercial here:

This is brilliant, as is the bottle cap. If only the actual drink tasted as good as a real Arnold Palmer: half iced tea, half lemonade. They sort of ruin it by putting the booze in, if that is possible (I honestly can't believe I'm saying that!).

If only Shaq would make a bottled drink with a cool bottle cap. Then I could show this commercial:

assorted soda

You may recall last fall my sqee'ing over the Barn Sale and my fantastic haul from that trip upstate. It's taken me a while to actually get to these, and I needed to figure out a good way to write about them. There are too many to do one post per crown, so I needed a theme.

In my opinion, the best of the lot can be found in this post. We have assorted regional and national sodas from back when there was more than just Coke and Pepsi. All of these crowns are cork-lined, and I just love the variety. These crowns really show (in some cases) the kind of beverage you're about to drink.  Don't just rely on the label. Check out our crowns, too, they seem to say.

There are three basic categories. The first is miscellaneous: we have a Blue Bird Grape Soda (why can't it be Purple Bird?) with a lovely blue bird in a top hat on a branch. Fun! They were putting birds on things before Portlandia even thought of it. And then there's Dodge City Sarsaparilla. When Michael and I went to Kansas City, we kept talking about going to Dodge, and then getting the hell out. But who even needs to go there when you have the bottle cap with a cowboy hat on it?

Next category: flavors. Bitter Lemon Dandy Soda--I like that it's DANDY; Cranberry Cola, which actually looks like it might have cherries on the crown; and Lemon Blossom Soda, which looks like something out of Brooklyn or Portlandia with those dainty little flowers.

But best of all, we have the crowns with people on them. There's a dandy with a top hat and a bowtie on Dandy Cola; a guy giving some sort of pointy finger and who clearly has some Old Fashioned Moxie; and to top it off, a creepy clown named Corky. What on earth was THAT soda?!

great divide brewing co.

Michael and I have been having a great time exploring our new neighborhood. Everything feels new, even though we aren't that far away from our old place. New commute, new neighbors, new restaurants that are *just* around the corner, and best of all, new grocery stores.

Sure, I had seen Euro Market from our elevated train for years, but I just assumed it was a poor-man's Titan, and never bothered to go in. I was a silly girl then. I am wiser now. And looking for bottle caps.

Euro Market has an entire back wall devoted to beers from around the country/world. It wasn't quite New Beer Distributor, but it came pretty darn close. Everything was available by the bottle, and damn they had selection. Michael and I were like kids in a (foreign) candy store.

We came away with a few good finds, but the first beer we actually cracked open was Great Divide Brewing Co.'s Samurai. An unfiltered beer, it was a nice conclusion to a rainy night. And the bottle cap? Check this out:

Great Minds Drink Alike! An excellent saying. Words to live by. Thank you, Great Divide for putting those words in my mouth (and some tasty beer).

zywiec

Well, crown fans, I think it's time for a mailbag of sorts. Remember last year when @Vadrach sent me a whole slew of bottle caps? It is time I paid that glorious shipment some more due.

Zywiec, hailing from Poland, is a brewery that has been around since the 1800s. 1856, to be exact. To make things easy on us, Zywiec Brewery is in in Zywiec, Poland. Nice.

Their bottle cap is pretty neat. We have a crown, the year the brewery was founded, the name of the brewery, and best of all, a man and a woman in some sort of traditional garb dancing a traditional dance. They are complete with feathers in their hats, socks/stockings pulled up to their knees, and look really happy to be there. If I were depicted on a bottle cap, I'd probably be doing the same dance!

There is a lot going on, though: I sort of want the Zywiec logo to be a little smaller so that the dancers could get some more surface area. But that's a small quibble. The fact that there are two dancers on there is certainly better than one dancer. And who doesn't love a crown on a crown?!

If only I knew what the beer tasted like... I'll have to check out my international grocery store to see if they carry it. You never know in NYC!

duff

Happy One Year Anniversary, SCBC readers!  It was a year ago on Feb 19 that I started this blog. Wow! So much has happened since then, and I've tasted so many sodas, beers, maltas (yuck), and other bizarre beverages, all with bottle caps of varying degrees of coolness. It was a great year, and I'm looking forward to another one.

What better way to celebrate one year than with a bottle cap that covers a lot of territory. The last time I mentioned Duff beer, I was talking about Horny Goat, Milwaukee, and fake TV beers. But NOW, I can talk about Duff beer as an actual beer. Which, amazingly, it is. I can't get it here in the U.S., but thanks to this funny thing called Ebay, I was able to get a Duff bottle cap quite cheaply. (Thanks Internet!)

This bottle cap sort of has it all. It's a fictional beer that is now real. It uses the real Simpsons font. It is related, in some way, to a TV show that is awesome (well, used to be more awesome than it is, but DID just celebrate its 500th episode, so they must still be doing something right.) I'm still waiting for the DVD of just Itchy and Scratchy cartoons to come out, which I can't believe hasn't been done yet. That's gold, people. GOLD. Duff Beer has already been made. We need something else, now.

And how do they keep thinking up couch gags?  I wonder if there is just one person whose job it is to think up new ones. I would very much like that job. Just saying.

pepsi

I hope you're enjoying the exciting world of sugar vs. high fructose corn syrup here at SCBC. Today is the 3rd and final day, unless of course, someone can find me an American Fanta in a glass bottle. (They have Mexican Fantas at my grocery store. I love my neighborhood!)

I will admit I cheated a little bit with Pepsi. I was so excited to find a Mexican Pepsi that I didn't even think that it might be impossible to find a Pepsi in a glass bottle. Yeah. So, I found one, but ALAS it does not have a bottle cap.

There is another issue that Michael noticed on the Mexican Pepsi's labeling. On the bottle, it clearly says that the beverage is made with sugar. HOWEVER, on the bottle cap it says that it is made with jarabe de maiz alta fructosa AKA high fructose corn syrup! (Cue ominous music.) Who do I believe? The bottle or the crown?! Or my mouth?!? (More ominous music.)

Michael and I both took sips: neither one was particularly sweet. The Mexican one was slightly smoother but both had a bit of a metallic quality that we saw in both the Sprite and Coke from the U.S. I went back and tasted both without ice, just to see if there was a difference. It was very, very slight, if any. I'm not entirely sure that they're different. Or if they are, it is too subtle for my taste buds.

How about the bottle cap? Well, as mentioned above, I wasn't able to find an American Pepsi in a glass bottle with a crown, so all I have to go on is what I have from Mexico, and some images from the internet.

The Mexican crown doesn't even say Pepsi. It just has the red, white, and blue swirl. Very international.

I found an antique bottle cap on the web with the swirly text and the red, white, and blue as a contrast. I love the old fashioned image. And you can definitely see the evolution to where we are today.

I just wish I knew for sure if the Mexican Pepsi I drank was really full of sugar!

coca cola

At the risk of seeming repetitive, I'll admit that I've written about Coke before, but I couldn't resist a taste test with this signature beverage as well. I've had many a conversation with friends and co-workers about the availability of Mexican Coke in NY, which is easy to find in pretty much any grocery store. Some people say they swear by it and will ONLY drink that version.

Now I can see why.

Again, as with Sprite, there is clearly a difference between high fructose corn syrup and cane sugar when it comes to these sodas. Coke with sugar has a fuller, sweeter taste with a smooth finish. Coke with HFCS, sadly, tastes like chemicals. It has a metallic tinniness to it. It tastes flat. People: if you have the option of avoiding American Coke, then don't drink it. It just isn't good.

And yet, check this out: American Coke's bottle cap is just that: "Coke" with a (R)egistered trademark that could also be a Period. Coke. Period. The font looks slightly off, almost lazy. It's clearly not the official font for Coke, and I don't know why they would have changed it to something so bland.

The Mexican Coca-Cola, in contrast, has the loopy script that has been long-associated with the Coca-Cola Brand. Beautiful, classic, simple.

I also wanted to take this chance to highlight a few of the other Coca-Cola bottle caps I have, both from here and abroad. I won't re-hash what I've already discussed (Coke World!) but check this out:

Here we have Coca-Cola Classic and Coke Classic. What I find interesting about the Coca-Cola Classic crown is it highlights the "original formula," which probably has to do with distinguishing it from that misbegotten New Coke experiment in the 80s. I find it interesting because isn't the original formula with sugar? Not HFSC, which it clearly states as the 2nd ingredient. In other words, it's a bit of false advertising, clearly not derived from the classic formula that the Coke company keeps hidden in a vault somewhere in Atlanta.

Coke Classic has the signature white twisty line, and it's the font I remember from my youth. Nice.

I also have a stash of older Coca-Cola crowns: one red, one silver. The red one is also South American: I think Michael got it on a trip to Chile (it says Talca on the side!). And the silver Coca-Cola lists its ingredients as water, sugar... so you know it's, like, classic.

It really is fascinating to do the side-by-side taste test. And even if you think you don't have a sophisticated palate, try it if you can.  You'll be blown away. Trust me.

**P.S.  Happy Valentines Day, everyone.  Red Coca-Cola crowns for V Day, right?!

sprite

I have written about Sprite in these pages before. But just recently, I found some Mexican Sprite in my local grocery store, alongside a few other Mexican sodas. And it made me think: this is the perfect opportunity to do side-by-side comparisons of high fructose cane sugar Sprite and cane sugar Sprite, along with the inevitable bottle cap comparisons.

First, the taste: It is amazing when you taste these two sodas side-by-side. American Sprite, with its high fructose corn syrup, tastes metallic and flat. There is a sharp aftertaste, not necessarily sweet but more chemical-like. Mexican Sprite, on the other hand, tastes sweet and smooth and coats your throat with a sugary, but not too sweet, aftertaste.

The bottle caps?  Both pretty cool!  The American bottle cap is green, with Sprite in big, bold white letters. The Mexican bottle cap is blue with white letters. Not as bold as the American, but still clean and bright. Both "I"s are dotted with lemon/limes.

I also wanted to bring up the interesting contrast between a few other Sprite crowns that I have:

The white one is from South America--Santiago, specifically--and is a Sprite Zero, just for the record. It is difficult to read, and has the ingredients right on the crown. Not the best design, to be honest. It pairs well, though, with this blue Sprite crown that I have, which is sort of an "in-between" crown -- that is, on a design chart, it falls somewhere between the South American and the Mexican. It is blue, has Sprite across the top, but also has the lemon/lime i dot, as well as the ingredients. You can almost see the evolution!

I also have this really old Sprite crown: pre-lemon-lime i dot, and it includes the ingredients. The crown also has a crazy-looking font, as if Sprite is still searching for its identity.

All in all, an interesting range. The caps evolved nicely into the clean-looking design we have today, but the taste....well, clearly, Sprite would have been bettered served if it had stuck with cane sugar.

jarritos

I'm surprised that this is the first time I'm discussing Jarritos, the weird Mexican soda that I find in bodegas and restaurants across NYC. Recently, I came across a 200th anniversary (a bicentennial, if you will) commemorative bottle of Jarritos for Mexican Independence. Granted, their bicentennial was in 2010, and I found this bottle about 6 months ago, but no matter (EW!!!). I guess soda keeps??

Anyway, this bottle cap has a celebratory bird, is gold and black, and frankly a little busy compared to Jarritos regular bottle cap:

Which is green, silver, and white and very clean looking.  And it clearly tells you, in Spanish of course, that it is made in Mexico.

Jarritos also has a seltzer line, with its own bottle cap: blue and white with the word "Mineragua" across the top in place of the usual Jarritos. But don't be fooled. Mineragua just means mineral water in Spanish (thanks Spanish 101!)

Jarritos has unfortunate flavors like tamarind and pineapple. No one wants these flavors. Please stick with tutifruti (fruit punch!) and lemon-lime. Anything more adventurous than that is going into crazy, sticky sweet territory, and I just can't take it! Thank goodness they don't all have different bottle caps.  There would be a lot of soda going down the drain.

kutztown

I'm telling you, the trip to St. Louis this go-around really was an abundance of riches. I found yet another root beer from Pennsylvania: Kutztown. I will say this: I'm fascinated by the fact that so many microbreweries make root beer and birch beer, but not many tackle colas. Why is that? Do they just not want to compete with Coke and Pepsi? Why is there such a variety of root beers and cream sodas? It is like no one has cornered the market on root beer, cream soda, and sarsaparilla. But cola -- don't touch it with a 10-foot pole.

I don't have many notes from this tasting, but it was noted that this root beer was better than another one I bought (but haven't blogged about yet: stay tuned. I think that one is coming up next week).

The bottle cap, however, is very nice!  Bright yellow, bold lettering and a frosty mug of root beer highlighted in the middle. If i didn't know it was root beer I might think it was from The Simpsons!

dr. browns

I would like to briefly continue my NYC theme (Go Giants!). Dr. Browns, although bottled in Southern California, originates in NYC (and the old-timey images on the cans and bottles reflect that).

In NYC I most often find Dr. Browns in cans, not bottles, but it's still delicious. Sometimes I can find a six-pack in Duane Reade for, like, $1.99, which is awesome. I'm a big fan of their Diet Black Cherry Soda. Michael is partial to Cel-Ray soda, for reasons that I can't fathom. I mean, why in the world would you want to drink a celery-flavored anything? Anyway, according to Wikipedia, Dr. Browns is common in Jewish Delicatessen's. I like that they make that distinction. Not a corner deli, not your neighborhood bodega: only Jewish Delicatessen's. Why?

When I was traveling last summer, I managed to find Dr. Browns on a morning show set I was visiting.  I made sure that the segment was over, and I snagged a few bottles for the road. I couldn't believe that I'd never seen one in a bottle in NYC. Turns out I had to leave NYC to find one of its signature sodas in a bottle, not to mention the bottle cap stamped with Hebrew letters.

And then again, over Christmas when I was visiting the holy grail, I found another Dr. Browns in a bottle! This time a Cream Soda. This gives a nice range of what the bottle caps look like, but I must say that I prefer the latter. The old-timey images, this time of the Statue of Liberty, call to mind NYC and delicious soda (except for the fact that I've never found a bottle of one in NYC, oddly).

You can get a nice look at the full line of bottle caps for Dr. Browns here. But those images don't include the plain crown I have above. Is it rare? Anyone have any info on that? Or maybe it's a bottle cap that comes out around the Jewish Holidays or something? Help me out, dear readers.

brooklyn lager - go giants!

A quick post tonight, basking in the post-Giants Super Bowl win. Tonight I invited over a few close friends for cheese, chili, and an exciting game of football. I know I've written about Brooklyn Lager in the past, but because I included a lager in my delicious, home-made chili, I thought I'd blog briefly about the crown again.

Brooklyn doesn't offer much in terms of design on the crown, but they are good about switching up colors for their different lines of beer. Straight-up lager is green, as per below.

For those of you who didn't watch the super bowl, you missed out on an amazing game! Down to the wire rematch of Pats v. Giants. If you didn't know, I'm a hardcore Giants fan -- and have been for many years. Four years ago, though, was the ultimate: I won my office pool when you fill in those little boxes. It was insane! This year, no pool at the office, but having a housewarming party, and a delicious beer to celebrate my new home and my team winning is the new ultimate. Go NY!

jolt - guest post by michael

Michael Lober here. When I was growing up in a small town in the lower Midwest, the principal weekend activity consisted of driving your car (or your parents' car) up and down the main street of the town. It was called cruising. We looped around the library, headed up toward the Wal-Mart, and then turned around in a turnabout by the town diner. Occasionally, when we spotted cars we recognized, we pulled over into the bank parking lot and discussed how there was nothing to do. It was a blast.

In the summer, these cruising sessions lasted upwards of five hours (gas, of course, was much less expensive then), and involved multiple trips to the nearby convenience stores. Mountain Dews were a popular stimulant of choice, but if we needed a real pick-me-up, we reached for cans of Jolt Cola. Jolt based its entire product around its caffeine content; its slogan at the time was "All the sugar and twice the caffeine." When I first consumed it, I feared that I wouldn't be able to sleep for days. But I never usually felt that differently. Its main effect seemed to be more trips than usual to the McDonald's bathroom.

Like most people, I drank Jolt only for the caffeine, not for the taste, which I must have repressed. Lauren, Caroline, Ryan, and I found a bottle in Straubs in St. Louis over the holiday breaks, and I was excited to relive a bit of my adolescence. But, as the saying goes, you can't go home again. I was disappointed to find that Jolt Cola tastes like chemicals with a splash of Coke, and has no more caffeine than coffee. I dig the lightening bolt on the cap and the funky font, but if you're not consuming Jolt while cruising the streets of a small town, then, really, what's the point?

triple xxx root beer

Triple XXX continues my quest to try at least one microbrew root beer from every state. Hurray, Indiana!
Of the root beers from this particular haul, Triple XXX seems to have pushed its way to the top. It is more vanilla-y than the others, and has a bit of a Sprecher element to it. Overall, everyone who tried Triple XXX liked it.

I love the website, too: and be sure to check out the "about" page. Multiple generations running the same restaurant? Fabulous. It does make me sad that there used to be a whole lot more Triple XXX restaurants across the Midwest.

The bottle cap is great.  I love the bright yellow, with the orange oval. And who doesn't like an italic "drink" that is also underlined? Please, try this beverage! It will quench your root beer thirst.

pop goes the bubble

It was pretty funny when Caroline pulled this bottle out of the stacks of beverages in Straubs. She was laughing because it was covered in dust. Which made me SO excited. Have we not discussed my affinity for the sodas and beverages that have been long abandoned on the shelves of supermarkets across the country? If it's not dusty or weird looking, I don't want it.

Pop Goes The Bubble fulfills many categories for me. Covered in dust. Check. Weird color. Check. Funky bottle cap. Check. Tastes awful. Triple check.

This was another one that we couldn't wait to open up when we got back to Caroline and Ryan's house.  Pop Goes the Bubble? Yes please. Unfortunately, the taste of this beverage didn't match the fun crown or the party-in-a-bottle label. My notes from this tasting are as follows:

  "ass"
  "the back-side of my butt"
  "basset hound butt-hole"

I'm not making any of these up.

But the bottle cap has so much promise! It's a little bottle cap man with a funny hat! And it's a "Real Soda." Alas.

almaza & malt star

Seriously. What is up with the maltas? I keep thinking I can get away with avoiding them, and then they just go and creep their way back into this blog.

A few weeks ago, just before Michael and I moved to our new place, Michael called me -- he was very excited.  He had found a new bottle cap and it was AWESOME. He couldn't wait to bring it home. But there was one small wrinkle. It was a malta. Not just any malta: a malta from Israel. Whoa! Maybe this one had a chance.

The bottle cap is pretty cool -- it's red, black, has some wheat on it, and, yes, it is in Hebrew. Does it say Malt Star in Hebrew? I'm not sure.

But the actual taste: well. You know what I'm going to say. It tastes like licking grass and dirt. Michael thought there was a coffee undertone. But I couldn't keep it in my mouth long enough to taste that.

And since we live in a new neighborhood, it is obligatory that we check out all of the new corner delis for beverages that weren't within the small radius of the old place. The corner deli has already brought us this: Almaza. We thought that since it was right next to the Laziza, it might also be a fruity beverage that would be relatively palatable. But no. It tasted even worse than Malt Star. Michael mentioned to me the other day that if it weren't for this blog, he would never have known how many malt beverages there are, nor how popular they are. Me neither, Michael. Me neither.

bell's brewery

I can't let the first week back go by without blogging about a midwest brewery that I found at Straubs.

I had a delicious Bell's Brewery Amber Ale a few days after Christmas at Michael's parent's house. We were deciding which beer I had gotten was going to be dumped into the chili Michael's dad was making, and Bell's was just too good to sacrifice to the chili. We ended up donating a Tecate to the greater good of dinner, and Michael's dad and I shared the Bell's. I think we made the right choice.

Bell's has an understated bottle cap, and a beautiful label. And I love that there are, in fact, bells on the Bell's crown. I'm glad I was able to find it in St. Louis, because it's definitely not distributed in NYC. So, if you live in a state where you can find it, seek out the Bell's!

big red

Michael and I have long debated the taste of sodas that are red in color. Often times, especially in South America (ie. Bilz), red sodas don't really have a flavor other than "red." This is obviously not the case with food: red could be cherry, raspberry, tomato, even vanilla (see Boylan's) or cinnamon, etc, etc. Why can't red soda have a taste? Why must it taste red?

Big Red, not to be confused with Big Red, falls into this "tastes like red" category. Similar to Green River, which Michael and I recalled tasted green when we had it one cold day after New Years in Chicago. Sure, it could taste sort of vanilla-y, or even a little cherry. But it doesn't. It just tastes like red. Or as this NPR story suggests, perhaps like effervescent Robitussin or carbonated juicy fruit.

The bottle cap, however, is a fun, splashy crown -- red and white, and, lo and behold, says BIG RED in big, bold letters with a splash of red soda behind it. It's bottled by Dr. Pepper, which gives me hope, since I do love me a Dr. Pepper, and when I was in Austin, I was so excited to find Dublin Dr. Pepper just hanging out in the convenience stores.

Anyway, if any faithful readers out there can figure out what Big Red's flavor really and truly is, post in the comments section!

leninade

I know that this is a blog about bottle caps, but during my travels this past Christmas, I may have found one of the best bottles that I've ever seen. Leninade also hails from RealSoda, and despite having a www.leninade.com website smack dab on the bottle cap, there is no such website. This. Is. Disappointing.

Before I get into Leninade, I do want to give a shout out to Caroline and Ryan Lober-Huston, Michael's sister and brother-in-law, who not only indulge me in my bottle cap obsession, but also drove Michael and I around St. Louis looking for sodas and beers, and didn't make fun of me (too much) when I bought 13-20 individual sodas at Straub's Grocery Store (see above). And then they helped me drink them so that I didn't have to take them on the plane with me. [Bottle caps are much easier to carry on a flight than full glass bottles of soda!]

OK, back to Leninade.  The bottle cap is admittedly cool. It did get a bit mangled when I took it off the bottle (this totally should have been a twist off. Why wasn't it?!). And how come no one got me a decent bottle opener for xmas? Ah well. But, the cap pales in comparison to the bottle, with what I think might have the coolest phrases ever:

• Get hammered & Sickled!
• Join the Party!
• A Taste Worth Standing in line for!
• Drink Comrade! Drink! It's This or the Gulag!
• Beware the Repressed Communist Party Animal Who is Really a Proletarian in Denial Masquerading as a Bourgeois Cold War Monger!

There are more -- I don't know how they fit them all on the bottle -- but it's worth buying one just to chuckle while you sip your delicious lemonade. And just to prove how awesome the bottle is, it survived the move. Michael will tell you how much I threw away, and I just couldn't bear to part with this silly bottle and its funny phrases.

jack black

Oh. My. God. It's been a crazy few months, crown-fans. Between the holidays, work, and me moving into a new apartment (!), there just hasn't been time for blogging. I apologize for anyone who has been relying on this blog for a source of entertainment and, of course, suggestions for new bottle caps. I will do my best to update regularly now that I'm a bit more settled.

So, despite the holidays being totally nuts, I did manage to find gobs and gobs of new bottle caps. And I had help tasting all of the beverages that went along with it. (Thanks Michael, Caroline, and Ryan!)  Their thoughts will be scattered throughout these posts. I was taking notes!

First up, Jack Black Blood Red Cola and Black Lemonade. Jack Black doesn't seem to have its own website, but is part of the "Real Soda" umbrella.

I admit that I love anything with a pirate theme*, and Jack Black doesn't disappoint in that area. Skulls and Crossbones adorn both crowns, and the bottles/labels also had witty phrases on them -- things like "This may be your only way out" and "Animal testing was consensual."  The crown even says, "Once you've jacked black, you never go back." (BUT stay tuned for the BEST bottle full of bizarre/hilarious phrases to come later this week...)

I'd say these bottle caps are pretty awesome. They are pirate-y. They are dark. They are witty. The drinks, however, were...well, interesting. The Black Lemonade was carbonated, which is kind of weird. And it was also bitter. The Blood Red Cola, I am sorry to report, was not red. It was just cola-y, nothing special, really. If it was red like, say, Boylan's Creamy Red Birch Beer, I'd be much more into it. Who doesn't want a red cola?

If you're looking for some pirate-themed crowns, though, seek out some Jack Black.

*Have I told my favorite pirate joke ever?  Voila:
"There's a new pirate movie coming out. I didn't hear much about it other than it's rated ARRRRR!"  OK, it's terrible. But I love it!