More Spot Stuff #socs

Stream of Consciousness Saturday 2 Minutes

Whatever happened to 7 Up? For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s a lemon-lime soda that was really popular in North America until about the 1990’s, but seems to have vanished from the cultural zeitgeist (I think I’m using the term correctly) since then. At one time it was ubiquitous, at least as popular as Coke and Pepsi and more popular than RC Cola and Dr Pepper, and just as heavily advertised. You can still buy it, I know that, but there are no longer any 7 Up vending machines and in the current vending machines you’re more likely to see Sprite (a similar lemon-lime soda from the Coca-Cola Company). The reason I bring it up is that their logo used to be the number 7, a red spot, and the word up, and their commercials used the red spots as animated characters, as you can see from the video above (which will work as my commercial for this post). A side note: when I was between 12 and 15 my mother, convinced that Coke made me break out, woild tell me to drink 7 Up instead. I’m not sure it had any effect on my skin (I didn’t break out that much, anyway), but I got to like 7 Up, “The Uncola,” as it was called in their ads.

A few of you talked about the “spot the differences” puzzles you see in the Sunday funnies, where you have two almost-identical pictures, and you have to spot the differences. There are similar puzzles, one being the notorious “Where’s Waldo?” puzzles, where you’d have to spot Waldo in his red-and-white striped hat and sweater in a crowded picture, and another where a number of objects are embedded somewhere in a usually-idyllic scene and you have to find them, kind of like a forest scene and a list of items you have to find, like “duck, banjo, car, boat, dirigible, airplane, baseball bat, and leash.” (That would be mean, because most kids don’t know what a dirigible is.) A popular feature in the Sports section of the paper is “Spot The Ball,” where they take a picture from a sporting event (e.g. football, American or soccer) and remove the ball from the picture, then tell people to indicate on the picture where the ball was. I saw a newspaper in Australia (might have been the Sydney Morning Herald, I’m not sure) where you would mark where the ball would be and mail it in with $1, and the person or people who came the closest win the pot.

Anyway, this is another entry for Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday, in case you didn’t know. See you in the funny papers!

Published by John Holton

I'm a writer and blogger who writes and blogs about things that interest me.

Published

22 thoughts on “More Spot Stuff #socs”

  1. I’m glad I found this. For us, 7-Up was medicinal used instead of ginger ale. I remember the green glass returnable bottle. When I was in high school my friend Traci had it at her Christmas party and she added cherries with the stem. We thought we were so cosmopolitan. Lol. Might be called a Shirley Temple. Nice stroll down memory lane.

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    1. All you’d need is Grenadine for color, but you’re right, that is a Shirley Temple. The Maraschino cherries are supposedly optional, but not to me…!

      Remember how the bottles had the slogan “you like it, it likes you” printed on the back?

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  2. I loved 7-Up. We always had it if we were sick, it soothed the stomach (supposedly). Those commercials are a hoot. As always, John, your clever take on the prompt is educational and entertaining. Thanks for the smiles this morning!

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  3. You can still get 7up over here and I know you love adverts so here is 2019 ‘s offering with the lovely Fido Dido.

    I also loved love spot the difference puzzles…plus I know what a dirigible is I have driven one on the River Charles in Boston US.
    Here is a song with the word dirigable in.

    Happy Sunday John 💜

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    1. Of course, we know what a dirigible is, as well as its fellow airships, the zeppelin and the blimp, but the younger generations haven’t been introduced to them, unless they’ve seen one of the many blimps that are used at sporting events. In 1983, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game was held at Comiskey Park in Chicago (it was the 50th anniversary of the first one, which had also been held there). About an hour before game time, we heard all this noise outside, ran out and saw the Goodyear blimp (one of them, anyway) flying overhead on its way to the ballpark from Midway Airport. Our neighborhood was on the flight path. After the game, we went outside and saw it making its way back…

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        1. We lived about three miles from Comiskey Park, where they celebrated home runs with fireworks. On a good night, you could hear the fireworks from our apartment…

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  5. Love this. 7-Up had a big presence in my world. I love all the search puzzles. I loved going to the pediatrician’s office where I could work the puzzles in the Highlights magazines. When I was an IT manager I had an acrylic wand filled with floating glitter and one lonely Waldo. It was a stress reliever turning it trying to find Waldo.

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    1. I love Highlights For Children, mostly for Goofus and Gallant and The Timbertoes. The latter is just a little bizarre, while the former is a bottomless well of comedic potential, e.g. “Goofus throws snowballs at old people. Gallant throws snowballs at Goofus.”

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    1. That was the late, great Geoffrey Holder, who was a tremendous dancer as well as an actor and singer. He was from Trinidad and Tobago, which explains his accent. I loved the old commercials where, at the end, he would lean back and laugh…

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  7. I rarely drink sodas anymore, but 7 up was my favorite once upon a time. In my memoir, I’m drinking 7 up when I meet my first love. So, I’m sad to learn it might be gone. Next time I go to the grocery store, I’m going to look for it. If I see it, I might even buy some, in the diet version.

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    1. They’re still making it, you just don’t see it advertised like you used to. For a while, I’d only see commercials for it around Christmas and New Year’s, probably because it was an integral part of many holiday libations (punch, primarily). I always liked it better than Sprite, but you know how it is with the south and Coke products…

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