When we lived on home-delivered soft drinks like Tarax, Slades and Loy’s
There was once a time when soft drink didn’t just mean Coke or Pepsi. And Victorians had crates of their favourites delivered to their doors by local brands like Loy’s, Tarax and Slades.
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When the soft drink delivery man called, it was all about the anticipation.
The arrival of the big, flatbed truck.
The sight of the truckie in the King Gee shorts and singlet climbing onto the tray to drag down a timber crate full of multi-coloured bottles.
The tinkle of the bottles as he carted the crate up the driveway.
The excitement when we loaded them into the kitchen fridge – or dad’s ancient “beer fridge” in the garage – and clanged away with a crate full of your empties for recycling.
The sharp hiss as we cracked the crown seal with the cork stopper and took that first sip.
Once, Melbourne had many independent soft drink makers, and many of them used the convenience of home delivery to stay ahead of the big budget advertising and enormous market reach of Coca Cola Amatil and Schweppes.
How else could a small company combat this kind of advertising might featuring singer Doug Parkinson from the early ‘70s?
Most of the old brands that were famous in Melbourne households have faded away – unlike the memories of grabbing a frosty cold bottle of a fizzy favourite.
SLADES
Slades Soft Drinks is still manufacturing soft drinks at its plant in Thomastown, and it still delivers.
The company was first established in the 1860s and early products included ginger beer and root beer.
In its golden age in the 1960s and 1970s, favourite flavours included Pyne, raspberry, cola, portello creamy soda and sarsaparilla. But chinotto, a bitter tasting flavour of Italian origin, tended to divide opinion.
By the 1980s, you could pick up a crate of your favourite flavours at service stations, particularly in the northern suburbs.
Back in the day, you had to phone Slades to get a delivery. These days, you can create an account and order online.
And there is a huge range available including standard soft drinks, lower-sugar and low-joule varieties, and flavoured and natural mineral waters. They even make their own plastic bottles.
TARAX
Now a part of the Schweppes stable, Tarax was established by George Pethard Sr in Numurkah, near Shepparton, in the 1890s and shifted to Bendigo in 1902.
It started out making a non-alcoholic, yeast-free beer known as Taraxale, named after the taraxacum, the Latin name for a dandelion.
In Bendigo, Tarax grew from strength to strength, and a series of “Tarax Bars” was set up in shops across Victoria.
By the end of World War II, Tarax focused on what we’d now call conventional soft drinks and swallowed a couple of smaller Melbourne bottlers, Ecks and the Consolidated Beverage Company, and boasted a range of flavours including No. 1 Kola (and, later, the American-themed Dixi Cola), Crimson (raspberry), Limelite (lime), Bitter Lemon, Solo, Pine (pineapple) and lemonade.
Shop sales of Tarax were augmented by home deliveries.
There were two Tarax plants in Melbourne – in West Brunswick and Huntingdale – in the 1960s, and Tarax was one of Victoria’s best-selling soft drink brands.
It was the first company to introduce cans into the Australian soft drink market.
It even introduced a UHT chocolate milk drink in a can.
Its market power attracted Cadbury Schweppes to buy out Tarax in 1972.
It marketed a limited range of Tarax flavours including Sunshine Pyne, Creaming Soda, raspberry and Black: Label Orange and Lemonade but Tarax was, in reality, just a regional brand for the global giant.
Remember the Tarax ad featuring Abigail?
LOY’S
Another home delivery icon.
Loy’s and Slades shared many flavours including creamy soda, sarsaparilla, lemon and old-fashioned lemonade but has their own brands too, including Razby and Orangecup.
Loy’s was a family company established as Loy Brothers in the 1920s, and produced soft drinks in Richmond, near the Yarra River, before branching out to bigger premises in the suburbs in the 1950s.
Loy’s green and yellow timber crates were a familiar sight all over Melbourne.
In the early days, they delivered on a horse-drawn dray.
Parkland on the Yarra known as Loy’s Paddock commemorates the company.
GOLD MEDAL
Greek immigrant Spiros Stamoulis established Gold Medal soft drinks in Preston as a young man, and ploughed his success into a property portfolio now managed by his son Harry and daughter Melina worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Gold Medal has an extensive suburban delivery network and a was a popular choice for many households, especially in the northern suburbs.
Stamoulis also owned a Greek-language newspaper and radio station 3XY, turning the latter into a Greek-speaking station and moving the studio to the Gold Medal plant in Bell Street.
Stamoulis sold Gold Medal to Cadbury Schweppes in 2004, ending decades in the soft drink game.
He died in 2007, but not before gifting Melbourne with the Hellenic Museum, which opened in 2009.
MARCHANTS
This company was marketed for many years as “our state drink”, but Marchants was established in Queensland.
George Marchant bought a Brisbane ginger beer business in 1886 and set up other plants in Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle and Adelaide.
A great philanthropist, Marchant shared profits with his workers and established charitable institutions.
By the 1960s, though, what was once Australia’s largest soft drink manufacturer was in dire straits, profitable only in Victoria.
Coca Cola Amatil swooped, buying out the Clayton firm in 1964 and turning Marchants into a Victoria-only brand that disappeared in the ‘90s.
COTTEE’S
Passiona was the first Cottee’s soft drink when dairy farmer Spencer Cottee set up his first drink plant in Lismore, NSW, in the 1920s to take advantage of the region’s prodigious passionfruit crop.
By the 1950s, Cottee’s had bottling plants in many Australian cities and towns, with one of the largest in Melbourne.
Cottee’s also made jellies, cordials and other products.
Along with Passiona, Cottee’s offered Tango tropical flavour, orange, lemon, Coola lime, Big Boy lemonade and range of other flavours.
They didn’t deliver but in the 1960s they were one of our top-selling soft drink brands.
US company General Foods took over in 1966 and, later, the brand became part of Cadbury Schweppes, but most of its soft drink lines faded away, with the exception of Passiona, the one that started it all.
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Crystal and Swing were also popular home-delivered soft drink brand in Melbourne.
But there were other independent soft drink makers in region al areas, like Cohn’s in Bendigo (also a brewer in its early days), Noddy’s in Geelong, Albury’s Blue Seal and the Totem brand, made by HCP Aerated Waters in Healesville.
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