On the Web since 1996

November 18, 2012 3:31 PM

Welcome to GONO.com (short for "Go to Nostalgiaville"), home to the Museum of Beverage Containers and Advertising. Curator Tom Bates welcomes you.

"In the next couple of years, I walked and rode my bike looking in the ditches & woods trying to find as many different beer & soda cans as I could find."
Cans ranging from Action in Jackson to Zing [a non-alcoholic cereal beverage] can be found in the museum's extensive catalog.

Once you've had your fill of beverage history, Tom's father Paul will be your guide through the many destinations we can reach from Nostalgiaville, a magic place where fond memories can be unleashed at will...at the touch of your friendly Mouse. Along the way, we're bound to see some Signs to Remember, advertising all manner of consumer goods and services:
AUTOMOTIVE
COMPUTERS
PETS
and MISCELLANEOUS!
When we reach our destination, we may pile in to the little black GEO Tracker for a closer look.

As long as you're here, why not spend the evening at Noah's Ark - a massive boat on the shores of Lake Cheri. It's furnished with a T.V., a small refrigerator, a microwave, a futon, a bathroom, and hundreds of different species of stuffed animals.

Some words of warning from Cheri's Corner: "Once you start thinking and acting like a four year old with no adult supervision, returning to the mundane ho-hum existence you are used to may not be possible."

posted by obscurator (4 comments total)

I was once a casual collector of bottles, though my collection of limited pride were the empty Snapple bottles without nutrition labeling, from before 1990 or 1993, I can't remember. When I moved to college, I filled a giant box with those bottles and a few other odd bottles from that era (including a few empty Orbitz bottles). I finally lugged that box to college, where it stayed unopened, moved from apartment to house as I moved around. Finally, my wife-to-be questioned why I kept them. "Nostalgia, I guess." She pointed out that the box had remained unopened for about a decade, and that I only remembered the bottles when I had to move that damned heavy box. She asked, why not take photos of them and recycle them? So I did, and somewhere in my unorganized mass of photos, there are 5-10 pictures of old Snapple bottles. For a moment, I was sad, thinking I might sneak back to the recycling bin and dig them out. Then I felt relieved that I didn't have a ridiculously large and heavy box to lug around for my future moves, especially when I didn't care about the contents enough to actually open the box.

I'm glad someone collects weird bottles and other random bits of the past, allowing me to move on and de-clutter my life, knowing there is someone more dedicated than I will ever be (and who devotes more space to old bottles than I really want to).
posted by filthy light thief at 3:46 PM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I do so love ephemera like this.
Not to long ago, a year to so at most, I came across a faded soft drink can, Fanta I believe.
It was lying in the grass, and so alien to the thin, aluminium cans of today that I was struck by the fact that I had either not noticed the change to I had quite gotten used to the new cans.

Oh, how I missed the old heavy cans, those quaint ring-pulls. The large two litre plastic bottles with the glued on base....

"Go to Nostalgiaville"

I assume that's the next stop along from Margaritaville, close to Pina Coladaburg.
posted by Mezentian at 7:16 PM on November 18, 2012

my cans, my precious antique cans

such a strange, random collection of strange random things

the table formatting on the pages though, ow
posted by ninjew at 10:27 PM on November 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I think the pages were made in Excel.
posted by obscurator at 7:04 AM on November 19, 2012