Hey there cola hearted woman
Come and drink from my loving cup
It will melt your cola heart babe,
Cause it is filled with 7up
7up embarked on the Uncola approach with its ads starting about 1970. They went straight for the youth (that would be US!) with its commercials featuring bright lights, rock and roll, and promises of romance.
The one featuring the can light stuck vividly in my mind.
My oldest brother’s wife actually bought me one of the dancing filament 7up lights. I was mesmerized by its rapid flickering, particularly in a dark bedroom with WLS on the radio.
The flickering filament wouldn’t last very long before burning out. And, they were expensive to replace. So most 7up can lights, mine included, ended up with regular bulbs in them.
I was recently delighted to find under my house (built in 1972) a 7up can that looks exactly like the one in the illustration. Perhaps I’ll turn it into a lamp someday.
I built these in ’70-71 for Jr. Achievement. Was an organization to teach kids about business. The bulb just recently burned out. My parents have had this since then.
My Company: Electro Specialties, Inc In Milwaukee, WI punch pressed the “key hole” and assembled the “Flickering 7 UP”lamp. The base was injection molded . The light socket was held in by a large nut designed for the thread on the socket. As this was not a machined thread, assembly to the socket was a difficult procedure. The bulbs were manufactured by a company in Chicago. We had a test procedure for the bulbs as they did not all function as required. The side key was injection molded. The original order was from a comany named “Dimensional Products, Inc.” We produced several hndred of the lamps.
After the order was complete, the company had a “Help Program” continue assembly of the lamps. We contnued punching the holes as this company did not have the Machinery necessary. This is where Davey must have worked on the lamps. Wlliam CEO of ESI. No longer in business as is DP products.
Very cool. My father-in-law supplied the magnets that mounted in the bulb which made the filament wiggle. I found a few of the bulbs when we cleared out his house and just ordered a vintage can off Ebay to make my own nostalgic lamp.
I actually still have mine from my teenage years and the last time I plugged it up it worked! Do you know if it is possible to still purchase a bulb ?
I’m looking for these bulbs too
I have one of the bulbs that still works the last time I plugged it in.
Ok,
I have a really neat story about this.
I was a young “electronics wiz”, long before things were easy to do.
I’d spend every moment reading electronics magazines, going to reference libraries, etc. What I did was pretty amazing for the times, and my age.
I saw the flicker bulb commercial, and said “hey, I want one of those”
More specifically, I wanted one that wiggled to the music, exactly as it did in the commercial.
I was way ahead of the curve with lighting that was music activated, and was asked by my school to always set this stuff up for the high school dances, etc.
But , the 7 up lamp that wiggled to the music was a very difficult undertaking .
In a very brief explanation, I had to build a variable frequency , variable voltage amplifier that locked in certain frequencies so that the fragile filament wouldn’t crash into the bulb & break. I went through a lot of bulbs (which you could actually buy at head shops)
Once I got it all running, I wondered if the 7 up company had an easier solution to this
Bear in mind that my design ore-dated microcontrollers, and integrated circuits were highly exotic devices. My design was old school transistors and a lot of wiring.
I was a very precocious 16 year old, and I was able to find out that the 7uo light was conceived and done by their advertising company Vickers & Benson.
So, I loaded up my contraption, and went to their head office west of Toronto.
No appointment… nothing
I just walked in, and asked to talk to the people responsible for the light bulb commercial.
I guess out of curiosity, they sent out a guy to the lobby to see what I wanted.
I showed him that I had a rather large box, (with my invention), and asked him if I could compare it to how theirs worked.
The guy was stunned, and invited me into his office.
I had a cassette recorder with me that had the commercial music sound track
I plugged everything in, and it just totally replicated what the commercial looked like.
I think if you blew on the guy, he would have fallen over.
He said “Wait Here@
The room then had a bunch of people in it, and he said “Do that again”
So,, I did.
And I was a little confused by the looks on their faces. They were literally speechless, and all looking at each other.
This was a little weird for me. I was thinking “what’s the big deal? I mean you guys already did this”
Not exactly.
They then told me that they hours of the light flickering. They then hired a studio band to come in and write some music that synchronized with the actual bulb flickering. It was apparently a huge expense.
They have me a bunch of 7up swag, a few cases of pop, and told me I was a cool kid.
So,,, that’s the story
Arthur Boas