As far as I can tell the Jud Long Island Company began sometime in the mid-1940’s with their premium beverages referenced in newspaper advertisements from 1946 up until the late 1960’s. A classified advertisement found in the March 31, 1947 edition of Long Island’s “Newsday” listed the company’s address as 44 Hempstead Turnpike in Mineola.
The company’s business appears to have been strictly local with their newspaper advertising limited to the Long Island counties of Nassau and Suffolk and the adjacent New York City borough of Brooklyn.
The first mention of Jud’s I can find was a line item for their Premium Root Beer found in a June 13, 1946 “Brooklyn Daily Eagle” ad for Bohac’s Supermarket.
Later that year a September 12, 1946 ad in Long Island’s “Newsday” pictured what appears to be an exact version of the subject bottle.
Several labeled examples of the bottle are included in the Long Island Antique Bottle Association’s “Long Island Beverage Book.”
Some labels read: /BOTTLED BY/ JUD LONG ISLAND CO./MINEOLA, N.Y.
Others labels read the same except except for the last line which read: /BOTTLED BY/ HAMPTON BOTTLERS/MINEOLA
Originally located at 93 Bedell Street in Hempstead, Long Island, between 1940 and 1945 HAMPTON BOTTLERS advertised themselves as the local bottler for Virginia Dare products as evidenced by this advertisement published in the February 15, 1940 edition of the “Nassau Daily Review.”
Then, in 1946, the same year that Jud’s began to advertise, classified ads list Hampton Bottlers at the same 44 Jericho Turnpike address as the Jud Long Island Company. This June 14, 1946 “Newsday” classified ad was typical.
This all leads me to believe that while legally they may have been two different entities, in practice Jud Long Island Company and Hampton Bottlers operated as one and the same.
Regardless of how it was being bottled, the following advertisement suggested that the public quickly grew to like their root beer. The problem was the public apparently also liked the bottle itself so they weren’t being returned, creating what the ad called a “Bottle Shortage.” The advertisement, published on January 30, 1947 in the “Nassau Daily Review'” pointed out that by the end of calendar year 1946 half a million bottles had not been returned.
The issue must have worked itself out and as early as 1947 Jud’s began expanding their menu beyond just root beer. By the late 1940’s, this August 25th “Newsday” advertisement points out that the company was marketing ginger ale, club soda, and several fruit flavors as “Jud’s Beverages,” all while still using the same bottle design.
In 1963 this May 29th advertisement in “Newsday” makes it clear that by then, and quite possibly earlier, the bottle design had changed, becoming more nondescript. The ad also serves to point out that by then a quart size had also been added.
Now called simply “Jud’s Soda,” the last advertisement I can find appeared in the April 3, 1968 edition of “Newsday.” At the time you could buy 12 – 12 oz bottles for 69 cents at the Nassau Farmer’s Market.
The bottle I found is machine made, 9-1/2 inches tall and 12 ounces in size, matching exactly the bottle pictured in advertisements from the late 1940’s. In fact, quite possibly it’s one of the 500,000 bottles the company was looking for in early 1947.
The base of the bottle includes a makers mark associated with the Thatcher Glass Company.
Glassbottlemarks.com describes it like this:
MCT variation: T, vaguely resembling an anchor with horizontal upper stroke, with smaller, angular M and C nestled underneath to the left and right. On this variation, the mark is often indistinct and the two smaller letters may be practically ineligible.
This particular mark was used from c. 1944 to about 1983 which aligns with a late 1940’s manufacture date for the subject bottle..
http://glassbottlemarks.com/thatcher-glass-manufacturing-company
According to loopnet.com the current building at 44 Jericho Turnpike in Mineola was built in 1946 making the Jud Long Island Company and Hampton Bottlers the original tenant. In fact, it’s quite possible they actually built the building. Here it is today, courtesy of Google Maps.
