When did you start buying Soda Pop in 2-Liter Bottles?

Pepsi introduced the 2-liter bottle in the early 1970s and almost a decade later they were still trying to convince people that this was something they should be buying, as you will see in this amazing commercial from around 1978. The commercial itself has a “Welcome Back, Kotter” vibe, with a stereotypical New York accented student who knows all about the economic benefits of this convenient way of buying lots of soda pop at once.

My family would eventually start buying 2-liter bottles, but it took a while. We drank the smaller 1-liter bottles or would have our soda delivered in glass bottles by a local distributor. Eventually my Mother’s concern about the wastefulness of such a large bottle and its tendency to go “flat” before it was finished vanished. Not because they solved the carbonation problem, but because of economics. A 2-liter was just so cheap, especially on sale. So we would load and if a quarter of a bottle wound up going flat, it was not a big deal.

Things got even better and a lot more convenient when Pepsi started being sold in plastic 2-liter bottles.

Pepsi was a leader in this beverage deliver form-factor, introducing the first two-liter soft drink bottle in 1980. The decision was driven through market research conducted by marketing vice-president and future head of Apple, John Sculley.

The bottle was designed at DuPont under a team led by Nathaniel Wyeth. A patent for its design and manufacturing process would be granted in 1973.

In the mid-eighties, the soda company introduced the 3-liter bottle and while this seemed like a natural upgrade, it just didn’t fly in our house. It was too much soda pop gone to waste and no matter how low the price, it just never seemed to make sense unless we were having a party. Nowadays, the 2-liter still dominates store shelves with the occasional 3-liter lingering about.

It’s a good thing, because I am not sure a smaller bottle of Diet Coke would make quite the same visual impact when I drop Mentos into it.