My dad is from Winona, so the whole family goes down every summer. This year is really special as it's my dad's 45th high school reunion, so while I am down there I am just wondering if I could easily find Mello Yello and Vault at the stores. It sure beats drinking Diet Pepsi and Coke.

Much to my mom's complaning, I have been buying fridge packs of Mello Yello because it is limited in my area, and I am afraid it is going to go away very fast.

Last I heard Winona still bottles Mello Yellow in returnable 10 oz. bottles - BUUUUT - you have to bring in empty 10 oz. (Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite or MY) bottles to exchange. I don't know about the stuff that they bring in.

LOL Sounds like the Soup Nazi of soda pop bottlers. LOL

They have to be that way because some dingbats will buy the bottles full then sell the empties as being rare on the big auction site.

[ 06-01-2006, 07:25 PM: Message edited by: ithastabeshasta ]

Yea, you have to remember that the 6.5 and 10 ounce bottles are sold at antique stores and such for about $5 a pop. Like ihastabeshasta said, people would get the bottles and sell them and then the bottler will run out of bottles to refill. Here's part of an article that ran a few years ago:

An old-time baby Coke bottle, made of glass thicker than the nerdiest bifocals, sells for $12.50 at the R.D. Cone Co. antiques shop on Second Street in Winona.
Three blocks over, at the Coca Cola Bottling Co. of Winona, the original 6.5-ounce contoured Coke bottles are still meant for quenching a thirst, not collecting.
Now, they're a collector's item. Once they were the only way to buy a soda.
He never planned on being the relic of a nearly obsolete business. Coke just tastes better in a cool glass bottle, Kuhlmann insists. So as long as he can maintain a stash of bottles -- the refillable ones, thick enough to withstand repeated use, that haven't been manufactured in ages -- he'll keep filling them, just like his dad did for more than 70 years.

So you can't buy 12 packs or anything like that?!