Sodastream - minor success

[Bob Eager]

I think they're still around...mainly in small pubs etc.

[Bob Eager]

In was using those when I worked in a college bar in the mid 1970s.

[clot]

Crumbs, I thought that they'd gone by that time. B*gg*r, she's moved my zimmer again. I never left it there! ;)

[Bob Eager]

It was a very small bar. It was enlarged (and moved) in 1977, and we got those hose abominations that are combined with concentrate to dispense mixers.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Yes. I remember stamping on the little sparkets bombs -- you caught it with just the edge of your shoe, which set it of spinning very fast and they stood up on end and went wizzing off like a spinning top.

[clot]

Yuch! I used to use those things at a local sports club when doing voluntary bar duty in the '80's. They're gone now thank goodness!

[Heliotrope Smith]

As young teenagers we would nick the empties from the back of a pub and take them round to the front and get the five bob deposit on them.

[Andy Hall]

Some years ago we inherited one of the early siphons that used bulbs (possibly dating back to the 30s, perhaps later). This one was glass with a criss-cross mesh of wires over it presumably to strengthen it.

At any rate, needing some spares for it, we contacted BOC who were the manufacturers at the time. One could still get all the spares - the main one being a rubber washer for the top with a dip tube. They offered us a brand new siphon free of charge because they were looking for original siphons for their museum. Offer was politely declined

[Frank Erskine]

We have one of those in the 'props' store of a theatre with which I'm involved. The bulb fitting is quite a lot smaller than the later 'standard' for which you can still get bits.

Back to the non-user-refillable ones, about 15 years ago I tried to exchange one for my Dad (a fair swap?!) and was told that they'd been discontinued, so Mum is lumbered with a useless lump of glass. It's possible that somewhere some small enterprise is still refilling these. Schweppes was one of the firms that refilled siphons.

[djc]

Yes, was originally my grandfather's -- he liked gadgets. Finally threw it out about a year ago, there appeared to be a rubber seal somewhere in the mechanism that had perished so it would never hold a charge.