We've discussed the sweet tea thing before, why the citizens of Mayberry aren't exactly swilling sweat tea like it's water, as people would in a real small southern town. Part of the problem is that the show was sponsored by General Foods, who advertised Sanka very heavily on the show. They had enough influence to have the characters drinking lots of coffee and very little sweet tea. I think in many of the dinner scenes, you can't really tell what they're drinking...presumably it would be sweet tea, which General Foods might see as a competitor of Sanka. (I don't think GF made sweet tea back then.)
Ozzie Nelson once said he had to go toe-to-toe with his own advertisers. Coca-Cola wanted the Nelsons to drink Cokes out of the bottle at breakfast time, and Aunt Jemima wanted the Nelsons to have pancakes for dinner. Kodak even wanted him to wear a camera around his neck once...in a scene in which he was mowing the grass. So if they could make demands like that, the GF representative could ask the producers to hide the sweet tea and limit soft drinks to when people are hanging out at the gas station or drug store. Having said all of that...long after this came up before, I found a color episode in which Andy is seen pouring something that resembles sweet tea out of a pitcher and drinking it. I even saved some stills of his doing that, and when I find them I'll post the Image Shack links. It's a dark colored drink with ice cubes floating in it, that's for sure. But the way the color looks, it could just as easily be grape or cherry Kool-Aid, another General Foods product. As for "pop" versus "Coke"...back then brand names were censored just as quickly as bad words. Obviously that doesn't happen now. Dixon _______________________________________________ WBMUTBB mailing list [email protected] http://www.mayberry.com/tagsrwc/wbmutbb/
