The Discreet 1.5 Liter Bottle of Soda

Exactly why does the world need a 1.5 liter bottle of soda?

When I was growing up we had available to us the very user-friendly and simple to handle 2 liter bottles. These were standard equipment in a home with growing teenagers (if the parents allowed them to have soda), stock supplies for getting together to watch a ball game and ever-ready if a party was being had for any reason. The 2 liter bottle of soda was as normalized a household good as a household good could get. If anyone in the house wanted soda, the command given was always understood to mean the 2 liter had to be fetched.

When I was out and around with friends and the fellas and we wanted a drink, we’d pick up a set of bottled soda usually of the 20 ounce variety and we would each get to drink one of our chosen flavors. Occasionally we’d snag a few sodas in 12 ounce aluminum cans if they happened to be the variety that were sold cold in the store we happened to stop at and we would forego the plastic 20 ounce selections that were sitting on the shelf at room temperature. I still remember when 20 ounce sodas were sold in glass bottles complete with a snazzy thin layer of styrofoam around the wide bottom of the bottle to help keep the contents cold.

Soon thereafter a gargantuan 3 liter model appeared in the stores in case we didn’t have enough soda in stock at the house inside those 2 liter bottles. These were especially handy for those get-togethers because you would buy only one 3 liter of a particular brand or flavor of soda and not have to buy two 2 liters of the same type. It was a pain to carry armfuls of 2 liters out of the car and into the house when each of you could easily carry two 3 liters easily and still have ability to haul the chips and dip. A 3 liter guaranteed there would be no shortage of soda and also kept your own stock of preferred soda style and flavor safe from the clutches of the other fellas.

So what is the reason for a 1.5 liter bottle of soda? 
I have a few guesses:
A 2 liter bottle holds too much soda for one person, or two people, or three. You don’t want that extra .5 liters taking up shelf space. The 2 liter bottle demands too much room in your refrigerator. 

I also have a few reasons for the existence of the 1.5 liter bottle of soda I am absolutely certain are not the reasons they are sold on store shelves these days:
The 1.5 liter bottle is a single-serving size for a solitary fan on game day. A proper daily allowance of soda measures 1.5 liters exactly (and not that dastardly 2 liters). The 1.5 liter bottles can be more easily formed into a safely transportable six-pack. 1.5 liters of soda can be safely consumed before the fizz wears off. 1.5 liter bottles fit perfectly inside the energy-saving refrigerators or today.  Four out of Five mothers prefer the 1.5 liter size because groups of them go very well in their kitchens.

I jest, of course. I think…

I think there is a very pertinent and intentional reason behind the emergence of the 1.5 liter soda bottle.
They (this group of people will come up and then in these discussions though we don’t always ever get a really good look at them) don’t want us to drink that much soda.

More directly: They don’t want us to drink 2 liters of soda. At one time. In one sitting. In one get-together.

Here is a fact that all of us life-long soda drinkers know based on years and years of consuming soda from 12 ounce cans, 20 ounce bottles, huge 3 liter bottles and even the standardized 2 liter variety: 
You don’t have to drink all of the soda at once.

Mothers and fathers are keenly aware of this. Parents were and are the people who have had to deal with the dilemmas of whether or not to store a 2 liter bottle of soda holding an inch and a half of soda in it or pour it down the drain. Parents are the ones who had to devise a way to combing two mostly empty 2 liter bottles of the same type of soda into one solitary bottle. Parents even sometimes had to resort to asking their children to come into the kitchen for a glass of soda at random times during the day or night so the bottle could be emptied out and thrown away and removed from taking up space and irritating Mom and/or Dad as they walked through the kitchen or rummaged in the refrigerator (this was before recycling really took off. Look away if you have to).

So what is being presented to us in the 1.5 liter soda bottle is regulated choice determined by someone else (one of those they people, maybe even a smaller group of them). Someone thinks you and I need only 1.5 liters of our preferred soda. If I think about it, the 3 liter bottles disappeared without a forwarding address quite a while ago. I’ll bet this small group of them whisked them away. It must be that they think they know what is best for our game days, hang out days and party beverage stock. I am glad someone is looking out for you and I. We might continue going around wasting soda otherwise. Or drinking too much of it all at once.

I haven’t the heart to tell them about the ounces, quarts and gallons of soda I poured out of my 12 ounce can, onto parking lot blacktop; the soda I dumped out of my 20 ounce bottles onto the grass after pulling over on road trips; the soda I poured out of 2 and 3 liter bottles straight down the drain in my mom’s kitchen because the fizz had worn off days before. 

Sometimes I just did not want to drink an entire 12 ounces, 20 ounces or even finish the last few drops of what was 2 or 3 liters of soda. So I didn’t. 

And I made that decision myself.