Wanted. Name of bon vivant who discovered new rum drink!

Believe it or not, the title of this post was one of the advertising slogans that American Spirits, Inc. registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in 1935 in support of its premium rum brand, Carioca.

Or how about this one? "Who discovered the Carioca cooler?" That's a gimme for anyone in our family. It's Walter Ruby, the vice-president of marketing for the selfsame American Spirits. But why is he writing advertising copy about himself?

Take a look at the whole list of copyrighted phrases. It's from the Library of Congress 1935 Catalog of Copyright Entries, part 1, volume 32 and it turned up as a snippet in a Google Books search.



Then here are two more snippets relating to the history of this drink, the first from an advertising trade journal in 1938 and the second from a court ruling published in a federal legal register in 1940. Both snippets leave you wanting more, but these excerpts are all that is available without tracking down the full documents.

"That such is the fact is mostly because American Spirits, Inc., who sell Carioca Rum, saw an opportunity to identify their fledgling with mighty Coca-Cola and started plugging a mixture dubbed Carioca Cooler back in 1934. Carioca Cooler ..."

"This article leaves no doubt that the Carioca Rum Company is very closely associated with the Coca-Cola Company in the promotion of a drink known as the Carioca Cooler. The presence of Mr. Homer Thompson, of the New York Coca-Cola ..."

Finally, the great graphical cocktail labels at the top of the post are from a collection on the site Arkiva Tropika. They look to me like coasters, and they have these corny toasts on them. Plus, there's the Carioca Cooler recipe right there. These are for Monday and Wednesday. I wonder if there were five more.