The Wonders of the World. These monuments are always some of the most recognizable places in the world, but we always see the same places, and I think it’s time that we add a new one. My vote for the new Wonder of the World is Collinsville IL’s World’s Largest Catsup Bottle. I say we set the date to make it official on June 5, Catsup Bottle Appreciation Day. First though, let us go through all of the amazing history of this wonderful monument that is on The World’s Largest Catsup Bottle Official Website and Fan Club.
It all started on October 20, 1947 when the Collinsville City Council had a meeting where they agreed to give the Suppiger Company credit towards their water bills for the cost of the new water tower, and just two years later, construction of the brand new and amazing Catsup bottle began.
The factory kept on producing until the year of 1960 when the Suppiger family decided to sell their share of the company and the company moved. The 65,000 sq ft warehouse is a distribution center for Brooks products, and sadly because of this change inside of the company, the production of Catsup was to be completely stopped.
As time went on Collinsville would slowly start to neglect our amazing town treasure all the way to the 1980s. Brooks Facility manager Angelo Leoni stated, “It seems like every time we repaint it, somebody climbs up and sprays graffiti on it.”
Once the 1990s hit, it started to become an eyesore to the point the people of Collinsville were debating on whether or not the Bottle was worth keeping up. The folks over at Red Gold Inc. expressed that they were interested in helping in the effort to restore and repaint the Catsup Bottle. The city of Collinsville was more than happy to hear from Red Gold, but when Brooks Foods heard about it, they called Collinsville City Hall stating that they wanted to give a strong reminder that they were still the owners of the water tower and that they can do what they wish with it a quote from the November 1993 archive states “Even with the fundraising and preservation movement under way, they can and will tear it down if they so desire.”
At this point in history, there is now a Catsup Bottle Preservation Group, and they are trying their best to get money and fund the renovation and remodeling of the Catsup Bottle. One way that they would do this is by selling merchandise. At the International Horseradish Festival merchandise was selling like crazy, so they obviously planned on continuing to sell at future events. Well by the time August 1994 came around, the Italian Fest where the Preservation Group planned on selling what they could until the Italian Fest reached out and said that absolutely no Catsup Bottle shirts will be allowed to be sold at the fest. They claimed that it would take money from the fest and that “it’s in our rules and we follow our rules.”
Now answer this one question. Have you ever seen Santa Claus at the Great Pyramid of Giza? No, you haven’t. Want to know where he has been seen? At the Catsup Bottle, multiple times throughout the years. If Santa Claus had taken the time to stop at the Bottle, then I don’t see why we can’t make it a Wonder of the World.
The community of Collinsville had become so tight that the people working the Catsup Bottle fanpage talk about how people are sending their kids in the Iraqian war Catsup Bottle stuff. They state in the March 26, 2003 archive, “The war in Iraq is now a week old, and we hesitated to send out our latest email update feeling that it might seem a bit inappropriate right now. Buuuuut we sent it, and we were glad to hear from a lot of folks who welcome the diversion! Thanks, gang. In fact, we heard from a mom who’s son is on a ship in the Persian Gulf and she was going to print out the Catsup Bottle web site and mail it to him and his buddies!” The word of the Catsup bottle is spreading fast around the world, and I’m sure that since that was 22 years ago that means that the word has spread even more around the world, so it’s already very well known.
Now we haven’t had a completely clean record with other cities, when the former St. Louis Rams took on the Pittsburgh Steelers, they could not stop talking about how Heinz Field actually had the world’s largest ketchup bottle, but we all know that that is just simply not true. When you search online for the World’s Largest Ketchup Bottle, there is only one place that pops up and that is the wonderful soon to be wonder Collinsville Catsup Bottle.
Now we have to skip a few years to the wonderful year of 2007 (mainly because the archive says that 04-06 are under construction). The World’s Largest Catsup Bottle Summerfest Birthday Party & Car Show Bash were coming up and people were getting excited until the sad day on May 21 where they announced that they would not be able to hold the Bash that year because of the City of Collinville’s terms. To quote from the May 21, 2007 archive the writer stated, “It’s a lurid tale of greed, money, power and politics that we’d all just soon forget.”
The final and easily most important reason that the Catsup Bottle deserves to be a great Wonder of the World is that it was mentioned about 20 minutes into the huge movie Twilight Eclipse. This moment was easily the biggest moment in history itself. Nothing could ever beat the significance of the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle being mentioned in this historic movie. To quote from the amazing June 30, 2010 archive the writer stated, “What we were not aware of until 12:26 this morning, was that the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle is mentioned about 20 minutes into the film! Amazing. The entire theater went nuts! That’s a surprise of Biblical proportions.”
Sadly, at about 2012 the archive has since been paused and has yet to be picked back up. Regardless, the Catsup Bottle has had such a huge impact on the people of Collinsville and deserves to be spread round the world. When asked why the Catsup Bottle is so important to the World, former Collinsville now Washington D.C. prodigy Elliot Schusky stated, “The Catsup Bottle is a shining beacon of humanity’s deserved hubris. It’s a symbol reminding us not to spend so much time worrying about what we should do, and instead focus on what we can do. The bottle rightly flies in the face of Ian Malcolm’s cowardly words in Jurassic Park. Humans have such power to accomplish any idea we put our minds to, no matter how difficult it is, and the Catsup Bottle perfectly represents that. That is its significance to the world.”
The Catsup Bottle that stands over our town has an unbelievable amount of history of struggles, challenges, and love and because of all of that history the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle stands as a symbol that shows that no matter what trials we may face, if we have a goal, we can make it and that is why the World’s Largest Catsup Bottle should definitely be the next Wonder of the World.
Official Fan club Website Link: www.catsupbottle.com
