[2] In the 1930s, more than 100 bottlers operated in Massachusetts, including brands like Chelmsford Ginger Ale, Millis’s Clicquot Club, and Polar Beverages.
[3] Twin Lights’ heyday came during the 1950s and 1960s, when it produced tens of thousands of cases a year and rivaled both Coca-Cola and Pepsi in popularity within the region of Cape Ann, north of Boston.
[3] Over time, many small bottlers were undercut by such factors as changing market demographics, the rise of national supermarkets and the introduction of nonreturnable packaging.
Pierce Sears, great-grandson of founder Thomas Wilson, operated the small business in the same original Rockport location, producing cases of Twin Lights soda on the family’s aging machinery, some of which dates back to pre-World War II.
[4] The distribution of Twin Lights was in the final years restricted mainly to local vendors in Rockport and Gloucester, Massachusetts, and to a handful of residential customers to whom Sears personally delivered the soda.