Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 3, 1993 TAG: 9312030420
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER NOTE: Below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It's green, all right, and tall - 35 feet, to be precise. From a distance, it even has a distinct tree shape.
So what's the problem? Haven't you ever seen a Christmas tree made out of empty 2-liter bottles of 7Up?
``Unfortunately, we have no human-interest story in having all the bottles sucked dry by a 7Up-crazed maniac,'' laments the tree's creator, 7Up area manager John Hickey, as he gazes up in wonder at his handiwork.
Instead, he confesses, he ordered empties from the factory.
Perhaps that's just as well. His ``tree'' consists of 1,150 empty bottles, dangling on 40 strands of baling wire, all hitched to a flagpole at the Pilot gas station and convenience store on Williamson Road in Roanoke County.
And that's just the beginning. There are Christmas lights, of course. And even a star on top. Well, sort of a star.
Actually, it's a stuffed version of ``Spot,'' the strange little soft-drink pitchman who consists of, well, a round red spot with arms, legs and sunglasses.
Whatever possessed Hickey and a half-dozen buddies to devote nearly two full days to rigging up this, uh, display?
Good old-fashioned salesmanship, mostly. November, December and January are the peak months for 7Up sales - the clear soda is a favorite mixer at holiday parties - and Hickey was looking for a promotional gimmick at the Pilot store.
``We talked about doing something big for Christmas and I opened my big fat mouth and we came up with this,'' Hickey says.
Next thing he knew, he was spending a weekend engaged in tedious labor drilling holes in the bottles and sliding them one-by-one onto the wires.
In the two weeks it's been up, the 7Up tree has turned out to be the attention-getter Hickey intended. However, it's not necessarily the soda that folks are beating down Pilot's door for.
``Everybody wants to buy Spot,'' Hickey says. ``At least 100 people have asked if they can buy him. One little girl even went out and shook the tree trying to get Spot down.''
by CNB