Playing ketchup with an old favorite: the world's largest catsup bottle is up for sale

 The Collinsville, Illinois tower dates back to 1949, and when the Brooks company relocated to Indiana in 1959, the bottle remained.

 In 1993, the bottle's owners wanted to sell the property and the Catsup Bottle Preservation Group was formed to keep it standing.

If you have $500,000 lying around and you're in the market for a 70-foot tall, 100,000-gallon water tower that carries bragging rights as the world's largest catsup bottle, have we got a deal for you. Bethel-Eckert Enterprises, the owners of the bottle, decorated in 1949 to resemble Brooks Old Original Rich and Tangy Catsup which used to be bottled at the plant next door in Collinsville, Illinois, just outside St. Louis, put the bottle and the property on which it sits up for sale last June and so far offers, much like ketchup pouring from a bottle, have been rather slow. It came as a surprise to us, and many other of the bottle's fans, that it was privately owned, as it has been on the National Register of Historic Places for some time and has been the source of a Catsup Bottle Preservation Group and yearly catsup festivals in Collinsville. A Mr. Mike "Big Tomato" Gassman, leader of the Preservation Group, is optimistic a sympathetic buyer will be found soon.

We hope so, too, because if the future of the bottle is in a pickle, we hope a buyer will mustard the strength to overcome doubt and relish it, if you catsup our drift.

I'll take that as a condiment: The World's Largest Catsup Bottle of Collinsville, Illinois

Collinsville is a cute little town...

...and they've got another nice, albeit more traditional, water tower.

They know how to put on a nice sunset, too.

We're big fans of water towers here at Eccentric Roadside and there's a Grade A Fancy one in the pleasant St. Louis suburb of Collinsville, Illinois. In 1949, the bottlers of Brooks Old Original Rich and Tangy Catsup commissioned the W.E. Caldwell Company to build a 100,000-gallon water tower next to their Collinsville plant. Not ones to miss a marketing opportunity, they designed their tower to closely resemble their slender, tapered catsup bottle, making it a giant condiment in the sky. The Brooks brand had great success and in 1959 the company merged with another. Bottling operations were moved to Indiana but the bottle tower remained in Collinsville. By 1993, the current owners wanted to sell the property and the bottle's future looked doomed. This is when a group of Collinsville's bottle-lovers formed the Catsup Bottle Preservation Group. The catsup company agreed to deed the tower to the town of Collinsville, but the town balked at the cost of painting and maintaining the tower, so the preservation group began a two-year fund raising drive (complete with a visit by the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile) that resulted in the eventual designation of the tower on the National Register of Historic Places. They've had a yearly catsup festival for the last 13 years, complete with a hot dog eating contest, musical chairs, a please pass the catsup tournament, and the crowning of Little Princess Tomato and Little Sir Catsup. Next year's event is scheduled for July 8, so mark your calendars.

You mayo may not realize it but it's great to see how, when in a pickle, a local group can mustard the strength to overcome adversity and relish their victory, if you catsup my drift.