Tropic-Ana

For many years, Tropic-Ana was the face of orange juice in America. As the official mascot for the Tropicana Juice company, she was on all their products. More importantly, in our area, she was all over the train. Couple times a week or more, a huge train would leave the Tropicana juice plant in downtown Bradenton, carrying thousands of pounds of orange juice concentrate to points north. And every single car on that train was decorated with Tropic-Ana. The picture above is from the side of an old rail car I spotted in Cortez Village during the last Commercial Fishing Festival. That image of her probably goes back a few years. The detail below (from the whole car shown at the bottom) is from a car that's on a spur down by the Florida Railroad Museum. I don't know if it's been recently repainted, but if it hasn't, it's sure looks it. I think Tropicana donated this one to them sometime back. They still run that Tropicana train, but I don't think it's as important of a symbol as it used to be. Not to mention it's probably half full of Pepsi...