TitleCentennial ShandyDescriptionFrom 1939 the soft-drink company Ballins produced a bottled product called Centennial Shandy at their Sydenham model brewery, touted as their 'newest and latest thirst sensation'. Timed to commemorate the Centennial of Aotearoa New Zealand in 1940, it was a popular mixture of malt beer and lemonade. The blue and yellow label depicted the main Centennial Exhibition building in Wellington.
Judging from newspaper advertisements, it was available throughout Canterbury and Selwyn, including at milk bars such as McKenzies in Burnham. It was sold at the Centennial Exhibition 'beer bar' in Wellington in 1940, where in April three men were convicted for breaking liquor licencing laws.
As a child growing up in Coalgate and Glentunnel, John Charles remembers children getting tipsy on it, and it appears to have been withdrawn from the market around 1957.