Collecting Mountain Dew bottles has become a hot hobby, especially if you can get a complete set of the names, and designs.

The lemony 7-Up like drink was invented back in the 1940s, by brothers Barney and Ally Hartman, of Knoxville, Tennessee. They actually started manufacturing it as a mix for hard liquor, and so jokingly named it "Mountain Dew", after Tennessee moonshine.

The theme was so amusing, that they carried it further in 1946, when a paper label was created for the bottle, with a sketch of a hillbilly, and the credit "by BARNEY and OLLY", because the artist misspelled it. Then in 1951, Ally ordered a new bottle of green glass, with a white painted picture of a hillybilly running from a revenue agent. This time the printing was correct, but for unknown reasons, the bottles were warehoused until 1955.

The "name fame" started in 1954, when Charlie Gordon and Tri-City beverage decided to add a lemon-flavored drink to their products, and struck a deal with the Hartmans for a franchise to bottle Mountain Dew. That bottle was the first commercially produced Mountain Dew, and carried the imprint "by CHARLIE and JIM". From then on, franchises sprung up on a regular basis, creating a total of 174 different Mountain Dew named bottles.

Ten years later, Pepsi would buy out the company that then owned the rights to Mountain Dew. The label was redesigned in 1965, and names were no longer permitted on the bottles, although some managed to get by the watchdogs. Today, depending on the year, condition, and rarity, some of the original bottles will fetch up to $20 from a collector.