Dorri Partain 
Assistant Editor 

The Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl, baby!

While those young ones who drink from baby bottles are more interested in the contents inside than the design on the outside, imprinted bottles prove one is never too young to support the hometown team.

Proudly sporting the Kansas City Chiefs’ arrowhead logo, this All Pro Baby! product was officially sanctioned by the National Football (NFL) in 1994 but the unique design goes back a decade earlier.

In 1983, parents William and Nickie Campbell of Muskogee, Oklahoma were pondering the unwieldy design of infant bottles. Their idea was to redesign the shape, making a bottle that a baby could easily hold. Nickie took modeling clay and began crafting various designs, testing which versions could be easily held by their daughter Mary. Armed with a $250,000 loan from Nickie’s father, they found a local company to create a mold and prototypes to take to market shows.

With William as President and CEO, they named their product The-Easy-To-Hold-Bottle and their company änsa Bottle Company, adding an umlaut to make the company name sound European though “ansa” is Latin for loop or handle.

Their design for a Baby Bottle With Integral Handle was granted US Patent 4570808 in 1984. Made from blow-molded polycarbonate, the bottle was offered in opaque pastel colors as well as clear in 4 ounce and 9 ounce sizes, and usually sold for $2.00.

As sales of the new design skyrocketed, the Campbells shifted production to a larger facility in Miami, Florida.  The caps, rings, and nipples were purchased from a company in Thailand and attached in America.

After several offers to purchase their company, and a growing family, the Campbells sold their company in 1993. Nickie Campbell’s unique design for an infant bottle has been entered into the Museum Of Modern Arts’ and the United Kingdom’s Museum of Design in Plastics’ collections.