Barware Tiki Mug Makers - a Timeline for Beginners

When I started collecting Tiki mugs, it was a bit nebulous to me which "common" mugs were older than others - Orchids, Dynasty Wholesale, OMC, etc.

So for fun, I've knocked together this visual timeline of mug makers who have supplied mugs to bars/Tiki restaurants over the years - either as generic items, brandable items, or location specific items. Below the timeline is a legend with more info on why a particular maker was included.

• I am using the broader public definition of "Tiki Mugs" here, to include things commonly referred to as Tiki (such as parrots, skulls, Asian themes, hula girls, etc) even if they are not depicting a true Tiki.
• I have intentionally left out mug makers who were primarily housewares sellers (like Frankoma or Treasure Craft), very small local shops making mugs for a single location, or makers who only make expensive mugs for the modern collector market. Frankoma might be over the line though?
• I have provided company start/end dates where I could find them, but of course some of these makers might have only jumped on the "cheap Tiki" bandwagon briefly during the 60's craze, etc.

Keeping the above in mind, any thoughts? Things to fix? Missing makers? I'd welcome all feedback to update the chart.

(You may want to right-click to open the image in a new tab, to make it more readable).

[ Edited by Tiki_Thor on 2025-09-02 18:42:56 ]

[ Edited by Tiki_Thor on 2026-01-26 14:03:59 ]

Interesting and informative. Several names I did not know about. Thanks for doing that.

Wow this is great! Thanks for taking the time to do this.

And for the curious, here's who I didn't include on my graph above for various reasons. Roughly in chronological order.

Great work. I did a dive into restaurant severwear here on TC. That was years ago though. Here’s a link.

https://tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic_id=34296&start=0

Thanks Uncle Trav!

I look forward to reading that thread tonight, and plundering any info I can to modify my timeline.

Cheers!

Looks like I need to add "Modern China USA" to this list, though I can't find any info on them yet.

There's a ton of differently-branded droopy mugs on mytiki.life, and I'm seeing examples of other branded Modern China USA items from the mid 90's thru 2006-ish for sale on eBay.

Possibly related to "Modern China Company Inc" in Sebring, Ohio USA, who has been active since 1959 and does a lot of sports branding on non-tiki water bottles/plastics, and currently lists 2 brandable tiki glasses (standard Libbys) on their website. No ceramics though.

[ Edited by Tiki_Thor on 2026-01-01 17:40:37 ]