toppa 3

I can't copy this properly because the Sands and McDougall 1944-5 online is 'unstable' but this is part of an ad for Amalgamated Dairies at 155 Capel which must be shortly before the time that Toppa ice cream was being made there. I don't know if Amalgamated became Toppa or Toppa bought the premises and converted it into an ice cream factory. The last mention of Amalgamated in the Age is August 1950. 

Here's another ad from approx the same time:

Melbourne Age 19 March 1943 p. 2

The above is from the Brisbane Telegraph 2 July 1953, p. 23. It doesn't tell us much but it doesn't negate anything we already know. Then there's this, from the Hobart Mercury 3 April 1954 p. 38:

Below is an ad from 1954, wherein the premises now houses a sinister-sounding org called 'Business Investments' and is selling off Amalgamated Dairies-adjacent (or perhaps some other similar company recently bought-adjacent) properties:

Melbourne Age 5 June 1954 p. 21

 Similar situation from May the same year:

Melbourne Age 27 May 1954 p. 20

Another ad, from 8 April 1954 p. 11 says that Business Investments is 'a subsidiary of Toppa Holdings'. Business Investments Pty Ltd - find me a more generic name - has fewer than twenty ads in the Age in the 1950s, and seems to have existed only to sell milk bars, which were surely owned by Amalgamated Dairies at an earlier stage and which needed jettisoning as the business switched, which seems to suggest (I'm talking myself round here) that yes, Amalgamated Dairies either converted to Toppa, or was bought by Toppa and its component parts sold off. I'd need to know more about the history of dairy distribution in Melbourne in the immediate postwar period I guess. But we are way before the period of dairy consolidation in the city - that didn't take place until, I think, the 80s. Those times when you'd go to another suburb and they'd have completely different packaging on their milk cartons! We were provincial AF back then...

Here's a banal news item from the Argus of 19 November 1955 (p. 18):

So this morning Perry and I went to have a look at 155 Capel St. We got very confused about where it was as it no longer seems to exist as an address, let alone as a building. These are 141 and 151, and a bit of associated laneway buildings etc. 

By the way this (above) appears to be a cool hidden cafe which I will have to check out properly sometime. 

I was confused about this but I think I've figured it. This is the site in 1945. It's pretty hard to see anything in this picture aside from that the big white shape represents one consolidated site. 

This is the same site on google maps now. So I guess what was Amalgamated Dairies/Toppa in the 1950s is now St Joseph's Flexible Learning Centre, which I didn't photograph when I was there because it's a school with kids in it. 

I suppose that's about the end of the mystery for now. In the sense of, that's as far as my research can go. The mystery may continue. In fact it does. But it's kind of a concocted mystery, and at present I feel like I'm having a discussion with myself about something no-one else cares about. What I do know is that if you put posts like this up online, at some point someone comes along who knows more. If that's you, please comment. If you want to discuss with me but you don't want to actually be published, you should still comment but with contact details and I won't publish the comment but I will get back to you.