Japanese Ramune, and how to retrieve the marble from within

When I first saw it in Japan, I knew I had to own one. The marble that comes along with the bottle of a Japanese soft drink, affectionately known as Ramune. The soft drink is basically a carbonated flavoured drink, with a marble at the stopper to seal the carbonation within. To drink from it, you will have to open a plastic seal and detach a small apparatus that will help you push the marble into the bottle, although you can just use your finger to do the trick. The fun part is, the marble gets stuck on the neck of the glass bottle and you just drink with the marble wobbling around the bottle. However the bottle was also designed in such a way that you can actually hold the marble in place at the neck so as to prevent the marble from slipping back to the opening and stop you from drinking from the bottle. Two indentations around the neck form a “V” shaped notch and holds that marble when you tilt the bottle at an angle.
Although widely popularized in Japan, as research would have it the design of the bottle actually came from a British soft drink maker named Hiram Codd and that the design existed since 1872! Hence such bottle designs were named Codd-necked bottles ever since.
Taking the initiative to bring yall the experiments of this novel item, I now list some crazy facts about what this bottle can actually do:

Experiment Specifications:
1 x Japanese Ramune bottle
1 x human test subject

Test and Results:
Q: If bottle turned upside down after opening and that the marble falls back to opening, will it stop the drink from leaking?
A: Test on the carbonated drink – No. It can be observed that the drink is dripping slowly.
Test on water refilled into the bottle – Yes. Water was not leaking.

Q: What angle can you tilt the bottle before the marble falls out from that “V” shaped notch?
A: Several tests indicate this to be somewhere between 40º ~ 45º angle.

Q: Is it true that the marble cannot be removed by normal means without breaking the bottle?
A: False. The marble can be removed simply with a number of work tools. As in my case, I opened it in less than 30 min with 2 flat-head screwdriver. However, do not attempt to do this by yourself if you are under 18.

Method:
Using the screwdriver, try to slip the tip to the inside of that blue sealing cap on the exterior of the bottle. The action is to pry the cap open. Do this several times around the edge of the cap. You will notice that sometimes the cap break off when you try to pry it loose. This happens but the trick is to loosen the cap without trying to break the seal. As you pry it loose, you will have to reinsert the tip of the screwdriver further. When you have loosen enough space in one area that can fit another screwdriver in, do that by inserting another screwdriver next to the one that is already inside. Try to push it as far in as possible and when you can push no more, cross that screwdriver over to the previous screwdriver and use it as a pivot to pry further into the bottle. Keep doing this action in that one area and you will eventually see that the blue cap has tilted slightly and you can feel the tilt when you pried it. Again insert both screwdrivers further in and pry with one and the other acting as the pivot and Voila! The cap will pop off soon enough.



Another place in which you may find another tip of retrieving the marble.