FORSYTH - It's the real thing, the Cola-Zeum is.

Hickory Point Mall's latest attraction is not so much a destination, more of a sweet overdose of all things Coke. For those seekers of refreshment who wish to wash themselves of reality for a while and drown in the sticky-sweet world according to Coca-Cola, this place is it.

The Cola-Zeum is housed where the Suncoast video store used to be, the multiple screen wiring that once conducted Hollywood's plotless havoc now buzzes with endless reruns of sugary Coke commercials, where everybody's always swigging soda and smiling.

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Everywhere else inside is a floor-to-ceiling shrine of Coke memorabilia: classic bottles that date to 1903, displays of historic vending machines and their early 20th century forebears, the Coke ice chests, all mixed in with about 122 years' worth of Cola-Cola advertising and related products.

There are hundreds and hundreds of individual items, with Coke's fizzy ad girls a common denominator, grinning at you everywhere from posters, trays and calendars. Their hairdos may go up and down with the effervescence of fashion, but their come-hither smiles belong to the ages. One stunning creature, next to a 1929 slogan that proclaims "The Pause that Refreshes" is so impossibly winsome she'd make any red-blooded male's glass tremble.

"Gorgeous, isn't it?" says Cola-Zeum owner David Lee Allen, looking around. He's a 45-year-old professional disc jockey who drank deeply from the Coca-Cola love cup when he was 20 and has been collecting Coke goodies ever since.

"I always said I was going to do a museum and, well, I did," he says, going for matter-of-fact modest but not really making it. "I'd been looking for a place for a year, and the mall really was my last resort; I'd never thought it would happen."

The mall, however, liked the concept of something refreshingly different. And now a collection that used to be jammed into Allen's two-bedroom home is cascading through 2,400 square feet of former retail space. The effect is to show the cultural impact of Coke writ large, how a drink invented in 1886 (and it really did used to be laced with cocaine) reinvents its image for every generation to become America's perpetual and indispensible fix for slaking thirst and lubricating good times.

Allen, who hunts all things Coke on eBay, at collector shows and through specialist dealers, doesn't have all the Cola ephemera yet, but he's got a lot. How about a full-size R2-D2 Coke promotional remote-control robot, designed to help "Star Wars" kids succumb to the commercial side of the force?

"And the operator could talk to kids through a cordless microphone," Allen says. "You know the sort of thing, 'Hey, little boy, have a Coke and a smile - don't do drugs.' " Of course, the original R2 only spoke in a series of electronic beeps and chirps, but no doubt star-struck, cola-laced kids made suitable allowances.

Go back further in time and in a galaxy far, far away, there is the sumptuous and seductive 1930s artwork of Haddon Sundblom. Coke asked the artist to create a Santa figure they could use in advertising, and the iconic, jolly fat elf he painted, upended bottle in hand, was destined to become the model for every child's image of Santa ever since.

"Coke invented Santa as we know him," Allen says. "The Coke people have always been marketing geniuses, and truly, I really think they are geniuses. Over the years, they've managed to get Coke on everything."

But the Cola-Zeum isn't a case of all that soda and not a drop to drink. There is a retail section out front selling retro-style Coke in bottles along with other classic sodas, and there is even Coke made how it used to be, with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup, the modern sweetener that has come to rule the pop world. Allen has to pick up the sugar-sweetened Coke from a specialist Chicago firm that imports them from Mexico, the DJ clearing his entertainment gear out of his truck and trailer so he can load up bountifully when he heads north.

Customers such as Margaret Fix and Doug Griffith are glad he makes the effort. They recently traveled from their Champaign home to shop at Von Maur but were sucked into the Cola-Zeum as soon as they saw the Mexican Coke with its distinctive labeling.

"We first found it down in Arcola at the Mexican restaurants there," Fix says. It tastes much better with sugar, and we're excited to find it here." Then she noticed the entrance to the museum looming behind the counter as she was paying for the Mexican Cokes. "And we'll check that out next time we come," she added.

Allen promises them a nostalgia-filled sluice down memory lane, with a dash of Coke memorabilia to suit all tastes. With that, he directs visitors to the grandest exhibit in the collection, the tricked out "Coca-Cola Denimachine" Ford Econoline Van, handed out as a star prize in the 1970s in a joint competition Coke staged with Levi's jeans.

The outside of the van has a surprising flame and denim-themed paint job, complete with faux stitching and rivets and light-up "Drink Coca-Cola" signs, and the interior is done in blue denim. Coke and its bottlers and promoters gave away about 115 of them, and Allen said it was one of the most successful promotions in history, catching the funky mood of the '70s when customized big vans were all the rage.

"It was designed by Hot Rod Magazine with side pipes, 8-track tape player, black and white TV, CB radio, cruise control, radar detectors, it had everything," Allen says. "Once more, Coke had showed it was the height of cool; it was party time again."

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