No more games, no more pretense — this is our list of the top 25 Zelda items of all-time. Whether they were weapons or shields or utility items, these are the panel’s selections for the coolest or most useful inventory slots in the series. We’ll be counting down one by one until we reach the #1 pick on Jan. 31.
7) Bottle – 7 votes, 260 points
Chris: You remember in Majora’s Mask when the developers went berserk and just started handing out bottles like they were candy? Beautiful, glass candy? And they said “ah, screw it” and gave you six bottles? Those were good times.
Other games, like Skyward Sword and Link Between Worlds, have experimented with five. The traditional number is four. Regardless, the bottles are always a hot commodity. We’ve talked at length in this list about how versatility is a huge factor in how much we like an item; well, it doesn’t get much more versatile than this. Fairies, poes, bugs, liquids, potions, water, fish, letters, papers…and that’s just the stuff I thought of in the last 10 seconds.
Like heart pieces and other notable Zelda items, the bottles also serve as a sort of hidden difficulty control. If you want to make things more tough, you can ignore them entirely (although you usually have to get at least one). If a boss is kicking your ass, you can always come back with fairies or potions in tow and just win a war of attrition. Either way, it’s easy to see why the bottle got so much support despite its simplicity.
Shaun: Whether you used them for puzzle solving, storing potions or life-saving fairies, or transporting soup, the chances are good that the bottles were one of the most important items in your Zelda experience.
However, they also made Link a horrible, tyrannical oppressor of poor fairies the world round. Link storm into their peaceful home, captures and imprisons them in a tiny bottle, where there is nary room to move, let alone fly, and then only releases them for one final act of curing before their lives are snuffed out. If there’s ever a Zelda game where the fairies rise up to kill Link, you can thank the bottles for that.
Joseph: Perhaps the second most versatile item behind the bow, the bottles in the series were often the difference between life and death. They could carry fairies, potions, soups, bees and more. If it looks like you can put it in a bottle, you probably can. And they had the magical property of keeping anything alive in perpetuity. Some enslaved fairies never saw the light of day after I caught them.
Michaela: Bottles mean Fairies and potions, and these are items I can’t go without in a Zelda game. I need to have at least three or more bottles in order for my paranoia to subside – any lower number is unacceptable and means I play the game in a tediously slow fashion.
Cary: Why were there only ever four (or five) bottles in all of Hyrule? Was it because everyone kept their treasures hidden in tall grass? Was there no bottlemakers union? Was it because of all the damn urns? The world may never know.
RELATED LINKS
PREVIOUS TOP 25s:
Gray Areas 
Bottles are great, and that image is hilarious and disturbing at the same time. =P
Those poor fairies locked up in there….