Just because it was 'old' doesn't mean it couldn't have been sold as an F1 hybrid. It's not like the breeders didn't know how to do that before the 1950s...it's just that it wasn't a very common or popular way of doing things. Read Liivingston's works to see how sophisticated/not they really were back then. It's pretty amazing...what they were doing 'seat of their pants', what they actually knew (and got right) and what was just a WAG.
As to the more than one Florida Favorite...it could be that it wasn't exactly stabilized when released. A number of the older releases were not bred for more than 3 or 4 generations, with maybe only one back cross. In other words, not quite up to 'modern' standards.
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