Fruitopia is a fruit-flavored drink introduced by
the Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company is an American multinational beverage corporation founded in 1892, best known as the producer of Coca-Cola. The Coca-Cola Company also manufactures, sells, and markets other non-alcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups ...
's successful
Minute Maid
Minute Maid is a product line of beverages, usually associated with lemonade or orange juice, but which now extends to soft drinks of different kinds, including Hi-C. Minute Maid is sold under the Cappy brand in Central Europe and under the bran ...
brand in 1994 and targeted at teens and young adults. According to ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' business reports, it was invented as part of a push by Minute Maid to capitalize on the success of
Snapple
Snapple is a brand of tea and juice drinks which is owned by Keurig Dr Pepper and based in Plano, Texas, United States. The company (and brand), which was originally known as Unadulterated Food Products, was founded in 1972. The brand achieved som ...
and other flavored tea drinks. The brand gained substantial hype in the mid-1990s before enduring lagging sales by decade's end. While still available in Canada and Australia as a juice brand, in 2003, Fruitopia was phased out in most of the United States where it had struggled for several years.
However, select flavors have since been revamped under
Minute Maid
Minute Maid is a product line of beverages, usually associated with lemonade or orange juice, but which now extends to soft drinks of different kinds, including Hi-C. Minute Maid is sold under the Cappy brand in Central Europe and under the bran ...
. Use of the Fruitopia brand name continues through various beverages in numerous countries, including some McDonald's restaurant locations in the United States, which carry the drink to this day.
History
Fruitopia was a pet project of Coke's former marketing chief,
Sergio Zyman
Sergio Zyman (born July 30, 1945) is a marketing executive from Mexico best known as the marketer behind the failed launch of New Coke.
Early life and education
Zyman was born to a Jews in Mexico, Mexican Jewish family in Mexico City. He attende ...
. The company spent an initial marketing budget of $30 million, allowing Fruitopia to quickly gain hype in the mid-1990s. ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine named Fruitopia one of the Top 10 New Products of 1994,
["The Coca-Cola Company Unveils New Fruitopia and Nestea Teas"]
PR Newswire Association. March 23, 1995. Retrieved March 5, 2010. and the beverage was even mentioned on the popular animated series ''
The Simpsons
''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, ...
''.
The brand's flagship flavor was Strawberry Passion Awareness.
This flavor was available at drink fountains as well at
McDonald's
McDonald's Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechri ...
as Coca-Cola pushed this drink to market in many places. Fruitopia
vending machine
A vending machine is an automated machine that provides items such as snacks, beverages, cigarettes, and lottery tickets to consumers after cash, a credit card, or other forms of payment are inserted into the machine or otherwise made. The fir ...
s have also appeared in schools and college campuses in addition to, or as a replacement of, soda.
In addition to the popular Strawberry Passion Awareness, other flavors included The Grape Beyond, Tangerine Wavelength, Citrus Consciousness, Fruit Integration, Pink Lemonade Euphoria, Lemonade Love & Hope, Raspberry Psychic Lemonade, Strawberry Kiwi Ruckus, and Beachside Blast. These flavors were available in the United States while a much wider array was available in the UK. On March 23, 1995, a Fruitopia fruit tea line featuring Born Raspberry, Peaceable Peach, Lemon Berry Intuition, and Curious Mango was introduced in 16-ounce glass bottles.
[ In a drive to remake the brand and remarket it as more relevant to ]Generation X
Generation X (or Gen X for short) is the Western world, Western demographic Cohort (statistics), cohort following the baby boomers and preceding the millennials. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1960s as starting birth years a ...
, however, Coca-Cola dropped several Fruitopia flavors in 1996, added others (such as Beachside Blast and Banana Vanilla Inclination), and renamed others (Citrus Consciousness becoming Citrus Excursion).
Advertising
They featured animation using imagery of fruit arrayed in colorful, spinning kaleidoscope
A kaleidoscope () is an optical instrument with two or more reflecting surfaces (or mirrors) tilted to each other at an angle, so that one or more (parts of) objects on one end of these mirrors are shown as a regular symmetrical pattern when v ...
patterns. This was accompanied by idealistic aphorisms reminiscent of hippie
A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to different countries around ...
poetry of the 1960s, such as might be found in advertisements which ran in underground press
The terms underground press or clandestine press refer to periodicals and publications that are produced without official approval, illegally or against the wishes of a dominant (governmental, religious, or institutional) group.
In specific rec ...
newspapers of the period. Background music on several of the ads was provided by the Muffs
The Muffs were an American pop punk band based in Southern California, formed in 1991. Led by singer and guitarist Kim Shattuck, the band released four full-length studio albums in the 1990s, as well as numerous singles including "Lucky Guy" and ...
, Kate Bush
Catherine Bush (born 30 July 1958) is an English singer, songwriter, record producer and dancer. In 1978, at the age of 19, she topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks with her debut single "Wuthering Heights (song), Wuthering Heights", ...
, and the Cocteau Twins
Cocteau Twins was a Scottish rock band active from 1979 to 1997. They were formed in Grangemouth by Robin Guthrie (guitars, drum machine) and Will Heggie (bass), adding Elizabeth Fraser (vocals) in 1981 and replacing Heggie with multi-instrum ...
. An example ad copy ran as follows:
Its recurring slogan was "Fruitopia: for the mind, body, and planet."
Trial in Greece
In 1997, Greek writer Eugene Trivizas
Eugene Trivizas (Greek: Eυγένιος Τριβιζάς; born 1946) is a Greek sociologist and writer of children's books.
For his lasting contribution as a children's writer, Trivizas was a finalist for the biennial, international Hans Chri ...
won the first stage of a legal battle against Coca-Cola. This prevented the multinational company from registering ''Fruitopia'' as a trademark
A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...
for soft drinks, as it was already trademarked for the title of his TV serial and comic-strip books. The court decided that Coca-Cola had unlawfully appropriated his intellectual property. Coca-Cola appealed against the decision and, in December 1999, the relevant court of appeal ruled once again in his favor prohibiting the use of his intellectual property as a trademark for soft drinks.
2000s drawback
By the end of the 1990s, Fruitopia had struggled to be profitable. In 2003, the Fruitopia line was all but discontinued in the United States, with some flavors being revamped under the Minute Maid
Minute Maid is a product line of beverages, usually associated with lemonade or orange juice, but which now extends to soft drinks of different kinds, including Hi-C. Minute Maid is sold under the Cappy brand in Central Europe and under the bran ...
moniker
A nickname is a substitute for the proper name of a familiar person, place or thing. Commonly used to express affection, a form of endearment, and sometimes amusement, it can also be used to express defamation of character. As a concept, it is ...
; Minute Maid, the world's largest juice brand, was largely responsible for the lagging sales of Fruitopia. A similar situation occurred with PepsiCo
PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Harrison, New York, in the hamlet of Purchase. PepsiCo's business encompasses all aspects of the food and beverage market. It oversees the manuf ...
, who replaced their own Fruitopia clone, Fruit Works, with the enduring Tropicana Tropicana may refer to:
Companies
*Tropicana Entertainment, a former casino company that owned several Tropicana-branded casinos
*Tropicana Products, a Chicago-based food company known for orange juice
Hotels and nightclubs
*Tropicana Casino & Re ...
moniker.
See also
* Snapple
Snapple is a brand of tea and juice drinks which is owned by Keurig Dr Pepper and based in Plano, Texas, United States. The company (and brand), which was originally known as Unadulterated Food Products, was founded in 1972. The brand achieved som ...
* OK Soda
OK Soda is a discontinued soft drink created by The Coca-Cola Company in 1993 that courted the American Generation X demographic with unusual advertising tactics, including neo-noir design, chain letters and deliberately negative publicity. Aft ...
References
External links
"Coca-Cola Changes Some Fruitopia Flavors"
Fruitopia website from Germany
Argentinean Fruitopia
{{Lemonade
Products introduced in 1994
American drinks
Canadian drinks
Coca-Cola brands
Juice brands
1990s fads and trends