. .
SOFT DRINKS THAT WENT FLAT
Whilst the world was changing, the balance of power swapping from East to West, international terrorism running rife, and the popular music world going mad over the likes of Kajagoogoo and Modern Romance, there was one unifying factor, which connected any person in any country in sensation and kinship to their fellow man - fizzy drinks. Most of the following examples fall into families. Firstly there was the super giant Coke organisation, with more connections than the Mafia, who made Coke, Sprite, Lilt and Fanta. Then the 7 Up company which actually made Pepsi before it found its own feet, and other smaller players like Schweppes and Canada Dry also had their share of success. There are also a few independents such as Barr's (Irn Bru) and Panda pops. There's a whole sociology lesson here. Watch and learn, and see those nose-invading bubbles come out to haunt you once more.
7 UP (1940s - )
Coca-Cola's "refreshing" alternative to Coke, basically
lemonade with an entirely irrelevant and unexplained name. Early
bottles had the phrase "you like it, it likes you"
embossed on it, which can't have been more than half right in
most cases. Image change in the late eighties with the "Fido
Dido" character proved to be a load of wank (apart from
Italian exchange students, who sport baseball caps and T-shirts
with it on to this day) and sales still dropped. Hanging in there
by its fingernails, still slightly more famous than a documentary
about children of the same name.
CRESTA RUN RATING : 
ALPINE POP (1960s/70s )
Sunderland-based fizzies delivered, memorably, to outlying towns
via the Alpin lorry. Rob Dixon - "It came in loads of different sugar
laden flavours My favourite was pineapple. It was always
delivered by hard kids, who used to hang off the van, and leg it
round in huge oxford bags, and mashed up two- tone big heeled
shoes. My mum always made me pay for it, and I used to hate it ,
as I always got the lad with the feather cut, and the knotted
Sunderland scarf round his neck, who would give me the fingers as
they sped off up the road. What nightmares are made of."
CRESTA RUN RATING :
BRITVIC 55 (1960s - )
Basically sophisto-orangeade, enjoyed as part of a screwdriver by
seventies laydeez in saloon bars, before they were allowed to
partake of the "large drinks" of manhood. "55%
pure orange juice - 100% sparkle!" yelped the close-harmony
singers drafted in for the ad jingle. "55% of the total
volume of a bottle of Corona for 300% of the price" noted
whoever was paying, with a resigned sigh. But that was the sign
of "sophistication"...
CRESTA RUN RATING :
CARIBA (1970s - 85)
For every Yin there is a Yang, and this was Lilt's (qv) Yang.
Tasted identical to Lilt and even had a very similar can. Adverts
depicted the same tropical scenes. Coke dropped it when they
bought Schweppes out. Pointless.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
CHARLES HAGUE'S (1950s-80s)
Yorkshire-based family pop concern, run by the father of one
WILLIAM HAGUE. They did
cola, lime & lemon, dandelion & burdock, lemonade,
orangeade and cherryade. Tez Burke - "The cola was nowt to
write home about, but the dandelion and burdock was ace! Best of
all we used to get Hague's pop for nothing because my cousin
Edwin (the only Unitedite among eight Wednesday- supporting
brothers) delivered the stuff before he lost his arm in an
accident. Still, many preferred the cola that was made by their
arch-rivals Exley's of Rawmarsh (and
incidentally old man Exley was a big cheese in the Rotherham
Liberal Party, if that's any clue as to what Mr.Hague's boy now
believes...)"
CRESTA RUN RATING :
COCA COLA (1895 - end of time)
The eternal mystery of why a brown, treacly liquid should become
the nth most successful brand in the world in less than a century
is possibly explained by its original incarnation as a brown,
treacly liquid full of cocaine. Sadly, the coke ("the
pick-me-up and brain tonic!" boasted the original ads. No
shit) soon went, but perhaps some kind of collective folk memory
of powdered soda lingers on, only to be broken on the stroke of
midnight, December 31st, 1999, when Cokeheads all over the world
suddenly purse their lips and go "actually, it's a bit
sickly, isn't it?" Well, there's still the caffeiene (but
see below). Only after the war did the American Large Man deem us
wanky Europeans able to handle the taste - most famously by
giving the New Seekers their first number one with "I'd Like
To Teach The World To Sing/Buy The World A Coke." Their
second, rather tellingly, was "You Won't Find Another Fool
Like Me," and the Big C-C didn't - subsequent campaigns -
"Coke is it!", and reams of white middle class stable
family background teenage sons finding a girl and banging her
brains out all merged into one feather-cutted, denim-jacketed,
everybody's-all-American pile of formless crud. Not that it
mattered to Mr. Coca and Mrs. Cola, of course. Pausing only to
invent Father Christmas (as we know him today) and swap the
"design classic" bottle for a tin, Coke changed its
appearance little, but always sold out. Around 1985, in response
to the threat from communist (probably) upstarts Pepsi, the board
changed the US' beverage to "New Coke!" and the yanks,
like they gave a fuck, took to the streets in their thousands to
get the "classic taste of coke" back on the shelves.
Some country and western no-hopers even chanced their arm with a
comedy record - "Why'd'ya wanna change the taste of
coke....why fix it, it ain't broke?" Clever wording. And,
like it was all a big old ruse anyway, The Board introduced
"Coca-Cola Classic", ie. the old product now pumped up
as something magical, from a bygone era. Coke's let's pretend
"secret recipe" that only three people know (as if the
secret of brown water is of the utmost significance on the world
stage - see Kentucky Fried Chicken for an even more laughable
attempt to add cold war mystique to bog-standard food products)
we can exclusively reveal as - water, sugar, caramel, more sugar,
bubbles, and some other crap. Go on, sue us.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
CORONA (1970s)
"Every bubble's passed its FIZZical!" yelped the Ernie
Bilko-voiced Head Bubble (see above) in the cartoon ads for this
knobbly-bottled orangeade. Very popular in the '70s, before the
Tango empire closed in. The idea of devouring an entire army of
bubbles and then belching out their remains appealed to the
juvenile mind.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
CRESTA (1960-80s)
Best remembered for the ads which, as with Corona, far outlasted
the drink in public memory. A "cool" polar bear in
shades (a cross between the more debonair Glacier Mints bear and
Den Hegarty) was sent into paroxysms of ecstasy after one taste
of this over-sugary, over-foamy beverage of various flavours.
"Rimsky Korsakov! It's frothy, man!" Not any more, it's
not.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
DOWNLOAD AN AUDIO SNIPPET OF THE CRESTA BEAR HERE
DIET COKE (1981 - )
CAFFEINE FREE
DIET COKE (1987 - )
Coke's eighties answer to the health revolution - the drink you
can drink while jogging! Early samples had an appalling
aftertaste, so the sweetener was changed. Ads very much like
normal fat bastard coke but with thinner people in them -
"Just for the taste of it!" wheened the singers, and,
well, it did have the bonus of tasting nothing like
"regular" Coke. Caffeine-free was released around '87
in response to a government health report about caffeine and
heart disease being linked. Thus the one remaining bit of fun
associated with Coke was obliterated. This literally was
brown water.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
DR PEPPER (1981 - )
Anyone remember the taste of Benylin, that horrible cough
medicine? Well carbonate it and you have Dr Pepper. Disgusting,
somehow survives in America, but over here has risen no higher in
popular folk myth than "that can of stuff that's the last to
go at a local village fete bottle stall because someone won it,
decided they didn't want it and surreptitiously put it back on
the bench" status. Constant ad campaigns of the "try
it! You might like it!" variety have fooled sod all people.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
FANTA (1970s - )
Coke-owned Orange fizz, much more artificial than Tango. not much
to say about this one, came and stayed and with Coke's big bucks
behind it, it wasn't leaving. Took over from Corona in the early
'80s, before itself being marginalised by bloody Tango. A
Disney-related campaign with the foolish tag "My friend,
Fanta" did little to improve its '80s standing.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
FRESCA (1970s-80s)
Odd grapefruit based
drink which was extremely bitter and not very suitable for
children. Presumably this was why the advert featured a very
sultry couple, sipping "Fresca" and causing their
sunglasses to freeze over. All very odd.
The packaging was
originally a light green-aquamarine background with Fresca in
yellow lettering, replaced with the "new" and
"updated" styling of the rather less appealing white
label with green lettering. Not the hottest seller, apparently.
The taste was something like 7-up, Mountain Dew, and some sort of
citrus-y acerbic tangy fruit like grapefruit. It was yellow in
color.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
HI SPOT (1970's)
7-UP competitor made by Canada "Ginger Ale" Dry. It was
basically a low spot and was virtually impossible to find over
here. A poor show.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
IRN BRU (1982 - )
Images of bagpipes and the Forth Rail bridge spring to mind for
this odd, medicine-flavoured Caledonian best seller from Barrs.
People thought it was actually made from leftover iron girders,
but now it has the de rigeur "ironic" new
image in the same way that spinach had a new image after the
arrival of Popeye. Sort of.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
JOLT COLA (Always around - if you know where to look)
First spotted in a petrol station's mini-market JUST across the
NI/Rep of Ireland border - Northerner's spotting the contraband's
flogging-on potential - which is still sold 'openly' in the
States. This stuff looked like Coke, tasted like Coke that has
'been left to settle' - but by jove - it give you a kick in the
place needed to wake you up. No need for the subtleties of Red
Bull and assorted modern pick-me-ups - this stuff was filled to
the bottle neck w ith caffeine, caffeine and more caffeine -
hence it's rather underground status. Favourite with students
working as porters in the summer months - ably assiting those
bleary eyed 6AM starts. Last spotted in a newsagents on approach
to Embankment station.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
OWN NAME BRANDS ( 1980's - )
All sorts could be mentioned here, but all have the same thing in
common - the taste of either a) a watered-down version of the
"proper" brands, b) a Sodastream (qv.) version of the
"proper" brands, c) cockroach's piss. A cheap
alternative to antifreeze and Super Viscostatic.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
LARKSPUR LEMONADE (1970s)
Lemonade delivered by
the milkman every morning, Larkspur Lemonade marked your local
daries attempt to compete with the huge supermarket conglomerates
such and Grandways. Coming in a 1 litre glass bottle with ribbed
sides (for her pleasure) but a smooth unopenable top, the
grimacing polar bear on the label proclaimed that the sublime
liquid contained 'a billion bubbles a bottle'. Nothing could have
been further from the truth after it had sat on your doorstep
since 4.00am and frozen solid on any given morning during the
winter of 1976.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
LILT (1970s - )
Pineapple and grapefruit flavour? No, it's not. Not even close.
But its 'distinctive' taste proved popular, killing off its
direct competition (cf Cariba). Advertising open to charges of
racial stereotyping, probably guilty, and certainly a pile of
condescending crap, featuring a clean-cut Carribean beach party
complete with bamboo milk float loaded with the green fluid. The
obligatory diet version predictably followed.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
LIPTONICE (1991)
Possibly the worst ever idea for a soft drink - fizzy iced tea.
Yep. Ads had sophisticated upper middles on yachts and suchlike
going "Tea?? Fuck off!", but finally being persuaded by
Angus Deayton to love the drink. Which is pretty much exactly
what happened in real life. Apart from the "liking it"
bit. Turned up around the same time as the second-wave Tab, and
was even quicker at vanishing without trace. A miracle of
incompetence all round.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
LUCOZADE (1950s - )
Working on the theory that "If it tastes this foul, it must
do you good!", The 'Zade sold to provincial doting mums the
world over whenever their sick little kid decided to fake an
illness (which always mysteriously cleared up by 1pm) to avoid a
Friday of double Fletcher Maths, and sit about watching Maths
Topics and Look and Read instead. Cue mother trundling up the
stairs with copious amounts of said get-well fluid and something
eggy on a tray. The nasty taste was deemed an acceptable price to
pay for the extended weekend. Always came in large, knobbly-sided
bottles (see also Corona) wrapped in fragile orange cellophane
which peeled away and merged with the gloopy residue running down
the sides of the bottle into a nasty-looking paste which
genuinely did make you ill, thus giving the lie to their
long-running "Lucozade aids recovery" campaign, showing
a cartoon boy progressing from poorly-in-bed to
sprightly-on-his-Chopper accompanied by a little hospital graph.
Now "a favourite energy boost among ravers", according
to the Observer magazine and similarly gullible sources.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
PANDA POPS (1970s - )
While the rich kids had Coke, us in the housing estate and the
flats had a variety of Panda Pops with a cute little panda on the
front. Many flavours that all tasted the same, bottles were
smaller and were miles less fizzy, specially after spending eight
months in the local corner shop's "open access"
doorless fridge, which did nothing to cool the bottles, but did
light them in a yellowy fluorescent glow, and made them rattle
constantly in their trays - a life-affirming sound.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
PEANUTS (1980s)
Several varieties of canned fizzy stuff, each with the marketing
clout of a different Peanuts (tm) character on the can. Charlie
Brown's 'Old Fashioned' Lemonade, Snoopy Cola, Woodstock
Appleade, Lucy & Linus Orangeade, Schroeder's Dandelion &
Burdock (well, maybe not...) Around at the time when the cartoon
was almost on the verge of taking over the UK, what with the
Coronet paperbacks, A Charlie Brown Christmas on every bloody
year (usually in June... 'Try to catch snowflakes on your tongue.
It's fun!') and clips of the other animated escapades regularly
turning up on Screen Test. Until Garfield showed up, that is...
Can contents decidedly average.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
PEPSI (middle of the century - )
Forever toiling in The Big C's shadow, Pepsi (named after a Wham!
backing singer, for God's sake!) made ground in the '80s, partly
due to the "New Coke!" debacle, and partly to some
savage ads (US regulations permit commercials to openly slag off
rival companies - imagine "ITV's shit! Get a TV
licence!" coming up in the middle of Coronation Street).
They spent big bucks on the ads (and set Michael Jackson on fire
as an added bonus). Over here, though, the notorious "Pepsi
Challenge" settled for Chris Tarrant on the streets of
London asking which cup of brown water various likely suspects
preferred. Seemingly less paranoid about their "secret
recipe" than C-C. Still brown.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
PEPSI MAX (1993 - )
A compromise between Diet Pepsi and normal. One of those
marvellous drinks that taste entirely of chemicals (cf. Tab).
Used mentally ill men in the advertising campaigns, and no-one
batted an eyelid.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
POCARI (1980s) Real name Pocari Sweat. Came in Blue
coca-cola cans (i.e. it had the ribbons device on) , with a white
logo all in capital letters. The original isotonic drink. Tasted
like a fizzy combination of sweat and saliva. No wonder 75% of it
was absorbed by your body. Or something. Made by coca-cola co. in
Japan. The drink itself was clear, and tasted quite close to
aspro-clear dissolved in water - i.e. Salty and sweet all at the
same time. (Only it didn't have the bits in, and it didn't
"get you stoned", as aspirin and Coke did, when you
were ten years old - cf. rubbish playground myths page 97).
CRESTA RUN RATING :
QUATRO (1983 - 5)
A sort of "Fruits of the forest" fizz that left as
quickly as it came. Orange, lime, grapefruit and... another fruit
blended in a futuristic vending machine (see The Core - Drink) to
create a rather poor-tasting can of sod all.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
SCHWEPPES TONIC (1950s - )
"Schhh... you know who" whispered William Franklyn in
the oh-so-coy long-running ads for the tonic water giants.
They're now Cadbury-Schweppes, of course, but the yellow-labelled
bottles of tonic water (and, of course, the later
"Slimline") were the brand's identification for the
pre-merger era. Tonic water, though - tastes nasty, but protects
you from malaria (as part of a quinine-controlled diet). Bit like
Lucozade, in that respect. Anyone fancy a pint?
See also Schweppes
Ginger Cordial. Matthew Jordan - "a non-alcoholic
version of Stones ginger wine, it was dark brown, syrupy and came
in tall thin bottles. A firm family favourite at the teatotal
1970s Jordan family Christmas, but it disappeared some time in
the mid 1980s. The liquid was so strong and syrupy that it was
intended to be drunk diluted but being a hardcore, no-nonsense
sort of family we knocked it back straight."
CRESTA RUN RATING :
SODASTREAM (1970 - )
Part of the Do-It-Yourself junk food ethos which also spawned Mr.
Frosty and the Breville Sandwich Toaster, The Sodastream, a tall
plastic oblong with a hinged tube and the all-important
"magic button" at the top, promised to free the fizzy
water consumer from the capitalist tyranny of overpriced
"name" brands, by handing the means of production over
to the man in the street, or rather kitchen. Based around small
cannisters of compressed Carbon Dioxide (which could blow up your
house if you dropped them, you know), 'Streamers filled one of
the supplied glass bottles with tap water (never above the marked
"safe level", though!), slotted it in place, and then
"got busy with the fizzy!" as various amusingly
headscarfed housewives had it in the ad. And behold, a bottle of
mildly fizzy water! Then came the flavouring - syrupy gloop in
weak cola, weak orange, weak cherry, and "Witch's Brew"
(green stuff, God knows where from) flavours. First ever batch
made in the household was manfully downed by the father, who
then, through clenched teeth, reckoned "Lovely! So, no need
to buy any more Coke for us!" The underwhelmed kid was not
so confident. A long battle of wits clearly lay ahead. Even more
unfortunate families had to make do with the Kenwood Cascade.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
SOLO (1970s)
Rough 'n' ready drink
in a yellow can. The TV ads showed someone enjoying a mouthfull
after climbing a mountain. If you shook the can really hard and
opened it, there was a delayed reaction before the contents flew
into the face of an intended victim who thought that the
"joke" hadn't worked and had moved closer to laugh at
you.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
SPARKLING RIBENA (1983 - )
The "flat" blackcurrent market was cornered by Ribena
and C-Vit, so Ribena and their little berries thought they would
take on the big boys, and did pretty well. Even after the
Blackcurrent tango arrived, Ribena sales are still high. Adverts
at the time were a bit ripe, however - of all songs, they picked
Sheb Wooley's "Purple People Eater" ("I'm a two
horned, one-eyed Sparkling Ribena") Bad call.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
SPRITE (UK : 1989 - )
The direct competition to 7-UP (qv), in that cutting-edge
"it's basically lemonade" market. But Sprite had, as a
Genesis soundalike session act bawled in the ads, "a squeak
of real lemon and lime". Sure. Been around for years in the
colonies before it came to the UK, where a mis-print on the
original ads said "The refreshing new taste of
Sprint"....That's how forgettable it is.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
SPORT COLA (1984)
What can only be described as a disgusting cola drink (cf Tesco
Low Sugar cola) made a very brief appearance in the mid eighties,
but with now advertising campaign to speak of except its
association with equally crap cartoon "Sport Billy", it
lasted as long as the war would have, if we were fighting just
Italy.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
SQUIRT (1982 - 4)
This one is even rarer than Quatro (qv). Came in a yellow can and
was a sort of lemony derivative. It was awful, and sunk without
traced after only a year on the shelves. Did manage to get into
the fizzy drink hall of fame by being immortalised in the
original Band Aid video. If you watch closely you can clearly see
Paula Yates holding said beverage, just before the "Feed the
World" bit starts. Hmmm.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
TAB (1960s - 1981, 1991-2)
Probably the strangest one of the lot. Came, buggered off,
returned, then buggered off again. The old can was a sort of pink
colour, whilst the new one was a silver with "Coke"
written all over it. Tasted of cola cubes (with added
chemicals!), looked like 7 Up - no wonder kids were confused.
Suffered in America from a St. Ides-like "Only gays drink
it" rubbishing campaign. Nevertheless, it is sorely missed.
As Homer Simpson mused, "Wow! Invisible cola!"
CRESTA RUN RATING :
TANGO (1970s - )
First brand to crack open the "fruit" market, with cans
depicting whole oranges, apples etc. on the front. Was content to
sit about in the fridge with all the other "fizzy
orange" efforts until recently, when a slew of zany
"concept" ads started boring everyone rigid.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
TIZER (1960s - )
One of those drinks with an undescribable taste (it's supposedly
some species of cherryade), a massive seller in the seventies
("We can tell it's Tizer! When our eyes're! Shut!") and
tended to mirror the state of Britain's economy with its sales.
Nothing much else to say - very much a stereotypical "tiny
tots" drink, largely unchanged, even with the advent of a
series of largely-ignored wannabe ironic ad campaigns in recent
years.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
TREE TOP (1960s)
Orange (and perhaps
other flavours?) cordial type stuff, which would rot teeth at 200
yards. The bottle weighed a ton, with a huge white plastic top on
in it. In fact it was very reminiscant of a lava lamp, (making a
comeback with the groovy kids of today) as also was the drink,
which resembled in colour and texture the oil floating within
said type lamps. Tree-Top was probably banned by some obscure EEC
regulation, shortly after Edward Heath signed on the dotted line.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
TRENDY POPS (1970s)
For those impoverished oiks who couldn't even afford Panda Pops.
Small, green, bottle-shaped bottle, cool green, yellow and orange
striped label. Flavours? Hard to remember, but probably orange -
the "plain vanilla" of fizz flavourings. Never
purchased after leaving primary school.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
UNIGATE "FIZZY
DRINKS" (1975 - ?)
Classics, we have here. 1 litre bottles of pop that you bought
through your milkman. The types were : Cola, Lemonade, Orangeade,
Limeade, Cream Soda, and the ever-loving Cherryade. But the best
bit was that each different type had a cartoon character playing
a musical instrument on the front. Cherryade was a bird with
gormless tits singing, and Cream soda was some cool bloke in
shades playing a sax. Some sort of hazily-defined
"jazz" theme seemed to run through them. Oh, they
tasted pretty bad, but man, were they cool!
CRESTA RUN RATING :
VIMTO (1940s - )
"Northern Coke!" "Sparkling fruit punch!"
"Vomit!" Nicknames for this permanent also-ran of
distinctly British extraction are rife, but sales have never been
as abundant. That said, unlike so many other UK design classics
(The Austin Allegro, The Spangle, The Goblin Teasmaid), this
piece of the past has stayed the course somehow, despite the
CokePepsico threat. And for that, no small amount of credit is
deserved. Even if it does taste fucking rancid. Comes (or used to
come) in stripey, unusually tall, thin cans as well as the
standard bottles, to set it apart from the crowd.
CRESTA RUN RATING :
 |
Improvising a million-and-one games
with the empty cans - Andy Kyriakides, Michael
Kyriakides, Paul Mavvin, Gary Hubbard, Paul Vinter, Ben
H, John Williams, Neil Sloan, Mark Wayt, John C, Rob
Dixon, Tez Burke, Matthew A Jordan, Andrew Barrett,
Rachel White, Any more carbonated recollections? MAIL HERE |