Another archive – possibly the best bit of writing i’ve ever done. Lived on tv.cream.org for 11 years before they finally took it off last year, luckily I still have the original and some choice comments I got on facebook. Enjoy and let those bubbles overcome you
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. Covered Jorden Fomula 1 cars in their logs. Sales dropped further. Hanging in there by its fingernails, still slightly more famous than a documentary about children of the same name.
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.” 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”…
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.
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…)”
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. Recently the coke heads have gone for flavours (Orange flavour, tasting like a really bad Orange creme from a box of Roses that no one eats, Vanilla Coke which taste even worse than Tescos value ice cream, Lemon, lime, Cherry, all of which are as rubbish as they sound, and now the added vitamin versions which in terms of the big c’s commitment to a healthy lifestyle is about as convincing as McDonald’s and thier salads. 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.
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 (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.
DIET COKE (1981 – ) CAFFEINE FREE DIET COKE (1987 – ) COKE ZERO (2007 – ) 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. Followed on with the Zero variety, obviously marketed as ‘Man’s Diet Coke’, because if you drank the normal Diet stuff, you must be homosexual. The Zero is a comment on the number of brain cells one must have not to realise this is Diet Coke in a black can.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.
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.
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. Alan Partridge keeps copius amounts in the mini bar at the travel tavern.
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.
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, but surprisingly good at removing egg stains from cotton clothing.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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, and has multiplied into various derivatives quicker than the spread of bird flu. The ‘isotonic’ range ‘Gets ta ya first thast’ as noted public orator John Barnes once said. Stick to Channel 5 mate.
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. Sadly even that pleasure has disappeared with the invention of plastic. Generally found on sale at East Sussex non-league grounds.
PEANUTS (1980s) Several varieties of canned fizzy stuff, each with the marketing clout of a different Peanuts ™ 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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Comment ·
Georgia Savva hahahahah. you make me laugh. 18 February 2008 at 16:42 ·
.Dan Taylor Oi, Vimto rocks and don’t you forget it sunshine! 18 February 2008 at 17:56 · .
Andy K Well when I was 8 years old someone had a bottle of vimto at school – you know the score…kids mum diluted it for him and he took it to school. I was dared to piss in it, which i did. Aforementioned kid then drink the urine infused fruit punch. 18 February 2008 at 18:31 · .
Meg Jones SODASTREAM! ah memories =) 18 February 2008 at 21:23 · .
Jared Hull Vimito is the soft drink of the Gods, it’s a scientific FACT. And how can you slag off Dr Pepper, it’s amazing (the drink, not you slagging it off). I had a Panda Pop recently, it’s good to see that they taste as ‘unique’ as ever. 19 February 2008 at 00:00 · .
Lapo O I can’t be the only person who shook up Panda Pops and threw them as high as possible into the air above the playground tarmac just for the fizzy fountain/firework like carnage that followed the high speed impact of the bottle into the ground? Physics in action :o) I was also once horrendously sick on Cherryade Panda Pops but the sick was exactly the same colour as the Cherryade so it was incredibly cool AND horrible at the same time! … See more Happy Days. 19 February 2008 at 00:51 · .
Dan Taylor Vimto is brilliant. Used to spend all day at my nans in Manchester at Xmas pelting everything that moved with snowballs, then just as hypothermia frostbite & snow blindness were setting in, you’d go indoors and have a big mug of Vimto mixed with hot water. Sorted. That was Scott’s big mistake when he went for the pole. No flask of hot Vimto. The loser! 19 February 2008 at 09:02 · .
Susie Jones Corona wasnt just orangeade in the 70s you know! It’s lemonade used to rival R-Whites in the returnable glass bottle scheme at my local newsagents. They did a lovely limeade version before the cresta bear nabbed it! 19 February 2008 at 10:01 · .
Dan Taylor Can’t believe you dissed Lucozade too. It works, it really does! 21 March 2008 at 00:11 · .Write a comment……
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