Ooh, ooh! Am I the first to pedantically note that Jim Jones served up Flavor Aid® (vice Kool-Aid) to his followers? Mmm…cyanide laced Flavor Aid…
-Tofer
Oops, I forgot to mention the link:
“Is Brainwashing Possible?” 18 March 2005
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/050318.html
-Tofer
Where did you find out this information?
There’s a link to the column on the front page, Arnold. 
I don’t feel like looking for it now, but I’ve done the searching through the net to explain the Jim Jones phenomenon to a girl too young to know anything about it, and it was Flavor Aid packets that were found scattered near the bodies. I promise.
ZenBeam, you smart aleck, I meant where did the poster read that it was Flavor Aid and not Kool Aid. Google Fight gave the following results:
“jim jones” kool-aid : 10700 results
“jim jones” “flavor aid” : 830 results
Here are two sample hits for “Jim Jones” and “Flavor Aid”:
Religious Tolerance.org : «Some sources say it was Kool-Aid; others say FlaVor-Aid®.»
Wikipedia : «Two metal buckets of grape Flavor Aid laced with Valium and cyanide were brought into the assembly hall and the mixture was dispensed in small paper cups.»
Having been around at the time, I recall the original news stories all saying “FlavorAid”, not “Kool Aid”. There might be a lot more hits for “Kool Aid”, but that’s because many more people know the bigger national brand Kool Aid, so it has entered the Collective Unconscious of Pop Myth. But we don’t take votes on the Truth – just because a lot of people think it was Kool Aid doesn’t make it so.
I’m ready to believe it, CalMeacham. Is there a definitive cite available on the internet? Or do you consider that Wikipedia is reliable enough?
Looking at the FBI reports regarding the assassination of Congressman Ryan, from interviews of various People’s Temple members.
On page 94 “she had been told that approximately seven-eight months before Congressman Ryan arrived at Jonestown, a mass suicide had been practiced and kool-aid had been used in that practice.”
Of course, that’s what somebody told the FBI that someone told her, and that was referring to a practice suicide, and not the actual one. And of course, “kool-aid” might have been used as a generic term.
On page 107 on the same link, someone talking about a practice suicide just calls it “a flavored water drink”
Then on page 85 of
“[Name redacted] stated that she had heard they had practiced drinking Kool-Aid, which supposedly contained poison, to show that they were not afraid to die. [Redacted] this never happened when she was at Jonestown.”
Page 100:
“[Redacted] he knows of one rehearsal in drinking unsweetened Kool-Aid, however this occurred prior to his arrival in Jonestown. [Redacted] this was supposed to be a test of the people’s courage by Reverend Jones”
However, on page 119:
“At another alert approximately six months ago an actual suicide ritual was practiced. Debbie Blakely had defected from the PT, this upset Jones quite a bit. He called an alert and asked everyone to drink flavor aide that alledgedly contained poison. After drinking the potion they were told to go outside to sit down and die. Several people refused to drink the flavor aide, however, Jones engaged them in a long debate and eventually everyone yielded.”
and from page 31 here:
“During this drill a big container of Kool-Aid was put out and everyone was told to drink. Some people even acted as if they were dying at the direction of Reverend Jones. During the drill, armed security guards were all around and there was clearly no choice as to drink or not to drink the Kool-Aid.”
So. the consensus was Kool-Aid, except for one woman who said it was Flavor-Aid.
One “Flavor-Aid packets” trumps ten “pitchers of Kool-Aid”.
In the field of textual criticism, it has been an axiom for centuries that, given a choice between an unlikely word and a likely word, the unlikely word is more probably correct.
This has to be weighed against the likelyhood of someone calling some off-brand drink “Kool-aid” versus the likelyhood of calling Kool-aid by some other name.
Repeating Arnold Winkelried’s Googlefight with just Kool-aid and “Flavor Aid”, Kool-aid wins by 250 to 1:
kool-aid (or “Kool-aid”): 456,000 results
“flavor aid” : 1820 results
Note that with “Jim Jones” included, the ratio was only about 13 to 1. It would seem to be much more likely to wrongly call Flavor Aid “Kool-aid” than vice-versa.
Of course, that one person who called it Flavor Aid may have just happened to have grown up drinking Flavor-Aid rather than Kool-Aid. In short, unless you can find a picture with packets of one or the other lying in the background, you’ll never be sure.
…but saying that someone who has bought into a hive mentality “drank the Flavor-Aid” just doesn’t have the same ring as saying they “drank the Kool-Aid”.
So we have the thousands of “whoever” making reference to Kool-Aid drunk at Jonestown, and we have the scholarly pages that make reference to Flavor-Aid.
An SDSU student’s paper on it: http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/JonestownReport/Volume6/tapeyohnk.htm
Google Answer’s page on it:
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=threadview&id=232174
The Kool-Aid FAQ hosted by MIT:
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/food/kool-aid-faq
An actual newspaper about one of Jone’s top aides:
http://www.rickross.com/reference/jonestown/jonestown34.html
This looks like a page that’s trying to be factual:
http://jonestown.biography.ms/
Etc. I’m tired of looking. What kind of source would be definitive?
Cardinal, I think a definitive source would be, as a poster already mentioned, a picture of packets of Flavor Aid at Jonestown, or a receipt for purchase billed to a credit card owned by Jim Jones, or something like that.
But seriously, going through your links, I would call the first one (SDSU student paper) convincing because it seems well-researched and cites its sources.
In contrast, the next two (Google’s answer page and the Kool-Aid FAQ) are really the same as far as the Flavor Aid information - the post on Google’s answer page saying “it was Flavor Aid” cites someone’s blog and the blog in return cites the Kool-Aid FAQ, which affirms “Flav-R-Aid was used, not Kool-Aid” but the FAQ doesn’t mention the source of its information. That’s a “whoever” reference (to use your term) IMHO.
Your newspaper article (a reprint from The Press Democrat/March 2, 2005, hosted at the website for the “Rick A. Ross institute for the study of destructive cults”) also states the fact that Flavor Aid was used, but no source is given for that information. I still have the old-time prejudice that newspaper articles are usually better researched than Joe Blow’s blog, but other people would disagree with me I’m sure. I think the cite would be better if the Rick A. Ross institute told us where we can find this newspaper called “The Press Democrat” - I’m not familiar with it.
The last one (biography.ms) seems also well-researched and lists its sources - I would call that one convincing as well (though I’m a little puzzled by the website - I couldn’t find any “about us” link to say who is maintaining that site).
In summary, I believe that you have presented good enough links that I will say I am now convinced that the drink used was Flavor Aid[sup]1[/sup] and not Kool-Aid.
[sup]1[/sup] I’ve seen a seemingly well-researched page spell it as “Flav-R-Aid” and say that it’s a British product. The product website I found spells it “Flavor Aid” and the parent company is in Illinois. Unless there is a separate drink called “Flav-R-Aid” I’m surprised at this discrepancy.
Also, Cardinal, I think anyone claiming it is Flavor Aid would have to explain away the references in the FBI reports given us by Captain Amazing. For that I would be inclined to use John W. Kennedy’s argument.
The Press Democrat referenced in the article is most likely the Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, CA. The author of the article, Mike Geniella, is a staff writer there.