Faygo is just as Michiganian as Vernor’s Ginger Ale. It’s bottled right here in Detroit with Great Lakes water (and I don’t mean that wannabe Champlaign).
occ mumbled:
Years and years ago all the big brands tried their three-litres in Michigan, but they were taller than the two-litres and didn’t fit in a lot of refrigerators. For my taste (and I guess my slow soda-drinking habits) even the two-liter bottles go flat much to quickly. Hence I always have to overpay and get cans.
Someone else mentioned price disparities – I live in one of those once-a-good-idea-but-now-stupid-and-useless deposit-law states, whereby we pay a 10¢ deposit on every can/bottle, and get it back if we’re willing to go to the dirty, smelly, sticky section of the store and feed the machines. The problem is, the soda/beer companies don’t run this whole mechanism out of the goodness of their hearts; they need to increase prices substantially to offset the costs of doing business in this absurd manner (sorry for the editorializing, but the factual stuff is true). Crossing from Michigan to Indiana, for example, is a great place to see soda-pop prices drop significantly.
I’d take RC over Coke anyday of the week and Pepsi just slightly over RC. RC was btw for years the official soda of Shea Stadium, so it’s had some NYC success. Mind you, Rheingold was the official beer so maybe that’s not saying much.
Also, since I work in trademark law, I can tell you that Pepsico owns 7Up’s trademark rights outside the 50 U.S. states, Puerto Rico & Guam.
Remember when they - the soda companies - were introducing a new flavor of soda almost every year? Like Mountain Dew (from Dogpatch USA comics with Lil Abner), Mellow Yellow, Cherry 7-up, cherry coke and so on? They’ve not had anything new in quite some time.
Jeez… I wish I could just get any cola at those prices, because of crazy taxes 1.5 liter of Coca Cola/Pepsi is usualy priced at what ammounts to around $2 here in Denmark + the refundable payment for the bottle (around $0.5).
We do have cheaper cola but it honestly all taste like crap imho.
Faygo is sold in Birmingham, Alabama, as is Shasta. However, I’ve rarely seen them in two- or three-liter sizes; usually it’s in six-packs or in racks at convenience stores.
The major brands (Coke, Pepsi) sell three-liter drinks here, and apparently do quite well. I’m always hacked if I can’t find a three-liter drink when I go to the grocery store. I tend to drink that more frequently than tea or water, so it doesn’t go flat as quickly. The three-liters sell fairly quickly off the shelves, so I guess other folks drink it as quickly as I.
The South must be a mecca for soft drinks, because we have just about every brand imaginable. Folks want to drink most anything cold when it’s 98 degrees outside and the humidity is around 60 or 70 percent.
Dunno if this qualifies as a “new” flavor, but Coke has started selling Vanilla Coke hereabouts. Mountain Dew has introduced something called “Code Red.” And, of course, we have the aforementioned lemon-flavored abominations (whose cans bear an uncanny resemblance to the regular diet drink, making it extremely difficult to determine which you’re getting unless you’re very careful).
Are you sure about this? I’ve seen (and used to own) some awfully old RC bottles, back when they spelled out the full name: Royal Crown Cola. They had a red-and-yellow logo which included (IIRC) an Egyptian scene with a pyramid. Don’t ask me why.
On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Nehi cola bottle. (And I’ve seen a lot of old cola bottles.)
Nehi (as noted by earlier posters) distributed a variety of fruit-flavored sodas. Was Nehi possibly a subsidiary of RC? Or vice versa? And if it was a regional brand before the 60’s, then was Radar O’Reilly’s love of Grape Nehi in the TV show MAS*H an anachronism? I am confused.
On the subject of RC’s advertising, I remember an old RC TV spot that touted RC as a “Mad, mad, mad, mad, mad cola! RC!” It may have even been Nancy Sinatra singing the song, come to think of it.
Anyhow, my fond cola memory from childhood was Double Cola, a Chattanooga-based brand. The bottle caps had letters underneath, and you had to try to spell out “Double Cola” to win a pet elephant. OK, maybe it wasn’t a pet elephant, but it was some fabulous child-inspiring prize, anyway.
Thanks, -spoke. It’s been a while since I did the research and I think I read that history. Anyway, to clear up what I said before – Royal Crown began in 1905 and was then called Union Bottling Works. The name was changed in 1912 to Chero-Cola Co.; one of its products was Royal Crown ginger ale. A second name change occurred in the 1920s – to Nehi.
So Royal Crown didn’t exactly begin life as Nehi, but the company was indeed the Nehi Corporation at one point in its history.
Thanks Ellen. I hope I wasn’t disrespectful; I was just trying to clear up my own fuzzy memory. I didn’t know that RC had been Nehi, so I learned something in the process. Cheers!
I remember a line of soft drinks in the midwest called “Yummy”. It’s what Sean Penn puts in the pillowcase to beat the crap out of two other guys in Bad Boys. And where does he get them? Out of an RC machine, of course!
And what’s the deal with Mr. Pibb? I know it’s been around for ages, but I never actually saw it until all the McDonald’s and Del Taco’s in Los Angeles suddenly started carrying it about 5 or 6 years ago. I kind of like it, even though it’s a knock-off of Dr. Pepper.