Not sure if this should be in Cafe Society or GQ but I am really puzzled by something, and I haven’t really been able to find in in Google searches. I am reading the Outlander series of books and the protagonist refers to the first movements of her baby as reminding her of once having a glass of Coca Cola “that dark, sweet American drink”, which she once shared a glass with an American military officer. Really? In 1945 Britian she would only once have encountered Coca Cola?
The Coca Cola Great Britian website tells me it has been available in the UK since the 1890s but only commercially available since the 1920s. Presumably Clare, in her late 20s during the first book, (putting her born around 1917 or 1918) would have had more than one chance to have a taste of the Real Thing?
I know, books can be full of anachronisms but this one is bugging me. Even more than the setting of the book being spring of 1945, no way she and her husband would be flitting around Scotland on a second honeymoon until at least a year later.
First of all, people in those days didn’t guzzle soda pop the way they do today. It was a rare treat, and the portions in which it was sold were very small. (Ever see an original Coke bottle? They were tiny; 5 fluid oz, I think. This is also one reason why people then were generally thinner than they are today.)
Second, this was during WWII, when everything was in short supply. Sugar was rationed, and soft drinks were not as freely available as in other times. Imported Coke would have had to come from the United States, and every merchant vessel making the hazardous North Atlantic crossing would have had other, more vital materiel to transport.
Third, keep in mind that WWII came on the heels of the Great Depression, when spending was a lot less discretionary than at other times. When you’re struggling to put food on the table, you buy a lot fewer luxuries.
Fourth, Coke was first marketed as a headache remedy and originally sold in drugstores; hence the invention of the soda fountain, where the syrup was mixed with carbonated water out of a tap. It may not have been as available in bottled form in Britain as it was in the States.
Fifth, the US armed forces stationed in Britain were noted for their wealth of materiel and relatively high standard of living: every effort was made to keep the troops well-supplied with luxury items like ice cream and other sweets. The British were astounded (and no doubt somewhat offended) at the amounts of food Americans threw away.
All in all, I think it highly likely that Coke would have been a fond wartime remembrance, and that the young lady would have enjoyed it in the company of an American officer.
I’m not sure why you’re so upset about this. “Commercially available” in the 1920’s does not mean “in vending machines on every street corner.” Even if Coke were widely available, it does not necessarily follow that English children and teenagers were gulping it down during the Depression, or that it wouldn’t be hard to find during World War II.
Here’s a story from2002 that said 14% of Americans have never flown in a plane. Here’s one fromthis yearthat gives the same percentage. How can it possibly be that more than 100 years after the invention of the airplane, one out of seven American adults has never even been in a plane?
I’m pretty sure it would have been. I think distributing the syrup to franchisees overseas for bottling and distribution has always been Coca Colas business model, and we certainly had no shortage of pop factories that could do the job, pre-war. Soda fountains would have been thinner on the ground, I think.
It doesn’t seem unlikely for someone in Britain in the 40s not to have had much exposure to Coke, though. Even before wartime shortages and rationing, shipping the syrup from the US would have put a premium on the cost, as would distribution, and it would have had stiff competition from the many very popular locally manufactured soft drinks. I think it wasn’t until the 70s that national (and international) brands came to dominate the market the way they do now, and even today some brands that have a healthy market share in one region of the UK can be almost unknown in others, so I can readily imagine someone in 1940s Britain not having seen Coke, or not having much incentive to try it if they had.
I remember from my own childhood in the 60s and 70s drinking loads of pop, but very little Coke or Pepsi.
This is interesting; I was just making an educated guess, but I’m curious now as to what soft drinks were available in Britain during the Interwar years. I’d assume the British market was dominated by Schweppes, but would colas have been among their products?
I remember watching a documentary on Coke a couple of years ago; it said that fruit-flavored soft drinks like Fanta were developed in Germany during WWII as a way of utilizing such refuse as orange and lemon peels, once direct access to Coca-Cola syrup was disrupted.
I lived in Britain during the '70s, and the only soft drinks I recall (besides Coke and Pepsi) were European sodas like Orangina, plus Schweppes beverages like Tonic Water.
Growing up in the States, of course, there was never any shortage of technicolored soda pop; my favorite was always black cherry. But when I told some UK acquaintances I was going to order root beer at the McDonald’s on the Strand (one of only three in GB in 1977), they had no idea what I was talking about!
McDonald’s was the only place that sold root beer in those days, and they stopped shortly after because nobody liked it.
Schweppes would have been one of the big national brands, but:
a) they were mostly known for mixers (soda water, tonic water, etc), and
b) the vast bulk of sales of pop would have been from local or regional manufacturers.
Every large city or town (and may moderate-sized ones) had at least one pop factory supplying the surrounding area. Mostly, they all made the same sort of range: lemonade, limeade, orangeade, American cream soda, ginger beer – probably dandelion and burdock and sarsaparilla, and very likely one or two others. This is the pop that most people would have bought, most of the time.
Though, as it happens, I’m pretty sure that Cadbury Schweppes are, or at least have been, the UK bottlers of Coca Cola. So, yes, they’ve had at least one cola among their products.
In Australia according to my dad coke was drunk mainly by the rockers in the 1950’s, before that it was an obscure drink. During my childhood of the 1960’s and '70’s I drank Loys soft drinks. These were delivered to our door at about a 1/3 of the cost of coke and pepsi.
Coke was for posers and rich kids back in the day, but man when I could get it I loved it.
Since I’ve been living in Canada, I’ve had a chance to try real Caribbean ginger beer. My God, that stuff (as opposed to run-of-the-mill ginger ale) is powerful! Is it as incredibly strong in Britain as the ones I’ve had here?
I wonder how many Americans have ever tasted Tizer, or Irn Bru. Americans sometimes seem to find it hard to grasp that the whole world does not share their culturally idiosyncratic tastes and traditions. Certainly, when I was a kid in 1950s and even 1960s Britain, I was much more familiar with Tizer than any form of cola. Coke and Pepsi (and other colas) were available, but not so widely drunk.
Irn Bru has been quite popular in Russia ever since the late '90s. I tried it once; to me, it tasted a lot like cream soda. Until just now, I had always assumed it came from Australia (the adverts they showed on Russian TV had kangaroos and penguins shipping Irn Bru to Antarctica, as I recall).
When I was a kid in New Zealand, in the 70s, Coke and Fanta were available (and Leed lemonade), as was Schweppes brand, but they were almost the only international soft drinks available, and most of us drank local product. Extremely local, as in what wasmanufactured in my home town; if you travelled to the next big city they’d drink something else.
I personally remember things like Panda Cola being more common than Coco Cola growing up but that may well have been because it was cheaper. Panda also had lots of other soft drink types that covered all the bases really. Also things like R. White’s Lemonade were really big in the 70’s and 80’s in the UK. In fact the below advert became a bit of cult hit.
from the 70’s I cant remember Coke or Pepsi. - Alpine, Dunns, Garvies and Barrs or Soda Stream but cant remember any American drinks - with the exception of Barrs American Cream Soda…
