To me, fruit punch tastes most like cherry flavor, which is red.
And, as others have said, purple is grape, green is lime, yellow is lemonade, orange is orange. Unless you think fruit punch should be blue, red is about all that is left.
No, no, no, it’s the nutritional content they need to get right.
What? Why are you all staring at me?
Jeepers. Don’t you know ANYTHING? :rolleyes: It doesn’t matter HOW nutritious it is. If it tastes wrong, NOBODY will buy it. Whereas, if it has the right taste/texture, people will consume all they can get no matter how non-nutritive it is. Even vampires aren’t immune to food marketing. ;).
Red tastes better.
This only applies to bottled fruit punch. The type sold in opaque aseptic packaging like juice boxes and bags is usually clear.
The natural, unadulterated juices of that mix would probably give a pale tan color. About the only distinct color out of that batch is the OJ.
Not particularly appealing to anyone, and certainly not to kids.
Green is better for changing your body temperature, it looks like radiator coolant/anti-freeze!
CMC fnord!
This is something I’ve always wondered about. Purple Popsicles taste purple. The thread is sort of about color/taste/real life connotations.
What in the world besides a weird-ass chemical combo even is purple? Eggplant Popsicles?
It’s blood from all the victims of the Kool-Aid Man. Oh yeah!
Is this a whoosh? As RedSwinglineOne noted, purple = grape.
Red fruits tend to be a bit luxurious- strawberries, cherries, rasberries, cranberries…these are all premium fruits. Furthermore, red coloring tends to overpower all lighter colors. So I think a nice bright red color subtly signals- this is a rich drink with premium fruits, not some cheap-o orange drink.
Some fruit punch mixis colored wih beet juice concentrate.
As was mentioned, red dye No. 40 is cheap-and people like red.
I have a similar question: what is “Tang”? It is a sour-tasting fluid, bearing no resmeblance of orange juice. Is it true that astronauts drink it?
Yes, it was used in the Gemini and Apollo programs. Don’t know if it is still a NASA staple or not.
Tang was on the list of drink concentrates used, but there were others. One of the Apollo astronauts biographies (I think it was Mike Collin’s Carrying the Fire, but I’m not going to hunt the reference down right now) noted that NASA catering created a grapefruit concentrate that the majority of astronauts preferred and specified for their flight meals.
However for the Apollo missions it got a lot less tasty. There was a scare about heart irregularities that was sheeted home to a possible potassium deficit, and after that they were forced to use a concentrate that contained a potassium supplement. Which tasted terrible.
Sorry about that. I meant the popsicles that are Arctic Ice-whitish bluish. I defy anyone to come up with a real life correlate. I like those ones.
Sky-blue popsicles. Loved those as a kid, but I could never figure out the taste other than “blue”. 
I noticed that in the old sitcoms and OTR shows “hula punch” whatever that is, seems to be the “punch” of choice for the younger set.
My guess would be that “hula punch” would be a generic / non-branded term for Hawaiian Punch and similar products.
Sour-tasting = check
fluid = check
orange colored = check
Sounds like orange juice to me. 
Wikipedia says “tangerine”, but needs a cite.