Gone but not forgotten: Childhood drink brands we miss
There is a particular kind of grief that only hits in a grocery aisle. Your hand moves toward a shelf space that has been empty for twenty years, and for a moment, you feel the loss of something most people would laugh at you for mourning.
A drink.
Not the snacks this time, but the drinks, the ones that came in strange bottles and stranger colors. The food and drink industry discontinues something beloved whenever the spreadsheet says to. This article is for the things the spreadsheet got wrong.
Image credit: ZolHaj / Wikipedia
Squeezit
Squeezit was introduced by General Mills in 1985 and remained a fixture of the school lunch for the next decade. The plastic bottles were designed to be squeezed, turning a juice box into something closer to a sport. Flavors had names like Chucklin’ Cherry and Grumpy Grape. Squeezit was discontinued in 2001.
Image credit: u/shrimpedy / Wkipedia
Orbitz
Orbitz lasted less than a year on the market, arriving in 1997 and disappearing almost immediately. The drink contained small edible gelatin balls suspended in fruit-flavored liquid, producing a visual effect the company compared to a lava lamp. The taste was generally described as reminiscent of cough syrup. Sealed bottles still appear on eBay, collector’s items for a product almost nobody enjoyed at the time.
Image credit: Amazon
Surge
Surge was Coca-Cola’s answer to Mountain Dew, launched in 1996 as a high-caffeine neon-green citrus soda. When discontinued in 2003, fans organized petitions for years. Coca-Cola responded in 2014 with a limited Amazon release that sold out in hours. A broader return followed in 2015. Surge is the rare case of a discontinued drink whose devoted fans were vindicated.
Image credit: lordofedging81 / Reddit
Fruitopia
Fruitopia arrived in 1994 with flavors called Strawberry Passion Awareness and Citrus Consciousness, and advertising that borrowed heavily from the counterculture. The drinks were essentially flavored sugar water in attractive bottles. Discontinued in the United States in 2003, it survives in limited form in Canada, apparently the only market willing to take Raspberry Psychic Lemonade at its word.
Image credit: Mike Mozart / Wikipedia
Crystal Pepsi
Crystal Pepsi arrived in 1992 as a cola that tasted like Pepsi but looked like water. It sold well for roughly a year, then did not. Consumer groups reportedly found the combination unsettling. PepsiCo discontinued it in 1994. Returns in 2015 and 2022 confirmed the appetite for it is mostly theoretical.
Image credit: Amazon
Clearly Canadian
Clearly Canadian occupied a premium tier in the early 1990s, a lightly sparkling fruit water in a distinctive glass bottle that felt slightly more sophisticated than a juice box. Country Raspberry was the flavor most people remember. The brand largely disappeared in the late 1990s and 2000s, but fan pressure led to a revival in 2015. The brand has maintained a limited presence, more nostalgia than product. The bottle still looks exactly right.
Image credit: NJS1993 / Reddit
Mondo
Mondo was the slightly less famous sibling of Squeezit: a squeezable fruit drink in a small barrel-shaped container, available in flavors like Chillin’ Cherry and Global Grape. It occupied school lunchrooms through the early 1990s and faded without the fanbase that campaigned for Surge or the collector interest that kept Orbitz bottles on resale sites. Mondo simply left.
Image Credit: musicphone1/iStock.
Final word
The spreadsheet always wins eventually. But it cannot account for the version of these drinks that lives in the people who drank them, in a lunchroom or a car or a backyard in a summer that no longer exists. That version is not discontinued.
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Related:
- 10 retro tech gadgets we loved (& still miss)
- 9 “senior-proof” smartphones that don’t treat you like a child
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