Soda & Soft Drink Saturday – Double Seven

Double Seven was an Indian soft drink brand. It was manufactured and marketed by the Indian government after Coca-Cola quit the Indian market in 1977 due to changes in government policies. Double Seven was launched at the annual trade fair at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi as a gift by the then ruling Janata Party.

In 1977, the Morarji Desai government asked Coca-Cola to hand over the controlling stake of its Indian operation to Indian investors as per the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. This would have meant that Coca-Cola might have had to share the secret Coca-Cola formula with its Indian partners. Coca-Cola refused and was asked by the government to cease its operations in India.

Developed to fill the void left by Coca-Cola, Double Seven was manufactured and marketed by Modern Food Industries, a government-owned company. The formula for the concentrate of Double Seven was developed at Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore. Despite government backing, Double Seven could not dominate the Indian soft drinks market. The main competitors to Double Seven were Campa Cola, Thums Up, Duke’s, McDowell’s Crush and Double Cola. Double Seven also had a Lemon-lime flavoured soft drink known as Double Seven Tingle.

In 1980, Prime Minister Desai lost the support of parliament and resigned, leading to elections that returned Indira Gandhi to power. Double Seven, which was named after the year in which she lost power, lost further share of market as her government was not interested in supporting a product which reminded them of 1977. Modern Food Industries gradually slipped into the red and was taken over by Hindustan Lever Limited in January 2000.

However, Thums Up, which was also launched in 1977 after the departure of Coca-Cola, continued to thrive until its eventual takeover by Coca-Cola.

Text from Wikipedia

The World’s Easiest Ice Coffee / Verdens Nemmeste Iskaffe

A simple recipe for ice coffee found on madogbolig.dk

Here’s a brilliant recipe for the world’s easiest ice coffee with condensed milk.

There is hardly an easier way to make a delicious ice coffee than with condensed milk. The milk gives a nice creamy flavor – like in the types of ice coffee that you buy from Starbucks or Baresso. At the same time, the condensed milk sweetens the coffee nicely and you can choose how sweet you want to make your ice coffee.

Once you’ve found the blend that agrees perfectly with your taste buds, you can make yourself a delicious ice coffee with condensed milk,  at a fraction of what you usually would have to pay at the cafes.

Civil War Era Pinappleade / Ananasade fra Tiden Rundt den Amerikanske Borgerkrigen

A 19th century refreshment recipe found on worldturn’udupsidedown

Stephanie Ann Farra who runs ‘World Turn’d Upside Down’  writes: This recipe was cooked for the Historical Food Fortnightly. A yearly challenge that encourages bloggers to cook a historical food every two weeks.

For this challenge I decided to take on a lemonade twist with pineappleade. Pineapples were exotic fruits in the 1800s, mostly grown in Jamaica. They were used for such dishes as ice cream, pudding, pineapple chips, fritters, drinks and marmalade. They were considered a “dessert” fruit and was often paired with sugar. Pineapples, being imports, were not as common as home grown fruits. The first large quantity producing pineapple plantation in Florida was started in 1860 by Captain Benjamin Baker, who was probably accustomed to the enjoyment of them at sea.

Soda & Soft Drink Saturday – Kitty Kola

Kitty Kola was a cola-flavoured soft drink. It  is produced in Sweden and bottled by Kopparbergs Bryggeri, Sofiero Bryggeri, Fagerdals Bryggeri and Fågelfors Bryggeri & Läskedrycksfabrik. The soda was originally English and was introduced in Sweden i 1953. The beverage was also found overseas due to the ease of exportation. It had been seen in specialty markets in the United States and other countries.

This beverage was a light brown with a slight foamy head when poured and is made with several natural juices to which water, sugar, and flavorings have been added. Additional sugar and carbon dioxide are also added to the mixture. It also has added natural flavorings such as lime juice. Caffeine is added as well.

This popular cola came in a 12 ounce bottle as well as larger, 20 ounce bottles and aluminum cans. It was a common drink with older adults, but was more heavily marketed to teens and young adults. One can contains as much caffeine as one cup of coffee.

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Kitty Cola now, however, has returned again in a new shape. The new drink is made from apples and cherry beans, and it is the pomologist Kajsa Leander at Berga Bruk in Småland, which is behind the recipe. It is organic and has no added sugar. In addition to the cola, the flavorsinclude Kitty Cool (lemonade) and Kitty Krazy (ginger). The drinks is now available at selected retailers and stores.

Soda & Soft Drink Saturday – Kooba Cola

Some things never change. Just as youngsters today do, kids in the 1940′s loved soda pop. Many modern cola drinks flourished during the Depression and war years: Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola, and Royal Crown Cola were all big during the Forties. Other brands were big sellers during the war years but are minor players today; although Moxie was popular enough to become a slang term in the American lexicon during the pre-war period, that soft drink is largely forgotten these days (although it’s still available in the North-eastern U.S.).

And then there was Kooba Cola. Good ol’ Kooba! Cold, refreshing, tasty, and good for you, packed full of Vitamin B! The company was so sure their product would be a hit with kids that they even gave away free samples,

What’s that you say? You never heard of Kooba Cola? Come on! There were ads for it in lots of comic books: Weird Comics, Mystery Man Comics, Wonderworld Comics…Kooba even sponsored the Blue Beetle radio show!

And that’s where you might start to smell a rat if you’re fairly knowledgeable on the subject of Golden Age Comics. All of the titles I mentioned were published by Fox Publications, one of the more controversial publishers of the era — and The Blue Beetle was a Fox character.

Victor Fox had, at one time, kept the books for Detective Comics which, at that time, was Superman’s publishing company. Fox saw the early sales numbers after Supes was first introduced and realized there might be some serious money to be made in the “costumed hero” business. So he quit his job at DC and started his own publishing company. He didn’t keep “in house” artists, but instead farmed out the work to studios.

In the 1940′s comics and soda pop went hand in hand together. We need to remember that “comics shops” didn’t exist back then – hell, there weren’t even 7-11s! Comics were sold at newsstands and “mom and pop” soda shops. As late as the 1970′s you could still buy comics at “soda fountains”. In my hometown we had a downtown soda shop called Cromer’s, which had a huge comics selection — Mom and Pop Cromer never sent comics back to the distributor, so a comic would potentially stay on the rack forever until somebody bought it. So, for example, when I started reading Marvel’s Doctor Strange in early 1976 and came into the story somewhere in the middle, I pedalled my bike down to Cromer’s in a successful hunt for back issues so I could get a “running start” into the story. Cromers’ was jam-packed with every small item you could think of, very cramped and crowded, but they still kept a small four stool counter and soda fountain. The mirror behind the fountain was festooned with scores of class photos of neighbourhood kids, including yellowed photos going the whole way back to the 1950′s. In fact, the store still had merchandise which went back that far – I once saw a plastic pack of girls’ bobby socks hanging on a peg, twenty years after they’d gone out of style.

Text from: fourcolorglasses.wordpress.com/

Russian Coffee Frappé / Russisk Kaffe Frappé

An ice coffee recipe found in “The Story of Coffee and How To Make It” published by The Cheek-Neal Coffee Co in 1925

Wikipedia: Frappé coffee (also Greek frappé or café frappé Greek: φραπές, frapés) is a Greek foam-covered iced coffee drink made from instant coffee (generally, spray-dried). Accidentally invented by a Nescafe representative named Dimitris Vakondios in 1957 in the city of Thessaloniki, it is now the most popular coffee among Greek youth and foreign tourists. It is popular in Greece, and Cyprus, especially during the summer, but has now spread to other countries. The word frappé is French and comes from the verb frapper which means to ‘strike’; in this context, however, in French, when describing a drink, the word frappé means chilled, as with ice cubes in a shaker. The frappé has become a hallmark of post-war outdoor Greek coffee culture.

Since this Russian recipe made with real brewed coffee is from 1925
I guess Mr Nescafe Representative must have simply pretended
to invent the frappé coffee after having stolen it from the Russians
in order to push his useless instant coffee

Ted

The History of the Cappuccino

An article by Lindsey Goodwin 
posted at The Spruce in March 2016

The cappuccino only began to become popular in America in the 1980s. This has led some people to believe that the cappuccino is a “new” drink. However, this drink actually dates back hundreds of years and has been enjoyed by generations in Italy and continental Europe.

Before the Cappuccino

In Europe, coffee drinking was originally based on the traditional Ottoman style of preparation. Water and coffee beans were brought to a boil, and sometimes sugar was added.

This is similar to modern-day Turkish coffee preparation.

By the late 1700s, the British and French had started filtering coffee beans from their coffee. Gradually, filtered and brewed coffee became more popular than boiled coffee. It was around this time that the term ‘cappuccino’ originated (though it was not used to describe the drink as we know it).

The Name ‘Cappuccino’

‘Cappuccinos’ first popped up as the ‘Kapuziner’ in Viennese coffee houses in the 1700s. A description of the ‘Kapuziner’ from 1805 described it as “coffee with cream and sugar”, and a description of the drink from 1850 adds “spices” to the recipe. Either way, these drinks had a brown color similar to the robes worn by the Capuchin (‘Kapuzin’) friars in Vienna, and this is where their name came from. (A similar drink of the time was known as the ‘Franziskaner’; it was made with more milk and named after the lighter-brown robes of the Franciscan monks.) The word ‘Capuchin’ literally means cowl or hood in Italian, and it was a name given to the Capuchin monks for their hooded robes.

The Invention of the Cappuccino

Although the name ‘Kapuziner’ was used in Vienna, the actual cappuccino was invented in Italy and the name was adapted to become ‘Cappuccino’. It was first made in the early 1900a, shortly after the popularization of the espresso machine in 1901. The first record of the cappuccino we have found was in the 1930s.

‘Cappuccini’ (as they are known in Italy) gradually became popular in cafes and restaurants across the country. At this time, espresso machines were complicated and bulky, so they were limited to specialized cafes and were operated solely by baristi. Italian coffee culture involved sitting around in these specialized cafes for hours, enjoying espresso, cappuccinos, caffe lattes and other drinks over conversation and reading. Photos from the era indicate that cappuccinos were served in the “Viennese” style, which is to say that they were topped with whipped cream and cinnamon or chocolate shavings.

The Modern-day Cappuccino Is Born

After World War II, the cappuccino making went through some improvements and simplifications in Italy. This was largely thanks to better and more widely available espresso machines, which introduced the so-called “Age of Crema“. These improvements and the post-WWII affluence across parts of Europe set the stage for cappuccino’s eventual worldwide popularity. This is when the modern cappuccino was born, so to speak, as it is when all the elements we now consider to make a great cappuccino (good espresso, a balance of steamed and frothed milk, presence of crema and a small, preheated porcelain cup) were all in play.

Cappuccinos Around the Globe

Cappuccinos first became popular across continental Europe and England. (In England, the first popularized form of espresso was, in fact, the cappuccino. It spread across the island easily because the Brits were already accustomed to drinking coffee with milk by that time, but the distinct texture and the cafe culture of the cappuccino set it apart from regular coffee with milk.) Later, the drink moved to Australia, South America and elsewhere in Europe. They then spread to America beginning in the 1980s, primarily due to its marketing in coffee shops (which had previously been more like diners with black coffee on offer). In the 1990s, the introduction of cafe culture (and higher priced drinks which correlated to the longer use of a seat in the coffee shop) made cappuccinos, lattes and similar drinks a big hit in the US.

More recently, the finally appeared elsewhere in the world, largely due to Starbucks. (See these international Starbucks menus for more examples of Starbucks’ spread of coffee drinks around the world.)

For the most part, contemporary cappuccinos are made with espresso, steamed milk and foamed milk. However, in some parts of the world, cappuccinos are still made more like Viennese Kapuziners, complete with whipped cream and other additives. This includes Vienna, much of Austria and Europe (such as Budapest, Prague, Bratislava and other parts of the former Austrian empire). This even includes even Trieste, Italy, a city which now borders on Slovenia and which has been held by various countries over the years. Since the 1950s, both cappuccinos and Kapuziners have been served in espresso bars since the 1950s.

Over the last three decades, automatic beverage machines in America and in some other countries have sold a drink that is called a ‘cappuccino’. These drinks are often made with brewed coffee or instant coffee powder and with powdered milk or milk substitute. They are not foamed and frothed but are whipped inside the machine to create bubbles. This unfortunate drink bears little relation to a true cappuccino.

In recent years, some European cappuccino customs have changed. Most notably, some Europeans (particularly those in the U.K., Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France and Spain) have begun to drink cappuccino throughout the entire day rather than only in the morning. Now, cappuccinos are popular at cafes in the afternoon and at restaurants after dinner.

Soda & Soft Drink Saturday – TaB

Tab (stylized as TaB) is a diet cola soft drink produced by The Coca-Cola Company, introduced in 1963. The soda was popular throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and several variations were made, including Tab Clear as well as caffeine-free versions.

As a result of studies in the early 1970s linking saccharin, TaB’s main sweetener, with bladder cancer in rats, the United States Congress mandated warning labels on products containing the sweetener. The label requirement was later repealed when no evidence was found linking saccharin with cancer in humans.

After its introduction in 1982, Diet Coke quickly replaced TaB as the Coca-Cola Company’s most popular diet cola, although TaB still retained a loyal following. Approximately 3 million cases were sold in the United States in 2008

History

TaB was introduced as a diet drink in 1963. TaB was created by Coca-Cola after the successful sales and marketing of Diet Rite cola, owned by The Royal Crown Company; previously, Diet Rite had been the only sugarless soda on the market. Tab was marketed to consumers who wanted to “keep tabs” on their weight.

Coca-Cola’s marketing research department used its IBM 1401 computer to generate a list of over 185,000 four-letter words with one vowel, adding names suggested by the company’s own staff; the list was stripped of any words deemed unpronounceable or too similar to existing trademarks. From a final list of about twenty names, “Tabb” was chosen, influenced by the possible play on words, and shortened to “TaB” during development.

Packaging designer Robert Sidney Dickens gave the name the capitalization pattern (“TaB”) used in the logo as well as creating a new bottle design for the soft drink.

TaB has been reformulated several times. It was initially sweetened with cyclamate. After the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a ban on cyclamate in 1969, sodium saccharin was used. Studies in laboratory rats during the early 1970s linked saccharin with the development of bladder cancer.

As a result, the United States Congress mandated that further studies of saccharin be performed and required that all food containing saccharin bear a label warning that the sweetener had been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals. In the absence of further evidence that saccharin caused cancer in humans, the substance was delisted in 2000 from the U.S. National Toxicology Program’s Report on Carcinogens; this led to the repealing of the warning label requirements for products containing saccharin. In December 2010, the United States Environmental Protection Agency removed saccharin from its list of hazardous substances.

At the height of its popularity, the Tab name was briefly extended to other diet soft drinks, including TaB Lemon-Lime, TaB Black Cherry, TaB Ginger Ale, TaB Root Beer and TaB Orange.

Other variants of Tab have appeared over the years

Caffeine Free TaB was introduced in the 1980s with little fanfare and disappeared soon afterward.

In 1992, Coca-Cola released TaB Clear in the U.S., Australia and UK. It was withdrawn after less than a year.

TaB Energy is an energy drink released in early 2006 that uses a different recipe than Tab cola.

TaB’s popularity began to decline in 1982 with the introduction of Diet Coke, although TaB retained something of a cult following in the United States, where customers purchased about 3 million cases in 2008. According to the Coca-Cola Company, in 2012 TaB was being sold in the countries of the Southern African Customs Union (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland), Spain, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the United States.

Text from Wikipedia

Soda & Soft Drink Saturday – Howdy

Before Sprite and 7-Up, there was Howdy. Orca Beverage President and Owner, Mike Bourgeois, calls Howdy the “original creators of the lemon-lime category.” In fact, Howdy Lemon-Lime was the primordial soda recipe from which 7-Up eventually evolved.

The company originally began in 1929, and according to Bourgeois, back then Howdy was made with seven ingredients. I don’t think I need to explain the connection further. Here’s the weird part: one of those seven ingredients was lithium. Bourgeois tells us the soda was originally marketed as a “Bib-Lable Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda.”

He goes on to tell us that lithium was used at the turn of the century as a mood-altering stimulant, thought to “give you a lift.” He offered up cocaine as a comparison. Good. Because there’s nothing I like with my lunch more than an ice cold lemon-lime soda chocked full of angel dust. Really makes the rest of the day go faster when I do my afternoon accounting work with a heart rate of 200 BPM.

As you might imagine, lithium has since been regulated out of the drink. Bourgeois did not specify when Howdy went out of business, but notes the company had been dormant for many years until around 2010 when Orca Beverage reactivated the trademark due to its rich history.

Orca has done this several times since the Mukilteo, Washington-based soda distributor began in 1987 because it wants to preserve the nostalgia of retro soda as much as possible. It is now the sole producer of Howdy.

Currently, the company boasts around 120 different brands. Bourgeois says in the case of Howdy, “It was a natural niche for us to cultivate.” He adds that the recipe has been reformulated to be more modern and clean and uses pure cane sugar and real lemon and lime oils. Even the logo is the same as the original. “It’s more flavorful. It has a little more of everything in it,” Bourgeois says at the end of our conversation. Time to taste the history.

Where to get it

Howdy Lemon Lime soda is distributed nationwide in the US at retro soda retailers. We suggest checking your nearest Rocketfizz retailer. You can also purchase it online at Amazon (via Orca Beverage) and Soda Emporium. And if you’re a retailer looking to sell soda yourself, or you’re just a dude wanting a bunch of soda at one time, Homer Soda is your go-to.

Text from fivestarsoda.com

Soda & Softdrink Saturday – Patio Diet Cola

Patio Diet Cola was a brand of diet soda introduced by Pepsi in 1963. It was created in response to Diet Rite Cola. Fitness promoter Debbie Drake was Patio Diet Cola’s spokesperson; the drink was also marketed as a soda alternative for diabetics.

In 1964, Patio released orange, grape, and root beer flavors. This flavor line was not meant to compete with brands like Orange Crush, but rather fill out the line. Patio sodas were available in the cold-bottle market: grocery and mom-and-pop stores. Advertising for Patio was comparatively scarce; at the time, bottlers were regionally franchised, and related advertising was necessarily local.

In 1964, Patio diet cola became Diet Pepsi. The newly branded diet soda was advertised alongside Pepsi, with the tagline “Pepsi either way”, which replaced the slogan “Dances with flavor”. Most of the remaining Patio line of flavors were phased out by the early 1970s, while a few survived until the mid 1970s.

In popular culture

The creation of an advertising campaign for Patio was a featured plot of the third season of the AMC television series Mad Men. In “My Old Kentucky Home”, the advertising agency hired an Ann-Margret look-alike. In “The Arrangements”, they notably used a take-off of Ann-Margret’s opening number from the film Bye Bye Birdie for their television commercial.

How Patio cola changed the world of fizzy drinks

Fifty years ago Diet Pepsi was first marketed, trying to fix a link in consumers’ minds between sugar-free fizzy drinks and weight loss. But today, the very term “diet” on food and drink almost seems a little retro.

The product featured in the first few episodes of series three of the advertising agency drama, and is a point of dispute between Sterling Cooper staff members when PepsiCo reject a television commercial based on the film Bye Bye Birdie.

Patio was a real product and the year after its introduction in 1963 it was rebranded as Diet Pepsi. But Pepsi’s move into diet drinks was inspired by an unusual source.

A soft drink produced for diabetic patients at New York’s Jewish Sanitarium for Chronic Disease in the early 1950s called No-Cal ballooned in popularity, far beyond the customer base its maker expected. It turned out more than half the people buying No-Cal weren’t diabetic – they were just watching their weight.

This caught the attention of Royal Crown, a cola maker, which introduced Diet Rite Cola in 1962. Their product was marketed towards the calorie-conscious as a dietetic product. The strategy worked – in three years, sales of diet drinks increased fivefold. Pepsi was forced to act.

But PepsiCo was not sure there was a big enough market for their diet drink, or that it would be successful. So they hedged their bets. They released the drink, but avoided connecting it to their main Pepsi brand, worried a potential failure could tarnish the brand they had spent years building. When they recognised the fad for diet food and drink wasn’t disappearing, they renamed Patio.

Soda & Soft Drink Saturday – Nichol Kola

In the 2010 edition of Soda Spectrum, contributor Blair Matthews writes “there’s hardly a trace of what was once such a successful and lucrative cola brand.” But searching is our thing… so we searched. We consulted Eric Wideman, “the nation’s expert on Nichol Kola,” according to his boss, Orca Beverage President Mike Bourgeois. And based on the information we’ve gathered from Wideman, I believe it. I mean what an absurdly specific thing to be obsessed with: a soda that started in 1936. Personally I am obsessed with Natalie and Tonya… but they’re not talking to me anymore. Anyway, here’s what Wideman relayed to us about Nichol Cola:

first there was Sun-Boc, then there was Ver-Vac, Pow! World War I – sugar problems – yadda, yadda, yadda. And now here we are years later with Orca Beverage resurrecting a forgotten brand. Got it? Good. Peace out. Jk. God, for how long it took us to write this, we are doing it in the most annoying way possible. Here’s a synopsis of the soda’s history as written in the book The House of Quality: The History of the H.R. Nicholson Company by Harry R. Nicholson. Wideman sent us excerpts from this extremely rare publication.

We do know it’s a real thing though because we found it online in Australia’s National Library. Go figure. Harry R. Nicholson was a business man. Dude was savvy back in the early 1900’s. With prohibition on the rise, he created Sun-Boc an amber not-quite-beer that became a hit with people looking for something to replace their former definitely-real-beer. After Sun-Boc’s success, Nicholson invested that money into a cola he called Ver-Vac designed to compete with Coca Cola. Well Ver-Vac, despite maybe being the worst-named soda I’ve ever heard of, was a hit. Nicholson raked in $110,000 from investors to go all-in on it. And then he hit a road block called World War I, which led to sugar rationing and a spike in sugar’s price.

Here’s the big problem with that; sugar is a huge part of soda and the amount of sugar businesses “were allotted was based on their usage before the rationing” and since Ver-Vac was a relatively new venture, Nicholson didn’t get anywhere close to enough of it to run a soda business. After a bad business deal on sugar and then the sudden stoppage of the war, Ver-Vac’s fizz as a company went flat. In 1926, Nicholson gave cola a shot again, this time branding it as “Nichol Kola” to compete with brands like Pepsi. He would sell the concentrate to independent bottlers who would then mix it up and sell it. Guess how much each bottle sold for?

Nichol Kola continued into the 1970’s, but as independent bottlers fell by the wayside, there were fewer and fewer businesses to which the company could sell their soda’s concentrate. The trend continued until Nichol Kola met the same fate as Ver-Vac. But in 2006 Orca Beverage revamped the brand. If you haven’t read past reviews, Orca Beverage is a large soda manufacturer and distributer based out of Mukilteo, Washington. Their “thing,” if you will, is buying up vintage brands no longer in production and putting them back on shelves.

Bourgeois tells us about his company, “We do that because our specialty is vintage soda. We just want to consolidate as many in-house as we can.” The current incantation of Nichol Kola is not the original formula. When asked to describe today’s recipe, Bourgeois played it pretty close to the vest, but pointed out cinnamon and coriander as ingredients used. He also says there are ingredients in it “that typically aren’t found in colas anymore.” Alright, history lesson over. We finally got that part out of the way. Now let’s drink this damn thing.

Text from fivestarsoda.com

The Christmas Recipes – Part 30

Peppermint Candies / Peppermyntekonfekt

Quick Troll Cream / Rask Trollkrem

Hot Spicy Apple Drink / Varm Krydret Epledrikk

Soda & Soft Drink Saturday – Jolly Cola – An Original Danish Soft Drink

Jolly Cola is an original Danish soft drink dating back to 1959. Today, Jolly Cola is produced by the Danish brewery ‘Vestfyen’, which also produces Jolly Light, the sports drink Jolly Time and Jolly Orange. Up until the 1980s, Jolly Cola had a market share of about 40% of the Danish cola market. This was extraordinary, as Denmark is the only country in the world, where another cola than the original Coca Cola has had a larger market share. Jolly Cola is probably most famous for its slogan “Say Jolly to your cola!”, but having reached its 50th birthday, this slogan will be followed by “Free your taste”.

The history of Jolly Cola

Following WW2, many countries in the world viewed Coca Cola as synonymous with the US and an American life-style, and as the US developed and increased its influence on society, so did Coca Cola. In the meantime, the Danish population still had to wait until 1959, before they could buy a bottle of Coca Cola. Admittedly, Coca Cola had been marketed with moderate success from the middle of the 1930s, but then came a war, followed by rationing of sugar and finally a special tax on cola, which made the soft drink just as expensive as a beer, and therefore kept it out of the Danish market. The taxation came as a result of skilled lobbyism, carried out by breweries and producers of mineral water – and it worked as intended.

Following the implementation of the tax in 1953, only 10,000 litres of cola soft drinks were sold in Denmark a year, primarily produced by minor Danish producers of mineral water, avoiding the competition from the American giant. However, the opposition against the taxation grew, and by the end of the 1950s it was only the communists and conservative powers in Danish politics, which had close connections to the brewing industry, that wanted a prohibitive surtax on what a member of the Danish Communist Party called “a bitter cup”

When the Danish producers finally realised that they could not keep Coca Cola out of the Danish market anymore, they quickly changed their strategy. In January 1959 18 breweries and producers of mineral water went together to form ‘Dansk Coladrik A/S’. This initiative was instigated by Carlsberg and Tuborg so as to produce an original Danish cola that was to be sold nationwide. The soft drink was named Jolly Cola and was an all-out copy product. This regarded not only the taste, but also the organisation behind the product, which completely resembled Coca Cola, especially in terms of having a strong and centralised control of quality and marketing, combined with local bottling departments.

Suddenly, the strategy seemed to be that if you could not get rid of Coca Cola, the least you could do was to ensure that the Danish population drank Danish produced cola. To a great extent, this was a success, and when the taxation was removed and ‘the great Danish cola war’ broke out in July 1959, Jolly Cola actually conquered a significant part of the new market. In July 1959 alone, nine million bottles of Jolly Cola were sold, compared to five million bottles of Coca Cola.

This was an incredible number compared to an annual sale of 40 to 50,000 bottles in 1958. Naturally, the sheer interest of the news explains a part of the increased sale, but so does the summer of 1959, which was exceptionally good. Nevertheless, when the market finally stabilised, roughly every fifth sold soft drink in Denmark was a cola, and approximately 40% was Jolly Cola. Jolly Cola maintained this market share up until the 1980s.

There are several explanations for Jolly Cola’s success. However, the most important one is that ‘Dansk Coladrik’ could make use of the brewing industry’s comprehensive network, distributing system and knowledge of the Danish market. For example, it is a known fact the Danish breweries supplied the restaurants and pubs. Another reason is that it was only possible to buy Coca Cola in Copenhagen and a few larger cities in Jutland in the early years of the hectic ‘cola war’. Hence, it was not until the 1960s that it was possible to buy Coca Cola nationwide.

This ensured that Jolly Cola was a well-established product in many places, when Coca Cola finally ventured into the market. Thirdly, it was due to great marketing. Dansk Coladrik A/S had e.g. tapped their cola in regular soft drink bottles. This made it easier for the retail industry to administer the returnable bottle system, but it also made it possible to launch Jolly Cola as “The Big Cola” (a slogan that not by coincidence resembled Pepsi’s success-slogan about the big 12 ounce bottle from the 1930s USA). A

A Danish soft drink bottle contained exactly 25 cl, whereas the characteristic ‘chubby’ Coca Cola bottle only contained 19 cl. The argument about value for your money was important in a time where a soft drink was considered to be a luxury product. (The story of Jolly Cola is based on the work of Klaus Petersen and Niels Arne Sørensen from the Institute of History, Culture and Society).

Today’s Jolly

In the 1980s Jolly Cola still had around 60% of the Danish cola market, but in the 1990s they experienced a decrease in sales. In 1999 the failing sales numbers forced the Co-operative Wholesale Society (FDB) to remove Jolly Cola from its shelves. Following this, Jolly Cola only made up 6% of the total Danish soft drink market in 2002, which was again reduced to 2% in 2003. In the same year, a trial between the brewery ‘Vestfyen’ and the association of Danish breweries almost compromised Jolly Cola’s existence. ‘Vestfyen’ believed that the association of Danish breweries would rather market Pepsi Cola at the expense of Jolly Cola. In September 2003, however, ‘Vestfyen’ took over all stocks dealing with the struggling soft drink so as to engage in a turn-around of the product. This became an immense success, and in 2004 Jolly Cola actually made up 25% of Coop Denmark’s cola sales.

You can see two Jolly Cola commercials with
supermodel Tina Kjær here and here

Text from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kuwaiti Traditional Tea / Kuwaitiske Tradisjonell Te

A traditional hot beverage recipe from the Middle East
found on allrecipes.com

This is the typical tea you will find in regular housed in Kuwait. Its deliciously aroma and the spices give it a rich taste.

The History of Ovaltine

Ovaltine (Ovomaltine) is a brand of milk flavoring product made with malt extract (except in the blue packaging in the United States), sugar (except in Switzerland), and whey. Some flavors also have cocoa. Ovaltine, a registered trademark of Associated British Foods, is made by Wander AG, a subsidiary of Twinings which acquired the brand from Novartis in 2003, except in the United States and Australia, where Nestlé acquired the rights separately from Novartis later on.

History

Ovaltine was developed in Bern, Switzerland, where it is known by its original name, Ovomaltine (from ovum, Latin for “egg,” and malt, which were originally its main ingredients). Soon after its invention, the factory moved out to the village of Neuenegg, a few kilometres west of Berne, where it is still produced.

  

Ovomaltine was exported to Britain in 1909; a misspelling of the name on the trademark registration application led to the name being shortened to Ovaltine in English-speaking markets. A factory was built in Kings Langley, which exported it to the United States as well. By 1915, Ovaltine was being manufactured in Villa Park, Illinois, for the U.S. market. Ovaltine was later manufactured in Peterborough, Ontario for distribution in Canada.

Originally advertised as consisting solely of “malt, milk, eggs, flavoured with cocoa”, the formulation has changed over the decades, and today several formulations are sold in different parts of the world.

The popular chocolate malt version is a powder which is mixed with hot or cold milk as a beverage. Malt Ovaltine (a version without cocoa) and Rich Chocolate Ovaltine (a version without malt) are also available in some markets. Ovaltine has also been available in the form of chocolate bars, chocolate Easter eggs, parfait, cookies, and breakfast cereals, where it is the only brand name that connects the cereals with the chocolate drink.

Ovaltine also manufactured PDQ Chocolate Flavor Beads, PDQ Choco Chips and Eggnog Flavored PDQ, which are no longer available. These drink mixes were very popular from the 1960s to the 1980s. Ovaltine discontinued the PDQ products around 1996.

The U.S. children’s radio series Little Orphan Annie (1931–1940) and Captain Midnight (1938–1949), and the subsequent Captain Midnight TV series (1954–1956), were sponsored by Ovaltine. They had promotions in which listeners could save proofs-of-purchase from Ovaltine jars to obtain radio premiums, such as “secret decoder ring” badges, or pins that could be used to decode messages in the program. Children from the time may remember that “Ovaltine” is an anagram for “Vital One”.

Another radio program aimed at five- to fourteen-year-olds, The League of Ovaltineys, was broadcast to Great Britain by Radio Luxembourg on Sunday evenings at 5:30 PM. Beginning in February 1935, it was broadcast until September 1939, when the outbreak of World War II forced closure of the station, and again after the war from 1952. Like with the U.S. program, listeners could obtain badges, pins, and secret codes. The Ovaltineys’ advertising jingle was regarded as one of the most successful jingles of the era and featured the iconic English singing trio The Beverley Sisters.

Villa Park, Illinois, was home to the Ovaltine factory in the United States until the company’s purchase and withdrawal in 1988. The Villa Park Historical Society maintains a permanent exhibit of Ovaltine advertising and memorabilia. The old factory was converted to loft apartments keeping the original floors and wall exposed.

In 1992, Himmel Group obtained the right to make and sell Ovaltine in the U.S. from Sandoz Nutrition Corporation. In 2007, Himmel sold their rights to Novartis. Presently Nestlé has the rights. With this purchase, Nestlé immediately ceased Ovaltine’s previous television advertising campaign targeted to older and nostalgic audiences, where Ovaltine was presented as more nutritious than former competitor Nesquik, and though it is still sold widely in the United States, Ovaltine is currently not advertised on American television.

Ovaltine in popular Culture

In William Trevor’s novel “Felicia’s Journey” Mr Hilditch repeatedly makes warm Ovaltine for Felicia and himself. “Later in the kitchen, he makes Ovaltine. […] She takes the mug he offers her. She sips the Ovaltine, leaning against the dresser.”  “I’m heating milk for Ovaltine.” He can think of nothing better to say, and she follows him into the kitchen, clearly more tranquil now. When he has made the drink he suggests they might like to have it in the big front room. ‘Make a change for you, eh?’

In 1947, Harry Gibson’s song “Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine” was popular on the radio.

One of the segments of A Christmas Story has Ralphie anxiously decoding the secret message on the Little Orphan Annie radio program, only to discover it’s no more than an encouragement to drink Ovaltine. He responds, “A crummy commercial?!”

In “The Fatigues”, episode 6 of season 8 of the popular ’90s show Seinfeld, Kenny Bania, a friend of main character Jerry Seinfeld, is given a joke by Jerry, regarding the name of Ovaltine. He says “Why do they call it Ovaltine? The jar is round. The mug is round. They should call it Roundtine.” to which Kenny Bania replies “That’s gold Jerry, gold!”.

When Dr. Frankenstein arrives at his grandfather’s castle in the movie “Young Frankenstein”, the housekeeper shows him to his room. After failing to interest the doctor in a nightcap of brandy or some warm milk, she tries one more time: “Ovaltine?”

Text from Wikipedia