Friday Factoid: You Been Fanta'd!
Welcome to another peculiar Friday Factoid!
Here's something you probably didn't know...
Fanta was invented in Nazi Germany!
The popular orange-flavoured drink, which actually doesn't contain any orange juice in the US, as opposed to the European recipe, was invented during the second world war.
Back in the 1930s, Coca-Cola was carefully marketed in Germany so as not to emphasize it's American heritage. Some ten years after it's launch, four million cases of coke were being sold every year -- and then, in 1939, war broke out.
Shortly after the war began, German Coca-Cola head honcho Max Keith realized that supplies of the Coca-Cola syrup were soon to end, owing to the Allied blockade.
That's when Keith (pronounced "Kite") was forced to come up with a new kind of soft drink, usually ingredients he could source locally.
In the end, he came up with a fruit-flavoured drink made from apple fibre and whey.
Then Keith had the problem of coming up with a new name.
He asked his staff to come up with something brilliant, and to start using their imagination -- their "phantasie" in German.
Some bright spark suggested you simply lop off the last few letters, coming up with the abbreviated "Fanta."
In 1945, with the war coming to a close, The Coca-Cola Company were delighted to hear of the new brand -- and Keith, rather honestly, turned over all profits to the American counterpart.
It was introduced to the US in 1960 -- and is currently available in around 70 different flavours.
It's rumoured that German prisoners arriving in the States after the war were amazed to discover Coca-Cola being sold. They had thought it a purely German beverage.
What a world we live in.
Happy Friday! :)
Labels: factoids
by Karl
6:03 AM
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1 Comments:
Hi, You may be correct about the name but actually my Father invented the drink prior to WWII and sold the patents and his bottling works to Coke when he had to join the army here in Los Angeles. As far as we know he was the first manufacture of fruit juice combined with sugar and carbonation. He was very involved with syrups and sweeteners and worked as a chemist in the war. Because sugar was so hard to obtain he decided it would not only be difficult to keep the company running (It was called Kay's and had a little polar bear holding an ice cube in it's arms)affordably because of the difficulty in obtaining sugar, but would be unable to oversee his bottling works while having to be on the base. He was stationed at The Presidio in San Francisco. Anyway, he sold his orange, grape and pineapple sodas to Coke, made a good amount of money for it. And then he went on to do sooo many other things. Just thought you should know, and I don't even know how I ended up here. I was Googling something completely different. Warm Hugs, Jacqui http://jacqui.livejournal.com
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