Fruitopia is a fruit-flavoured drink introduced by The Coca-Cola Company in 1994 and targeted at teens and young adults. According to New York Times business reports, it was invented as part of a push by Coca-Cola to capitalize on the success of Snapple and other flavored tea drinks. The brand gained substantial hype in the mid 1990s before enduring lagging sales by decade's end. While still available in Canada and in Australia as a juice brand, in 2003, Fruitopia was phased out in most of the United States where it had struggled for several years. However, select flavors have since been revamped under Coca-Cola's successful Minute Maid brand. Use of the Fruitopia brand name continues through various beverages in numerous countries.

 

 

History

Fruitopia was a pet project of Coke's former marketing chief, Sergio Zyman. The company spent untold sums on the brand, including an initial marketing budget of $30 million, allowing Fruitopia to quickly gain hype in the mid 1990s. TIME magazine named Fruitopia one of the Top 10 New Products of 1994,and the beverage would even be mentioned on the popular animated series, The Simpsons.

The brand's flagship flavor would be Strawberry Passion Awareness. This flavor was available at drink fountains as well at McDonald's as Coca-Cola pushed this drink to market in many places. Fruitopia vending machines have also appeared in schools and college campuses in addition to or as a replacement to soda.

 

In addition to the popular Strawberry Passion Awareness, other flavors included The Grape Beyond, Tangerine Wavelength, Citrus Excursion, Fruit Integration, Pink Lemonade Euphoria, Lemonade Love & Hope, Raspberry Psychic Lemonade, and Beachside Blast. These flavors were available in the United States while a much wider array was available in the UK. On March 23, 1995, a Fruitopia fruit tea line featuring Born Raspberry, Peaceable Peach, Lemon Berry Intuition, and Curious Mango was introduced in 16-ounce glass bottles.In a drive to remake the brand and remarket it as more relevant to Generation X, however, Coca-Cola dropped several Frutopia flavors in 1996 and added and renamed others.

 

Advertising

Fruitopia had rather unusual commercials despite the simplicity of the product behind them. They featured animation using imagery of fruit arrayed in colorful, spinning kaleidoscope patterns. This was accompanied by idealistic aphorisms reminiscent of hippie poetry of the 1960s, such as might be found in advertisements which ran in underground press newspapers of the period. 

Background music on several of the ads was provided by The Muffs, Kate Bush, and the Cocteau Twins. Ad copy would run as follows:

There is a beautiful personliving inside you!Please share a Raspberry Psychic Lemonade with him or her.