View Single Post
  #3 (permalink)  
Old 03-05-2005, 10:26 PM
fusion fusion is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Delaware
Posts: 3,884
Send a message via AIM to fusion
Post

Fruitopia was introduced in 1994, according to what I read.

Originally it was in 16oz glass bottles. There were fruit drinks as well as teas. All of the drinks had 60's hippie type names.

When Coke partnered with Nestle to bring out RTD tea, the Fruitopia tea line was dropped.

In the beginning of 1998, they switched to 20oz bottles. There were also 4 packs of 16.9oz bottles in some areas at some point in time. 12 ounce 6 packs cans and bottles as well in some areas.

When they transitioned from glass to plastic, the packaging process changed. The glass was hot filled, the plastic was cold filled, which meant that they had to reformulate the drinks.

The flavors kept changing. There were a core number that they kept the whole time, but they would add and drop flavors constantly. Towards the end, the flavors really went downhill. Beachside Blast and Cherry Vanilla Grove were just horrible, imho.

Fruitopia is under the control of Minute Maid, though it was bottled and distributed by the Coke bottling system. Four flavors were selected and transitioned to the Minute Maid line, the rest were killed off. They were looking to change the demographic to an older one.

Kiwiberry Ruckus = Berry Kiwi
Strawberry Passion Awareness = Strawberry Passion
Raspberry Psychic Lemonade = Raspberry Lemonade
Citrus Excursion = Tropical Citrus (I think)

Fruit Integration was also killed off, in favor of Minute Maid Fruit Punch.

Coke still sells Fruitopia in other countries, notably Canada and Australia, where it is more successful. They also kept it in the glass bottle, which was transitioned into a rocket type bottle (like you see with the Nestea and Lipton teas here).
Reply With Quote