Fruitopia
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Fruitopia is a fruit-flavoured drink introduced by Davide(fruitopia man) 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 most common flavor of this drink is "Strawberry Passion Awareness." This flavor is available at drink fountains as well as McDonald's as Coca-Cola pushed this drink to market in many places. Fruitopia vending machines have also appeared in some schools and college campuses, in addition to, or as a replacement to soda. After Fruitopia was introduced in the United States, TIME magazine named it one of the Top 10 New Products of 1994.
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. A much wider array of flavors was available in the UK. In a drive to remake the brand and remarket it as more relevant to Generation X, Coca-Cola dropped several flavors in 1996 and added and renamed others.
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 also contributed.
There is a beautiful person
living inside you!
Please share a Raspberry Psychic Lemonade
with him or her.
Fruitopia was discontinued by Coca-Cola in the United States in 2001, being replaced by the Minute Maid moniker. A similar situation occurred by PepsiCo, who replaced their own Fruitopia clone, Fruit Works, with the Tropicana moniker. However, Fruitopia Strawberry Passion Awareness is still available in the United States (branded as Minute Maid) in McDonald's fountain machines nationwide.
Fruitopia juice is still available in Canada in a wide variety of flavours, and has recently been released into Australia. The ingredients in Canadian and former American Fruitopia drinks are not the same and they also taste(d) different; the United States version has preservatives added. In 2007, Coca-Cola GmbH Germany released a new fruit juice line under the name Fruitopia by Minute Maid.
A drink to dilute with the same name is being sold by the Coca-Cola Company in Argentina, under their Cepita branch.
[edit] Fruitopia's trial in Greece
In 1997, Greek writer Eugene Trivizas won the first stage of a legal battle against Coca-Cola, preventing the multinational company from registering in Greece the title of his TV serial and comic-strip books Fruitopia as a trademark for soft drinks. The court decided that Coca-Cola has unlawfully appropriated his intellectual property. Coca-Cola appealed against the decision and, in December 1999, the relevant court of appeal ruled once again in his favour prohibiting the use of his intellectual property as a trademark for soft drinks.
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