20 Forgotten Sodas That Americans Once Couldn’t Get Enough Of

Before 7UP became the familiar lemon-lime soda we know today, it had a much longer name and a rather surprising ingredient. Its inventor and bottler, Charles Leiper Grigg, created Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda in October 1929 in St. Louis. It contained lithium citrate, a legal mood stabilizer at the time, and was sold as a hangover cure. Under pressure from the federal government, 7UP removed lithium from its formula between 1948 and 1950.

In 1876, Dr. Augustin Thompson invented a bitter patent medicine flavored with gentian root called “Moxie Nerve Food” in Union, Maine. In 1884, he turned it into a carbonated soft drink. So zealous was the advertising campaign that the brand name became American slang for nerve and courage, as in “moxie.”

Hugh S. Nesbitt introduced his famous orange soda, Nesbitt’s Orange, in Los Angeles in 1924. It included real California orange juice and citrus zest. In 1946, a 20-year-old Norma Jeane—before the world knew her as Marilyn Monroe—was a featured model in print ads for the beverage. In the 1940s and ’50s, Nesbitt’s was America’s best-selling orange soda and was even Disneyland’s only orange soda when the park opened in 1955.

Before diet soda became a supermarket staple, No-Cal was created with a much more specific audience in mind. This sugar-free pop, made with a sweetener known as sodium cyclamate, was invented in 1952 by father-and-son team Hyman and Morris Kirsch at their Brooklyn, New York, business, Kirsch Beverages. It was originally intended for diabetic and cardiovascular patients at the Jewish Sanitarium for Chronic Disease. With actress Kim Novak endorsing it, No-Cal took off, grossing $5 to $6 million a year by 1954.

By 1920, Claud A. Hatcher of Columbus, Georgia, had expanded his Chero-Cola Company to about 700 franchise bottling operations. Then Coca-Cola filed a trademark violation suit, and a 1923 court decision forbade Hatcher from using the word “cola” in his product name. Hatcher concentrated instead on his Nehi brand of fruit sodas before getting back into the cola game in 1934, after resolving the dispute, with a new formula called Royal Crown Cola.

Coca-Cola quietly discontinued Delaware Punch in 2020, ending the drink’s 107-year run as a staple at soda fountains across the South. The soft drink was first created by chemist Thomas E. Lyons in San Antonio, Texas, in 1913.

“Green River,” a hit by Creedence Clearwater Revival, takes its name from a syrup that John Fogerty remembered as a kid. In 1916, Richard C. Jones created Green River, a bright lime soda in Davenport, Iowa. When Prohibition closed down breweries, Chicago’s Schoenhofen Edelweiss Brewing Company purchased the recipe in 1919, bottling the soda into surplus beer bottles. Green River soon became a favorite fountain soda throughout the Midwest.

Introduced in 1939 in Camden, Arkansas, by Tyndle Fooks, Grapette was a carbonated beverage sold in small, 6-ounce glass bottles to keep the flavor strong. The brand was widely distributed by over 300 bottlers by 1950. In addition to the bottled soda, Grapette also sold a syrup concentrate in glass containers shaped like bears, cats, and elephants. The containers could even double as piggy banks thanks to a slotted cap for coins.

Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray is a classic New York Jewish delicatessen soda, sometimes referred to as “Jewish Champagne.” The original “Celery Tonic,” made of carbonated water, sugar, and celery seed extract, was concocted by a physician known only as Dr. Brown in Brooklyn in 1868. In the early 1900s, the drink was renamed Cel-Ray, a requirement of the Pure Food and Drug Act.

By 1942, Frank W. Bireley was the nation’s largest single purchaser of oranges by volume, using over 20,000 tons a year. He left Stanford University in 1923 to make Bireley’s Orange, a flash-pasteurized, still beverage touted as a wholesome drink for children, and it grew so rapidly that in 1943 the beverage business was sold to General Foods.

Kayo was a character from the popular newspaper comic strip Moon Mullins. In fact, the young Kayo Moon gave his name to Kayo Chocolate Drink, introduced in 1929 by Aaron D. Pashkow. The product of Pashkow’s Chicago-based Chocolate Products Company, Kayo was actually a chocolate milk drink rather than a carbonated soda, and much of its fame came from its connection to the widely popular cartoon character.

Nearly a decade after the 1929 debut of 7UP, St. Louis-based LeRoy Schneeburger came up with the Bubble-Up lemon-lime formula in 1937/1938. Schneeburger, who touted the beverage under the slogan “A Kiss of Lemon, A Kiss of Lime,” owned the Bubble-Up name, which was originally registered as a trademark in 1919 in Sandusky, Ohio, to sell grape juice.

Whistle Orange Soda was developed by Sylvester “Vess” Jones, circa 1915-1916, in St. Louis. The distinctive blue and clear frosted bottle was easy to identify on the fountain shelf, and the slogan, “Thirsty? Just Whistle!” has stayed with drinkers since then. It was introduced as a product of the Orange Whistle Company and by 1925 was fully folded into his Vess Beverage Co.

In 1921, O.R. Rand created NuGrape in Atlanta. But the grape-flavored beverage itself wasn’t the most distinctive thing about it. Customers could recognize a NuGrape bottle by feel alone, thanks to its spiral-ribbed shape, which allowed them to single it out while reaching blindly into an ice-cold cooler. Its ad campaign fittingly featured the tagline, “A Flavor You Can’t Forget.”

Upper 10 was a brand of crisp, caffeine-free lemon-lime soda introduced by The Nehi Corporation (later renamed Royal Crown) in 1933 to compete with the success of 7UP during a craze for lemon-lime soda. As such, it fought for shelf space with a very similar flavor profile.

Big Red was originally named Sun Tang Red Cream Soda when it was concocted by mixing vanilla and citrus oils in 1937. The name we know today didn’t come until 1969, when the company began calling the drink “Big Red,” a nickname that had originated with golf caddies at a San Antonio, Texas, country club. Yep, sometimes the customers come up with a better name!

In 1940, the B-1 Beverage Company of St. Louis introduced B-1 Lemon-Lime Soda. The soft drink contained an infusion of thiamine (Vitamin B1) and was touted by some as the answer to hangovers. The push for healthful citrus drinks capitalized on 1940s enthusiasm for vitamin-laced foods and beverages; the soda’s health benefits were more hype than science.

Root Beer was first introduced as a patent medicine by Dr. George W. Swett in Boston in 1885, originally sold in earthenware bottles. During the 1930s, it was sold in a clear glass bottle with the “Pilgrim Boy” logo. During WWII, sugar was rationed, so Dr. Swett’s Root Beer recipe was strengthened with corn sugar. These bottles were labeled “Rich in Dextrose.”

By 1938, Clicquot Club, founded by Henry Millis in 1881 in Millis, Massachusetts, was producing as many as 100,000 cases in the beverage industry’s first commercial cone-top metal cans. The company had a knack for packaging innovations: it was also a pioneer of the metal crown bottle cap, which it began using in 1893, and the 32-ounce bottle, introduced in 1934. Clicquot Club advertised all these fizzy goods with its mascot, “Kleek-O the Eskimo Boy.”

Vernors’ ginger ale was first sold in 1866 from James Vernor’s pharmacy soda fountain in Detroit. Company tradition holds that he developed the recipe before the Civil War, and that the ginger syrup matured in an oak barrel during his years away (although the barrel story does not appear to be factual). Vernors is still sold today and is the oldest soft drink in America still in production.

This content was created with the help of AI.