Why Fruitopia Was Discontinued

When Fruitopia was introduced in 1994, Coca-Cola shook up its marketing tactics to please a crowd of baby boomers and Generation Xers who were moving away from the fizz of Coke. The carbonated beverage industry was coming undone, and alternative drinks were booming in the early '90s (via The New York Times). Coca-Cola launched Fruitopia to milk the trend. 

Consumers were exposed to flavors named Citrus Consciousness and Strawberry Passion Awareness through ads that had kaleidoscopic images of fruits moving to the rhythm of trippy new-age music. But despite the $30 million effort to establish Fruitopia in the first year, per The New York Times, the beverage didn't seemed to perform well. When the scenario didn't improve in the following years, Coca-Cola decided that Fruitopia wasn't worth fighting for. 

Though phased out from U.S. markets in 2003, as per Atlas Obscura, Fruitopia is still available up north in Canada. But the question is whether you would cross the border to take a sip of Fruitopia that failed for multiple reasons — the most simple being, as Tom Pirko, president of category consulting firm Bevmark, told Supermarket News in 2003: "it wasn't that exciting." Here are some of the other reasons Fruitopia was discontinued.

Since Fruitopia was launched at a time when consumers were ditching their carbonated staples for something that was healthier and non-carbonated, the brand thought it would be all-too-apropos to promote itself as good "for the mind, body and the planet" (via Orlando Sentinel). But just because people were warming up to healthier drinks didn't mean they forgot to have fun, Fruitopia. Customers naturally thought Fruitopia was taking itself a tad too seriously (via The New York Times).

To show that the brand was taking a chill pill, the company came up with new slogans. And one among them landed it in the soup with Saab — yep, the Swedish car company that asked people to "find your own road." According to The New York Times in 1996, the Leo Burnett Company, which is known for its popular Marlboro Man and Tony the Tiger ads, created a slogan for Fruitopia, which unfortunately looked like a regurgitated Saab ad. No one, even if they tried, could overlook the stark similarities between "find your own Fruitopia" and Saab's "find your own road." 

Saab Cars USA Inc. filed a complaint against Coca-Cola, which probably pushed the company to abandon the slogan altogether. Instead, it came up with a more philosophical "Fruits Unite. Refreshment happens" saying and ultimately settled on a simple and direct "Fruitopia: We just want to make you feel good" (via The New York Times).

When Fruitopia came into the market, everyone already was used to quenching their thirst with Snapple's ready-to-drink iced tea, Clearly Canadian's flavored sparkling water, and Mistic fruit juices (via The New York Times). Clearly, there was a demand for "new age" drinks, and Coca-Cola wanted to put its best step forward in the industry. In 1993 alone, the category grew by 25%, per The New York Times, in comparison to a measly 2% to 3% growth in soft drinks. 

Coca-Cola, with its Nestea ready-to-drink teas, Minute Maid juices and Nordic Mist sparkling water, had 8% of this market, and it wanted to up to a 30% market share in three years, as Sergio Zyman, Coca-Cola's then senior vice president and chief marketing officer, told The New York Times in 1994.

As a solution, it introduced Fruitopia — to compete with the other brands. "There's no question Fruitopia is very much of a me-too," Emanuel Goldman, a beverage industry analyst, told The New York Times. But as Tom Pirko, president of Bevmark, a category consulting firm based in California, told Supermarket News in 2003, Coke executives had a hunch that Fruitopia wouldn't stand a chance against Snapple. And it just so turned out they were right; Fruitopia couldn't sustain. In fact, as Pirko said, it shouldn't have been launched at all and was an "unnecessary product" (via Supermarket News).

Coke acquired Minute Maid in 1960, giving its customers the option to buy frozen concentrate orange juice cans and powdered orange juice, among other flavors. Three decades later, the brand's decision to add a new line of juice drinks — Fruitopia — within a company that already had a brand for juices — Minute Maid — failed. Fruitopia folded in less than 10 years, and some of its flavors were shifted into Minute Maid's line-up, per Supermarket News.

Though it's clear by now that there were many reasons for Fruitopia being a flop, a surprising one is that it was competing for attention within its own parent company. Ray Crockett, a spokesman for Coke in 2003, told Supermarket News, "We believe the Minute Maid brand has more staying power." Fair enough. Minute Maid had stood the test of time since 1945 when it was introduced as a possible option to keep soldiers hydrated during World War II (via Minute Maid) and was eager to expand beyond orange juice that it was most known for at the time. 

Soon after Fruitopia was history, Coke juiced up the Minute Maid line with flavors such as Strawberry Passion, Tropical Citrus, Berry Kiwi, Raspberry Lemonade, and a limeade drink called Limonada.

Fruitopia couldn't have had world dominance in the fruit juice industry even if it had rolled out the tastiest of flavors. For, in one case, it wasn't what was inside the bottle but what was outside of it that limited which markets it could reach. 

Turns out Fruitopia was not as uniquely sounding a name as Coca-Cola probably thought it was. When the company took its juice line to the shores of Greece and tried to trademark the name, a popular Greek children's book author, Eugene Trivizas, faced off the beverage behemoth in court, per The Independent. Trivizas, who had penned over 100 books and earned quite a name in Greece by that time, couldn't allow someone else, even if it was a goliath of a company, to put a trademark on Fruitopia — the imaginary place where his popular stories were set.

Finally, it came down to whether the author's characters such as Bitter Lemon and Sweet Pea that Greek kids had read and loved would win the battle against a beverage that was trying hard to build a fan base. Ultimately in 2003, the court ruled in Trivizas' favor, and Coke had to withdraw its trademark request. 

And since then, for the Greek, Fruitopia remains not a drink, but the land where Grapes of Wrath and Spill the Bean have their adventures.