How was Fanta accepted

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Sun Jul 06, 2003 6:07 pm

I know this maybe is a weird question, but I was wondering, how Fanta
was liked and accepted as compensation for Coca Cola.

I know, that Coke was quite popular in Germany during and before the war, but how was this accepted by the governmet, or didn´t they bother?

Weird question, but stil interesting.

Regards

Danny

Jason Pipes · Post by **Jason Pipes** » Sun Jul 06, 2003 8:28 pm

Not a weird question at all! Very interesting. I had no idea that Fanta was created as a replacement for Coke during wartime in Germany. That's really interesting to learn!

Rohrbach · Post by **Rohrbach** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 5:06 am

Hi,

FANTA is short for fantasie. When trying to find a name for the new product, Max Keith, head of Coca Cola GmbH during the nazi years, went to his employees asking for suggestions and told them to let their fantasy run wild. Somebody hit on FANTA.

The coke made in Germany was made with all local ingredients except for two that seems to have made coke uniquely coke. They were imported from the US. When war broke out Max Keith realized that there would be disruptions or a complete loss of supply of the ingredients. He put company chemists to work coming up with an alternative drink that could be made on a war-time economy. The chemists came up with a fruit flavored drink made from the left overs of other food industries. The FANTA mix varied a lot depending on the availability of fruit from Italy.

Something like 3 million cases were sold in 1943. Instead of drinking it, many people added it to their cooking because of the war-time shortages of sugar. FANTA contained beet sugar.

Rohrbach

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 12:42 pm

Thanks for your help ! ! !

Still looking for a picture of german army personell (W-SS would be amazing

) drinking coke or even Fanta.

@ Jason: amazing, isn´t it, the story behind Fanta.
Who knows what kind of secrets Sprite might have

Regards

Danny

John W. Howard · Post by **John W. Howard** » Mon Jul 07, 2003 11:00 pm

Hello Gentlemen:
Was Fanta sold here in the United States in the 60's and 70's? If I remember correctly it was, but I could be wrong.

croat · Post by **croat** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 10:55 am

Fanta is still sold in Canada to this day, and is one of my personal favourite beverages. Not sure if it is still on the market in the US, but I presume it is.

Jason Pipes · Post by **Jason Pipes** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 11:07 am

Question - in poking around for into about Fanta I found repeated mention that it was developed and released in the late 50s, early 60s. Any thoughts?

Rohrbach · Post by **Rohrbach** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 5:50 pm

Hi Jason,

I think what happened is this. When the American military and the accompanying American Technical Observers arrived in Germany in 1945 they took over what was left of the coke bottling plants. There had been 43 of them and they were all bombed out. The Americans found Max Keith still bottling Fanta from the remains of a plant. He offered to help the Americans get coke running again. Although Keith was a hero with coke's hq in Atlanta, the American authorities in Germany refused Keith's offer because of his affiliation with the old regime and the new policy of de-nazification. They also refused to give Keith any coke syrup and for awhile would not allow him to produce Fanta. However, the Americans gave in early on and let Keith produce Fanta. They set up one plant. The Americans used German workers to produce coke for the GIs in half the plant and Keith produced Fanta for the Germans in the other half. Keith ran into a few problems. In the post-war economy he couldn't find enough sugar or fruit to continue production and the German population was too poor to buy such luxuries. I think Fanta went out of production for awhile. In the meantime Keith did some wheeling and dealing and ended up getting control of coke again in Germany. He started producing German coke again for Germans in 1949.

During the war Keith registered Fanta's trademark in a few countries allied with Germany. Somehow he was able to maintain ownership of the trademark in those countries. By the mid-50s, coke was hitting a sales slump in the world market. Vendors couldn't make it on coke sales alone. The company tried to solve the problem by expanding the range of soda flavors. They got Keith's permission to use the trademark and Fanta orange was introduced to the world starting with Italy in 1955. Fanta was test marketed in the US beginning in 1958.

Rohrbach

Jason Pipes · Post by **Jason Pipes** » Tue Jul 08, 2003 6:01 pm

Again, very interesting indeed! So, the sources I've found that mentioned Fanta launching in the 50's and 60's are more-or-less glossing over the WWII connection.

Your information is very detailed, what resources did you gather this info from, if I might ask?

Thanks for posting!

John W. Howard · Post by **John W. Howard** » Wed Jul 09, 2003 12:20 am

Thanks gentlemen for this interesting thread!!! Who would have thought to find a thread about soft-drinks under the heading of "General German Military Discussion"? I love it!!!

Arne · Post by **Arne** » Wed Jul 09, 2003 3:05 am

Anyhow, there where also a cola softdrink called "Afri-Cola" which was an alternative for nationlalists who don't even wanted to drink "enemy cola" (like today with the islamic "Mecca-Cola").
This brand was very succesfull also and still is.

http://www.afri-cola.com/

Check out the company history.

Rohrbach · Post by **Rohrbach** » Wed Jul 09, 2003 4:15 am

Hi,

The information came mostly from For God, Country, and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergrast. I also found info on the web using key words like Keith, Coke, Fanta, etc.

Jason, I'm not so sure the authors of what you read were trying to gloss things over so much as they just didn't think to go further back. When Fanta came back in the '50s I think the marketing campaign probably made it seem like it was something brand new instead of something brushed up and reintroduced.

One other factoid that you might be interested in is that the German supply of coke ran out by the end of 1942. In the last months of supply Keith largely succeeded in reserving it for soldiers in the hosptials. After '42 the consumption of coke by soldiers of the Wehrmacht was limited to what they could capture from the enemy. I wonder if they ever took any from Ivan.

Rohrbach

xavier · Post by **xavier** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 4:33 pm

fanta is still available here (mexiko) and is produced and botteld byt "the coca-cola company" as a matter of fact, I jsut drank two bottles today in the morning...

not orange, not cola like flavor either, but sweet, more like vainilla with a twist, and with less gas too.

best regards

Sebastian Pye · Post by **Sebastian Pye** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 6:11 am

I havent seen waffen ss men drinking coke but ive seen film footage of streetfighting with a large, visible coca cola logo on a building. At least something.

2311Marine · Post by **2311Marine** » Fri Jul 18, 2003 9:07 am

I know FANTA is sold in Kuwait to this day.