Why Fans Blame Fruitopia For The Demise Of Five Alive In The United States

Most Gen Xers will recall snacks from the 1980s that are now such a distant memory, one might question whether they really existed or if they imagined them. The same applies to popular drinks that faded from fridges sometime during the '90s.

One such beverage was Five Alive — a Minute Maid fruit juice launched by Coca-Cola in 1979 — that was a lunchbox staple for countless Reagan-era kids and teens. You'll often see nostalgic posts on social media, with folks asking who remembers the citrus-based drink. There's never a shortage of affirming replies, either — plenty of commenters mention how much they loved Five Alive as a child. Some even recall buying the juice as a tube of frozen concentrate, as it was cheaper than the liquid form. However, Five Alive seemed to disappear from American grocery stores around the middle of the '90s. It's still not entirely clear why this happened, but we can take a reasonable guess.

Consumer tastes change, and by the start of the 1990s, people were wanting more modern products: trendy clothes, trendy music, trendy drinks. In a bid to match these demands, the Coca-Cola Company launched Fruitopia under its Minute Maid brand in 1994 — a new juice with funky flavor names and quirky branding. To guarantee success, the company also poured a whopping $30 million into marketing. Although Five Alive and Fruitopia weren't exactly the same drink, there was definitely some crossover, especially in terms of the target audience. As a result, some fans speculate that Five Alive was purposely phased out by Coke to make room for the shiny new drink in town.

While Coca-Cola never gave an official reason for why Five Alive was discontinued, a browse of nostalgic social media threads makes one thing clear — there was a relatively definitive switchover point in the '90s when Fruitopia took Five Alive's crown. In part, this was likely due to a new demand for more wholesome, "New Age" drinks, and while Fruitopia wasn't exactly what you'd call healthy, it was pushed as a more natural beverage than soda.

Fruitopia was also made available in McDonald's restaurants, and name-dropped by Stephen Hawking in his cameo on "The Simpsons." By the turn of the millennium, nobody was talking about Five Alive anymore. Interestingly, most folks who were familiar with both products claim that while they remember Fruitopia more from a cultural perspective, Five Alive was actually the superior drink. Ironically, Fruitopia only survived until 2003, when the brand was discontinued, and a handful of flavors were rolled into the Minute Maid range.

But we've only been talking about the United States. Both drinks are alive and well in other parts of the world, and you don't have to look far to see them thriving. Five Alive and Fruitopia remain staples in Canada, and the latter is still available in McDonald's there to this day. Five Alive was also launched in Nigeria in 2003 (as 5Alive), and it's popular enough that Coca-Cola continues to release new flavors. But if you are craving a juicy blast from the past, you don't even need to leave the house, as you can still order cartons of Five Alive on Amazon.