2731: Sprite (Soda) Jun 12, 2024

 Coca-Cola has in its 137 years of operation acquired many brands, but it’s also started many. Fanta was famously created when wartime Germany was unable to import the cola syrup and is named for the German ‘Fantasie’ (imagination), but even the Sprite drink also has older origins than its initial 1961 launch. Nearly two decades before that, Coca-Cola’s mascot was Sprite Boy, who was a traditional sprite in the mythological sense, used for an ad campaign promoting the nickname “coke”, phased out in 1951. When they launched a new soda type to compete with 7-Up, they reused the name, but not the image, of this older mascot, likely harkening back to that, and perhaps sprites’ other connotation with high energy, hence ‘spritely’.