Fanta has its roots in Germany during WWII, so the Nazi association is something that's tough to deny. Dive in and hear all about how this beloved soda got its start as a non-orange, bad-tasting fizzy drink.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
What is the connection between Fanta and Nazi Germany?
But that's not to say it wasn't a huge hit. It was a big seller. And not only that, it instilled like a kind of national pride among Germans. Like, look at how resourceful we are in the face of, you know, wartime scarcity. But have you tried this stuff?
Yeah, it was their own. They're like, we have Fanta and beer. And like, we're going to claim those and love those and drink those until we fall over. So he did, even though, like I said, he officially supposedly never joined the Nazi party. He did work very closely with the Nazi party because he needed their help. He needed their help making sure that production continued.
And, you know, the cooperation with the Nazis was a key part of that. But that was able to keep the doors open, at least. Officially, Coca-Cola in April of 1955, post-war, said, why don't we rejigger Fanta and make it taste good? And we've got the name. We have it copyrighted, and it's already sort of got a little bit of a cred, at least in Europe.
So let's just keep the name, and hopefully no one will remember the Nazi ties.
Yeah. But also, so this name, just the name, right? They could have come up with anything else. But just the name has Nazi ties, like you said. It was created in and for Nazi Germany. And it was also made from apple pulp and beet sugar and whey. Why would you use that? I would think you would want to do the exact opposite and bury that name like it was a banner with the Coke logo and a swastika.
But instead, they just went with it and they introduced it in Italy first as this the version we know now, this orange soda version in Italy was like, yeah, it's pretty good. Let's go with that. And they started to export it, finally made it into the United States in 1958, which was, I think, three years after they reintroduced it in Italy.
Yeah, I think what the deal was is it wasn't widely known outside of Germany. So it's not like the word Fanta had some negative connotation all over the world. And the Germans loved it. So it actually had a positive connotation in at least one market. So, yeah, I get it. I mean, maybe it would have been a good PR move to change it because it's a Nazi thing.
But I don't think it was like some otherwise tainted name.
I see. I see what you mean. And they were like, I'm sure people just forget about it anyway within a year or two. Anybody who even knows about it will never come out.
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