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Issue Date: July 11, 2004
A toast to the '90s
If "Seinfeld" and the Internet don't convince you that the '90s were an earth-shattering era that changed everything, perhaps you should consider the decade's bubbling beverage business. While most of us were caught up doing the "electric slide" and shouting "Whoomp! There it is!" drinks were being introduced on the market just about every week. A few that defined the times:
Frappuccino
Long ago, in a dark, forlorn time, coffee came in one size and was thought to be a cold-weather drink. Then an upscale coffee-bar juggernaut from Seattle introduced the Frappuccino. Its blend of coffee, ice, low-fat milk and sugar had us lining up at Starbucks on long summer days and learning beginner's Italian. So pause that cool-jazz CD, look up from your laptops for a minute, and raise your half-caf, no-whip grande to the biggest thing in coffee since Juan Valdez.
Crystal Pepsi
The clear soft drink might have been pretty to look at, but still there was something about a cola that looked like fizzy water that just freaked people out. May it live on forever as a trivia question, or an eBay novelty gift.
Snapple
Easier to guzzle than soda, more mature than Kool-Aid, Snapple was a safe compromise in every convenience store and gas station. And what variety! The bottler boasted its drinks were "made from the best stuff on Earth" -- who would have guessed that was water, sugar and juice concentrate? Still, the trivia on the underside of the cap proved addictive.
Zima
They told you it was an alcoholic beverage unlike any other. They told you it was a refreshing alternative to beer. They didn't tell you it tasted "zlightly zuspicious." Zima may have been a novelty in the alcohol market, but the translucent drink never quite took off. Here's to that special zomething no one could put a label on.
St. Ides
Around the time gangsta rap started coming outta Compton, Calif., St. Ides had the idea that malt liquor shouldn't be peddled with the velvet touch of Billy Dee Williams. A drink that gave you breath detectable across a crowded room and a headache until the middle of next week would be swigged on street corners in brown paper bags, not at candlelit tables. So St. Ides, the malt liquor so ghetto it later added a snarling Rottweiler to its logo, hired Ice Cube and Biggie Smalls to do commercials, which implied increased sexual potency with use of the product. So crack the 40-ouncer and pour a little on the block for the bad boy of beers.
-- Bryan Tucker and Craigh Barboza
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