Life Savers Soda Is The Discontinued '80s Drink You Should Be Grateful You Never Got To Try
The early 1980s and '90s were a wild time for soft drinks. So many weird and wonderful beverages were launched and discontinued, from the nostalgic Mountain Dew competitor Surge to the mystic-themed Fruitopia juices that ruled the '90s. One you may not remember is Life Savers soda. Yes, like the hard candy.
Nabisco, the makers of Life Savers, launched a line of fruit-flavored soda in 1981 to provide the masses with a drinkable version of the candy. The can echoed the iconic striped Life Savers packaging and like the candy, the soda came in five original flavors: fruit punch, grape, lime, pineapple, and orange.
In a world where flavored seltzers like LaCroix are the norm, chugging the equivalent of liquid sugar seems unconscionable today. But the folks at Life Savers thought they had a sure thing. After all, soda was ridiculously popular in the 1980s (the Chicago Tribune reported in 1987 that people were drinking more soda than water). But despite doing well in taste tests, Life Savers soda didn't take off, most likely because it tasted horrible.
Why you shouldn't be sad you missed out on this discontinued soda.
According to an eponymouys Reddit thread, Life Savers soda tasted overly sugary, while other sources claimed that not only the taste but the color lacked appeal. Either way, soda drinkers weren't buying it. Life Savers soda was promptly pulled in 1982 after only a year on the shelf.
This wasn't the first time Life Savers branched out into new products with embarrassing results. In the early 1990s, the brand released Life Savers Holes, small hard candies meant to signify the missing middle of a Life Savers candy (think of them like the candy version of a Tim Hortons Timbit), only to have it discontinued for an unfortunate reason: The packaging's plastic cap was cited as a choking hazard.
Seemingly determined to deliver on providing Life Savers fans with candy in beverage form, the brand launched Life Savers Squeezit in 1995. It was sold in a plastic squeezable bottle and was available in watermelon, blue raspberry, and the vaguely titled "tropical fruit." This second attempt at a soft drink was part of the General Mills line of Squeezit beverages, known for being super-sweet and providing 100% of your daily sugar intake. Whereas the original Life Savers soda was fizzy, the Squeezit variety wasn't carbonated, which somehow seemed worse, like you'd be drinking syrup. Unsurprisingly, it, too, was discontinued.
At the end of the day, the inspiration for Life Savers soft drinks — drinkable candy — was its downfall. As it turns out, people prefer to consume their favorite candy the old-fashioned way: in solid form.