After 50 years, Lilt, a soft drink known for its “totally tropical taste,” is being discontinued and rebranded. According to its owner, the Coca-Cola Company, it will now be known as Fanta Pineapple & Grapefruit as of Tuesday.
The company emphasized that the drink’s flavor and components wouldn’t change.
However, fans, many of whom seemed to associate Lilt with youthful memories, took to social media to express their disappointment.
“Fanta ‘Grapefruit & Pineapple’ … I’m still going to call it Lilt. Just like I still call the chewy sweets in paper Opal Fruits!” tweeted one.
“Farewell to Lilt,” tweeted another. “For some completely pointless reason they are rebranding it … Apparently nothing is allowed to be different these days.”
Lilt was introduced in 1975, and thanks in part to its advertising, it quickly became well-known in the UK.
In one late 1980s television commercial, a parody milkman known as the “Lilt Man” delivered Lilt on a Caribbean beach in a “Lilt float.”
Additionally, advertisements for the beverage in the 1990s starred Blanche Williams and Hazel Palmer, two Jamaican women who rose to fame as the “Lilt Ladies” in the media.
When the Fanta font was used in the redesign of the Lilt cans last year, some fans assumed something fishy was going on.
Lilt will no longer be sold under its current branding as of February 14th, according to Coca-Cola, which also announced the gradual introduction of Fanta Pineapple & Grapefruit bottles and cans throughout the UK.
“Our main priority with this announcement is to reassure Lilt’s loyal fan base that absolutely nothing has changed when it comes to the iconic taste of the drink they know and love,” Fanta brand manager Charlotte Walsham said. “It’s just got itself a new name.”
Only a small number of nations, including Ireland, Gibraltar, and the Seychelles, sold Lilt outside of the UK.
(Adapted from BBC.com)