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In the sticky-sweet summer of '65, while Motown ruled the airwaves and revolution simmered in the streets, Royal Crown Company took their own shot at shaking up the establishment with a peculiar green firecracker called Kick soda.
Like a bolt of lightning in a bottle, this tangy upstart aimed to capture the restless spirit of a generation that was tired of playing by the rules, offering a citrus jolt that promised to hit you like a mule's hindquarters and wake you up to the changing times.
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Eager to claim market share in the burgeoning citrus soda segment in the 1960s, the Royal Crown Company concocted its own offering—a drink called Kick—to take on the dominant brands Mountain Dew and Mello Yello sold by arch rivals PepsiCo and Coca-Cola.
Formulating a beverage with a bracingly tart citrus flavor and caffeinated bite, Royal Crown strategically positioned scrappy upstart Kick to appeal to thrill-seeking youth and thus carve out a niche amid the marketing clout and widespread availability enjoyed by the soda giants' competing citrus products.
Though Kick ultimately proved no match for the commercial juggernauts of Mountain Dew and Mello Yello, its launch exemplified Royal Crown's pluck and ingenuity to expand beyond traditional colas into more novel flavors in an increasingly competitive, brand-driven beverage marketplace.
When Royal Crown debuted Kick in the 1960s, its eccentric advertising used the simile of a kick from the hind legs of a mule to describe the soda’s intense citrus flavor, billing it “Like a Mule.”
Punning playfully on the word “kick,” this far-fetched metaphor at once tapped into the playful, boundary pushing youth counterculture of the time, while also linking the drink's bracingly tart taste to a whimsical but memorable image of a mule delivering a stinging kick—a sensory impression intended to resonate viscerally with thrill-seeking soda drinkers.
Such offbeat marketing, riffing on the beverage’s name coupled with the mule simile, illuminated advertisers’ savvy yet sometimes silly attempts at the mid-20th century dawn of lifestyle branding to imbue new products with intrigue.
Hoping to attract nonconformist consumers often overlooked by major brands' marketing at the time, Royal Crown's new citrus soda Kick deliberately targeted niche demographics of extreme sports aficionados, punk rock devotees, and the fledgling video gamer crowd when it launched in 1965.
By actively seeking these young outsider sets enamored with testing boundaries and immersed in counterculture, the company astutely aimed to establish Kick as the beverage of choice for those who fancied themselves bold, convention-defying rule-breakers.
Through association with punk's brash ethos and the thrill-seeking adrenaline rush of risky physical feats, Kick strived to brand itself as the deliciously tart, buzz-inducing soda for daring misfits and radicals seeking their own paths—a calculated branding maneuver to carve out market share outside mainstream soda marketing.
Kick's niche targeting foreshadowed beverage makers' movement toward lifestyle branding catering to consumers' self-images rather than just promoting flavor.
The once-promising upstart citrus soda Kick, which parent company Royal Crown positioned as the quintessential “alternative” drink of counterculture defiance when it burst onto the consumer beverage scene in 1965, faced an abrupt end to its already declining market relevance when industry giant Cadbury Schweppes fully acquired Royal Crown in 2002.
Having bought the flailing Royal Crown company, Cadbury Schweppes swiftly made the calculated business decision to cease production of the niche Kick soda brand altogether by 2003, ultimately sounding the death knell for the struggling fringe brand in its simmering battle against dominant rivals Coca-Cola and Pepsi on the pop landscape.
Though Kick’s nonconformist ethos briefly resonated in the context of 1960s-era cultural upheaval, its discontinuation at the hands of a global conglomerate almost 40 years later underscored the immutable reality that anti-establishment branding could not shield small brands against consolidation of power in the ever-concentrating beverage industry.
Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the once-canceled citrus soda Kick emerged revived when nostalgic brand rights holder Old Towne Beverages in Detroit rebooted production in partnership with local bottling outfit Michigan Bottling Company.
Resurrected in limited runs for niche distribution through Garden Foods starting in 2023, the previously discontinued 1960s drink beloved by punks and gamers saw fresh life just over a decade after soda titan Cadbury Schweppes axed the lagging brand upon acquiring Kick's parent company in the early 2000s.
By tapping into enduring cultural nostalgia and the artisanal boutique food movement, while also capitalizing on strengthened local pride in Historic Detroit amid the city’s ongoing rebirth, Old Towne shrewdly made Kick a symbol of renaissance for community and product alike after years left for dead.
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