The product has been reformulated several times since its launch in 1929; in 2006, it underwent another reformulation, becoming "100% Natural" with five ingredients: "filtered carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, natural citric acid, natural flavors, natural potassium citrate"http://www.7up.com/7uptext/7upnutrition.asp
The origin of the 7 Up name is not clear. The most popular story is that its creator named the soft drink after seeing a cattle brand with the number "7" and the letter "u"http://www.dpsu.com/Brands/7UP/7UPFullHistory/tabid/148/Default.aspx. Other rumors suggest that the name reflects the drink's seven flavors and carbonation, that its creator came up with the name while playing dice, or that even it was the 7th large commercial lemonade brand that taste the same.
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Sugar-free 7 Up - Introduced in 1970 and renamed Diet 7 Up in 1979. The product has gone through a number of reformulations. In the 1980s, Diet 7 Up made the transition from the artificial sweetener, saccharin to aspartame. In 1998, Diet 7 Up was "flavor enhanced" along with its non-diet counterpart. Later, the sweetener acesulfame potassium was added to the mix to help mask the aspartame aftertaste. Finally, in 2005, Diet 7 Up switched to a blend of sucralose and ace-K.
Cherry 7 Up and Diet Cherry 7 Up were introduced in early 1987.
7 Up Ice Cola - A clear cola introduced in 1995 by PepsiCo for the international market. The product line failed and was discontinued.
7 Up Ice - Introduced into Europe and marketed only during the summer as it leaves a cold sensation as an aftertaste. In India, it was introduced as a limited edition Cola during the summer of 2005.
7 Up Raspberry / Clear Raspberry - Available in Brunei, was also available in Canada for the summer of 1991.
7 Up Light/free - A diet version available outside the USA. Produced by Pepsi, who hold the international rights.
7 Up Gold - During 1988, this spice-flavored variant was test-marketed in certain areas of the United States. It was never widely marketed.
7 Up Orange - Available outside of the USA from Pepsi.
7 Up Tropical / Tropical Splash
7 Up Cranberry Splash
7 Up Mint - Available in Saudi Arabia in 2002-2003. The flavor was unpopular and was discontinued. Many people likened the flavor to mouthwash.
7 Up Plus - Introduced in 2004, supplemented with calcium, vitamin C, real fruit juice and sweetened with Splenda, an artificial sweetener. Touted as a healthy alternative, it contains no caffeine and has only 2 carbohydrates per serving, as well as 5% apple juice, which is uncommon among American market carbonated beverages.
dnL - Introduced in 2002, this contained caffeine and green color, and was intended to compete with Mountain Dew. The name is derived from an inverted "7Up" logo.
Citrus 7 and Diet Citrus 7 - Contained 7 fruit flavors
Like Cola and Diet Like Cola
Advertising
According to the Dr Pepper/Seven Up website, the earliest advertising for 7 Up featured a winged logo; the ad described it as a "glorified drink" with "Seven natural flavors blended into a savory, flavory drink with a real wallop".
In 1967, a successful advertising campaign dubbed 7 Up the "uncola" and helped cause a major increase in sales by positioning the product as a "thirst-quenching alternative to colas".
A "No Caffeine" campaign started in 1982 was a response to growing consumer concern and confusion about caffeine in soft drinks. The campaign prompted the soft drink industry to produce new caffeine-free products.
The brand has been represented by mascots including Fido Dido and Cool Spot, a sunglasses-sporting red dot.
During the early 1980s, actor/choreographer Geoffrey Holder appeared in several commercials, tweaking soft drink rivals by holding a Kola nut in one hand and an "un-Cola nut" (a lemon or lime) in the other.
More recent advertising campaigns have challenged consumers with slogans such as "Are you an Un?", portraying 7 Up drinkers as rebellious non-conformists, and "Make 7 Up Yours", implying an aggressive double meaning by separating the slogan into "Make 7" and "Up Yours".
In 2005, 7 Up announced that it would be awarding one customer a free ticket to Space.
pH
Some people mistakenly believe that the name 7 Up comes from the fact that its pH is above 7.0 (neutral), though this is not the case; the pH of 7 Up is comparable to many other soft drinks. At a pH of 3.67http://www.21stcenturydental.com/smith/pH_drinks.htm, Diet 7 Up is less acidic than lemon juice (pH 2.3), vinegar (pH 2.9) or wine (pH 3.5)http://encarta.msn.com/media_461534810/pH_Scale_Some_Common_Solutions.html.
History
7 Up glass bottle
7 Up was created by Charles Leiper Grigg who launched his St. Louis-based company The Howdy Corporation in 1920. Grigg came up with the formula for a lemon lime soft drink in 1929. The product, originally named "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda", was launched two weeks before the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The product's name was soon changed to 7 Up.
7 Up, as its first name suggests, originally contained lithium citrate, a mood-stabilizing drug. It was one of a number of patent medicine products popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries; they made claims similar to today's health foods.
The Great Depression was just the beginning of the business challenges the product would face. In its early years, there were around 600 lemon-lime beverage brands being sold in the US. 7 Up was able to survive and become the market leader in the category by being one of the first to be nationally distributed as well as being marketed as more healthy than other soft drinks.
The success of 7 Up led Grigg to rename his company to The Seven Up Company in 1936.
Lithium citrate was removed from 7 Up's formula in 1950.
After establishing the category as more than a niche, major competitors set their sights on it such as The Coca-Cola Company with its Sprite brand introduced in 1961. Sprite would not challenge 7 Up's position seriously until the 1980s when Coke forced its major bottlers then distributing 7 Up to drop the beverage in deference to Sprite. 7 Up challenged Coke's actions in court as anti-competitive, a challenge they eventually losthttp://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=5th&navby=case&no=9510048cv0.
Philip Morris acquired The Seven Up Company in June 1978. Philip Morris sold the brand's U.S. operations in 1986 to a private investment group, which merged with Dr. Pepper Company and established Dallas, Texas as the headquarters of the combined company.
A can of 7-Up.
7 Up became dependent on Pepsi's bottlers for distribution during the 1990s, until PepsiCo launched its own serious entrant in the category with Sierra Mist in 2000. PepsiCo then adopted the previous Coca-Cola tactic and forced its bottlers to give up 7 Up for Sierra Mist, which most did by 2003.
The result is that in the United States, DPSU does not have a network of bottlers and distributors, so some of their products are frequently bottled under contract by independent Coca-Cola or Pepsi bottlers, though in some areas independent distributors exist, either by Cadbury-Schweppes, or by individual independent bottling plants. These bottlers often do not distribute their products much beyond major supermarket chains, so 7 Up can be difficult to find in smaller stores and vending machines.
In 1998, in the first formula change since lithium's removal, 7 Up was flavor-enhanced, without changing the sugar content or carbonation level.
In 2006 the product was re-formulated so that it could be marketed as being "100% Natural" in the United States. This was achieved by eliminating the preservative calcium disodium EDTA, and replacing sodium citrate with potassium citrate to reduce the beverage's sodium contenthttp://www.7up.com/7uptext/7upfaq.asp. This re-formulation contains no fruit juice and is still sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). HFCS is a cheaper, longer shelf-life substitute for cane or beet sugar and the result of a complex industrial process by which starch is extracted from corn and converted by acids or enzymes into glucose and fructose. The manufacturing process needed for HFCS has led some public health and special interest groups to challenge the ad campaign's "natural" claimshttp://cspinet.org/new/200605111.html.
Pop culture
When The Seven-Ups (1973) was filmed - all of the actors posed in front of a 7-Up delivery truck as part of a publicity stunt for advertising the film.
In 1983, as part of publicity for 7 Up in Mexico, the jingle on the spot was Kim Carnes' hit "Bette Davis Eyes" with the phrase "Alrededor del Mundo Seven Up" ("Around the World Seven Up") and the Pac-Man video game.
In the same year, it was exhibited in Chile, with the slogan "Seven Up, cristalina y refrescante" (Seven Up, crystalline and refreshing), with voice in off by Antonio Vodanovic, host of the famous, Song's International Festival of Viña del Mar.
The red spot for 7 Up has been an interim mascot for 7 Up. He had a video game spin-off called Cool Spot.
