Sunday, August 21, 2005

This will ensure...


That Sandy gets to Japan as soon as possible.

Meiji curls and Fanta grape soda wait for her here!

[In special commemorative packaging! What it's commemorating I'm not entirely sure, but it seems awfully exciting, don't you think?]

Her cravings for said items should ensure her rapid disembarkation from the U.S.

**Little known Fanta fact!** [or maybe not so little known...]

Fanta's reputation as Nazi-cola is, to some degree, a matter of interpretation...

From the Coke Nazi Advert Challenge:

"Coca Cola's German wing (Coca Cola GmbH) worked with the Nazis, developing Fanta (a leading Coke brand) specifically for the Third Reich Market... Coca Cola (GmbH) were the German bottlers for Coke under the leadership of the CEO Max Keith (pronounced Kite)... As Max Keith supplies of Coke dwindled in 1941 he gave his last batches to Nazi soldiers.

After the US entered the war in 1941 Max Keith couldn't get Coca Cola syrup from America to make Coke, Keith invented a new drink out of the ingredients he had available to him and made it specifically for the Nazi market and the Third Reich. The drink was called Fanta. In 1943 alone he sold 3 million cases of Fanta in the Nazi empire.

Mark Prendergrast "In March of 1938, as Hitler's troops stormed across the Austrian border in the Anschluss, Max Keith convened the ninth annual concessionaire convention, with 1,500 people in attendance. Behind the main table, a huge banner proclaimed in German,"Coca -Cola is the world-famous trademark for the unique product of Coca-Cola GmbH" Directly below, three gigantic swastikas stood out, black on red. At the main table, Max Keith sat surrounded by his deputies, another swastika draped in front of him...The meeting closed with a "ceremonial pledge to Coca-Cola and a ringing three-fold "Seig-Heil" to Hitler.""

But, according to Snopes.com:

"Until the end of the war, Coca-Cola executives in Atlanta did not know if Keith was working for the company or for the Nazis, because communication with him was impossible. Their misgivings aside, Keith was safeguarding Coca-Cola interests and people during that period of no contact. It was thanks largely to his efforts that Coca-Cola was able to re-establish production in Germany virtually immediately after World War II.

According to a report prepared by an investigator commissioned by Coca-Cola to examine Max Keith's actions during that unsupervised period, Keith had never been a Nazi, even though he'd been repeatedly pressured to become one and indeed had endured hardships because of his refusal. He also could have made a fortune for himself by bottling and selling Fanta under his own name. Instead, in the face of having to work for the German government, he kept the Coca-Cola plants in Germany running and various Coca-Cola men alive throughout the war. At the end of the conflict, he welcomed the Coca-Cola company back to its German operations and handed over both the profits from the war years and the new soft drink.

So where does all this leave the question of who or what invented Fanta and why? The truth is simple, even if it doesn't run trippingly off the tongue: Fanta was the creation of a German-born Coca-Cola man who was acting without direction from Atlanta. This man wasn't a Nazi, nor did he invent the drink at the direction of the Third Reich. Rather, in an effort to preserve Coca-Cola company assets and protect its people by way of keeping local plants operating, he formulated a new soft drink when it became impossible to produce the company's flagship product.

Fanta is still a Coca-Cola product, and today it comes in seventy different flavors (though only some are available within each of the 188 countries it is sold in)."

So see, it wasn't Nazi-cola, it was just cola marketed to Nazis!

See!

Completely different!

2 comments:

  1. Ugh, you left out the roll of cash...if you want me to get out there, you need to have Fanta grape, Meiji curls and a big fat roll of cash. And not that fake money stuff you have for your classes. Let me see the roll of 10,000 yen notes. Don't pull a Jr. either...10,000 yen note on the outside and tissue paper on the inside...I'll be looking! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's great to see you two focusing on the important part of a marriage...a big fat wad of cash. I love it! Just kidding!!

    Maybe the wad of cash was implied?!

    jm

    ReplyDelete