Soda Shop Science: 10 1960s Soft‑Drink Flavors That Disappeared Overnight

Summer afternoons at the corner fountain once fizzed with experimentation. Bottlers, emboldened by diet trends, citrus crazes, and space‑age chemistry, rolled out new flavors faster than teenagers could feed dimes into jukeboxes. Some became timeless classics; others sparked brief stampedes before vanishing from coolers and memory. Their labels promised waistline miracles, grapefruit tangs, or psychedelic colors—yet supply chains, shifting sweetener laws, and limp sales doomed them to collectible‑bottle auctions. Revisiting these lost elixirs is more than nostalgia; it’s a crash course in mid‑century marketing gambles and America’s restless palate. From cannily rebranded diet colas to caffeineless lemon‑lime rivals, here are ten sips the 1960s served, only to snatch back before the decade closed.

Patio Diet Cola

PepsiCo’s first sugar‑free cola hit test markets in 1963 under the Patio banner, courting calorie counters who’d flocked to Diet Rite. Within a year executives re‑christened it Diet Pepsi, making Patio’s cola flavor one of the quickest rebrands in soft‑drink history. Early cans featuring sun‑lounger graphics vanished almost overnight, turning surviving empties into prized antiques.

Like

Coca‑Cola answered the diet boom with Like, a cyclamate‑sweetened lemon‑lime soda launched in 1963. Advertised as “the drink you never have to diet from,” Like sold briskly until the FDA’s 1969 cyclamate ban forced its quiet exit. The company pivoted to Sprite’s zero‑calorie offshoots, leaving Like’s striped cans as flea‑market footnotes.

Wink Grapefruit Soda

Canada Dry’s 1965 “sassy” grapefruit‑apple blend positioned itself between Squirt and Fresca. Regional fans loved its biting fizz, but distribution never reached full national pull. Concentrate sales dwindled, and the final bottlers were told supplies were finished, stranding Wink loyalists with empty shelves and online cravings.

Teem Lemon‑Lime

Pepsi’s 1959 lemon‑lime gamble peaked mid‑sixties, fronting movie‑theater fountains and comic‑strip ads. Yet Teem couldn’t outshine Sprite or 7‑Up; U.S. production ended in 1984, later replaced by Slice and Sierra Mist. Nostalgists still unearth pull‑tab cans, but stateside bottling never returned.

Spur Cola

Canada Dry’s cola experiment lingered into the early 1960s after a late‑’40s debut, touting a smoother, less acidic bite. Super‑market shelf wars proved brutal, and Spur disappeared before the British Invasion hit radio. A brief 1980s revival fizzled fast, making original 12‑ounce bottles a collector’s quest.

Upper 10

Royal Crown’s caffeine‑free lemon‑lime soda dated to 1933 but still poured strongly in the sixties, pitched as the “Uncola before the Uncola.” Once RC merged with a larger beverage group, bottlers phased it out in favor of sibling 7‑Up. U.S. cans ceased by the 2000s, though fountain whispers persist overseas.

Schweppes Bitter Lemon

Imported ads featuring “Schweppervescence” made Bitter Lemon the sophisticated choice for gin or solo sipping. American palates shifted sweeter, and by the late 1970s most domestic bottlers dropped the quinine‑laced blend. Today it survives mainly as an import, relegating the U.S. recipe to cocktail‑book nostalgia.

No‑Cal

Brooklyn chemists launched No‑Cal in 1952, but its crisp fruit flavors—especially black cherry—hit nationwide vending machines in the early ’60s. The brand’s health‑forward ads featured Broadway starlets before cyclamate controversies and intense diet‑soda competition eroded shelf space. By the mid‑1970s, No‑Cal slipped quietly into beverage history.

Diet Rite Cola

Diet Rite, introduced by Royal Crown in 1962, dominated early diet‑cola charts and spurred rivals to act. But formula tweaks, saccharin warnings, and limited distribution pushed Diet Rite out of mainstream coolers. Though a niche version lingered for decades, its original cinnamon‑hinted recipe is gone for good.

TaB

Coca‑Cola’s hot‑pink can debuted in 1963 and became shorthand for ’60s diet culture. Saccharin sagas and aspartame rivals shrank its market share, yet die‑hard fans kept production alive until 2020, when Coke finally pulled the plug. The original saccharin‑sweetened flavor, however, vanished decades earlier, leaving only memorabilia—and petitions—behind.