For anyone coming to India a must have is the cola (soda) Thums Up that is how it is spelled. It is the great Indian cola drink, I carried a dozen cans to college in upstate New York so people could sample it, not everyone loved it but it had takers.
Presently owned by the Coca Cola company, they tried to put the brand to sleep but found that doing so would give rivals Pepsi a large market share. It is still probably the leading soft drink on the Indian market despite the best efforts of Coke & Pepsico.
Marketed as a macho, tough drink, some say it taste of betel it has some of the qualities of its target audience as well.
Get an ice cold one and then gulp it down quick and you will know what i mean. The extra fizz will glide down your throat and it'll hurt for a millisecond and what a wonderful hurt it is. In the early days the marketing was softer, more youth oriented (Happy Days are here again) from there it evolved into the more aggressive (Taste the Thunder) which is probably more apt.
Considering Indians have a palate that is used to aggressive, loud, heavy flavors, subtle things like Pepsi especially dont work the best, although considering the marketing spends of the two majors, Thums Up survives on popularity alone.
Many colas have come and go (Double Cola, Rola Cola, Campa Cola, Thrill, Crush) even with the presence of Pepsi & Coke, TP does a decent market share of roughly around 30%. Back in the mid 80's they distributed cricket based memorabilia the most popular of which was the flip books (Kapil bowling & Sunny batting)
Best enjoyed with slightly spicier items like Pav Bhaji, Samosas, Schezuan which really bring out the beast in the bottle.
For anyone travelling to India this is a must try.
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5 comments:
Gaurav,
Another memorable drink was Goldspot which has been dead for sometime now. As a kid, I used to love its very orangey taste which used to go well with street food like masala peanuts, bhel, etc.
Rajesh
Goldspot is dead. The drink itself was ok, dont find it substantialy different to Mirinda. I found the bottle more interesting to play with as a child.
Back in the day when we used to go to the suburbs we could see the gold spot factory with the giant gold spot bottle on top.
if you are interested, some old gold spot commercials can be viewed http://youtube.com/watch?v=1x5b77kw3fg
HELP...any place where i can find a list of all soft drinks available in Mumbai during the
80's?
i dont think there is a resource quite like that. google around and you can piece it together.
Try the usual suspects Thums Up, Thrill, Gold Spot, Limca, are the ones i can think of. Then you had Double Cola, Citra which came in the early 90's.
Nothing beats Mangola.
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