Posted on 01/19/2021 1:38:30 PM PST by mylife
In the mid-1800s, a new beverage fad took over the United States and Europe. Coca wine was fortified wine infused with coca leaves, i.e., cocaine. According to The Drinks Business, the stimulating wine drink initially had the approval of everyone from U.S. presidents to Catholic popes. One such wine was made by a Civil War vet named John Pemberton, who had cooked up his "brain tonic" as a means to kick the nasty morphine habit he'd picked up after being injured in the war. His Pemberton's French Wine Coca also contained an extract of the African kola nut, which is chock-full of caffeine, just to give the cocaine a little kick.
However, by the end of the 19th century, some regulators in the United States began to have a problem with one of the drink's ingredients: the alcohol. Pemberton made his booze in Georgia, a state which presaged the national prohibition of alcohol with its own statewide ban a few decades earlier. So Pemberton took the alcohol out of his tonic and called it Coca-Cola, which he sold to soda fountains as a syrup to be mixed with mineral water. His original recipe had five ounces of coca leaves in each gallon of syrup, but that would be cut by 90 percent by 1891, and down to zero by the turn of the century. However, coca leaves are still part of the recipe to this day.
(Excerpt) Read more at grunge.com ...
Peripetchikoff : No formula, NO DEAL!
C.R. MacNamara : OK, NO DEAL!
Borodenko : We do not need you! If we want Coca-cola, we invent it ourselves!
C.R. MacNamara : Oh, yeah? In 1956 you flew a bottle of Coke to a secret laboratory in Sverdlosk. A dozen of your top chemists went nuts trying to analyze the ingredients. Right?
Mishkin : No comment!
C.R. MacNamara : And in 1958, you planted two undercover agents in Atlanta to steal the formula. And what happened? They both defected! And now they’re successful businessmen in Florida packaging instant borscht. Right?
Peripetchikoff : No comment!
C.R. MacNamara : Last year you put out a cockamamie imitation “Kremlin-kola!” You tried it out in the satellite countries, but even the Albanians wouldn’t drink it. They used it for SHEEP DIP! RIGHT?
Mishkin : No comment!
C.R. MacNamara : So either get down to business or get off the pot!
Peripetchikoff : My dear American friend, if we are to live together in peaceful coexistence, there must be a certain amount of give and take.
C.R. MacNamara : Oh, sure - we give and you take.
Peripetchikoff : What is the matter - you do not trust us?
C.R. MacNamara : No comment!
most don’t know that coca cola grew Coca with a Top Secret Agreement from the government in Hawaii.
Oh, brother. It’s no secret that extract from coca leaves is part of the formula.
Another idiot posting ...
Dr Pepper snuffed them
Look!
I caught one! :)
LOL My first thought, too. Did they end up getting a Pepsi outta the Coke machine?
Not sure if it’s still the case, but for a long time the Stepan Chemical Co. (ticker SCL) produced both medical-use cocaine AND the non-narcotic coca extract used in Coca-Cola. Who the hell knows if Coke is still doing that. The soda cans used to say “original formula,” but now they say “original taste” which suggests that they’re no longer adhering to the formula.
One of my all-time favorite movies.
the point is they still say it is.
Now I’m an RC and peanuts guy but coke on ice? dude, that’s good.
the colors then were yellow an red
the little pony bottle is funny cuz coke sold pony bottles and one of Pepsis major marketing moves was to sell the large bottle for the same price, mocking the pony bottle..
There’s a scene in the movie that always struck me as prescient. The East German son-in-law, attempting to prove his capitalistic credentials to his Southern in-laws, says something along the lines of “We must think beyond the six-pack. What about an eight-pack? Or twelve-pack!” lol
They flew planes of weapons to the Contras and flew back with coca leaves.
Yup. Stepan is adjacent to the company I work for and we share a couple common property lines. Razor wire topped fences and cameras all over.
We have cameras too, but they have had them for over 20 years. I guess they think coke heads will try to break into the place.
I’m old enough to remember those pony bottles coming out of the old rack stack Coke machines for 10 cents a shot........
Oh yeah, and they were ice cold.
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