CANNING STUNT

So, Old Jamaica is saying goodbye… I said goodbye to the ginger favourite back in 2018 when the UK recipe introduced sucralose in response to the Sugar Tax. Ditto - for me the greater loss - grapefruit classic Ting. If you wanted the former sugar-only recipe, you had to go grey import from Jamaica or elsewhere.

https://youtu.be/_ujXZ0A1nA4?si=4lHHZB8-WqOUjEKz

The UK fizzy drinks market is competitive. Whilst there are a number of companies producing full sugar drinks, they have positioned themselves as more exclusive experiences. If you want 100%, you have to pay the tax and then some. Let them eat cack. At the school kid in a corner shop end of the market, you have to sup up your sucralose. The only drink to have resisted and kept full sugar with minimum price bump is Coke.

See also the UK supermarket meal deal. A sandwich, a drink and a snack for £5 or less. What a bargain! Well, it just makes the sandwiches, snacks and drinks very expensive if you want them separately. This is a huge market, but one that has taken a significant hit with the decline in office based work over working from home. Surely there’s no way Father Coke would be left behind by its children Zero and Diet!?! But many fast food menus these days no longer offer the sugar original. Soft drinks have no concept of filial piety.

I used to work at a business that was part sponsored by Hendrick’s Gin. They’d ship us a few cases every month so we could serve it at openings and such. It wasn’t long after the brand’s launch and it marked a coming boom (read glut) of boutique gins. Every canute in the country was soon enough producing their own take on the spirit. It’s a very cheap one to produce compared to whisky or similar. Not that you’d notice with the price.

But Schweppes and others had also introduced sweeteners into their tonic water. I’d get Waitrose own brand as that was one of the few still holding out. Euro Schweppes was sugar only. Not so the UK edition. This was some years before the tax. Now, you have to shell out for boutique tonic water to go with your boutique gin and you can get charged crazy prices for what should be a drink as cheap as chips and have the masses rolling in the gutters. This is what powers revolutions. If you want it. This summer’s race riots were as much a mix of sun, cheap cocaine and a pound a can.

Ice cold, you don’t taste sucralose so much, but at room temperature, grhhgghg. But there’s a generation raised on a broad spectrum of artificial sweeteners. For many, that is the taste of sweetness. Palettes have adjusted.

Is Old Jamaica really going? The campaign reads like it’s got a reveal in store for us. The reference to the Ozzy farewell tour of 1992 which actually carried on until 2018. The shelf stacker in the video claims it’s been 25 years, but the drink’s launch is more like 1988 and the Second Summer of Love than hoary old metal. Aren’t we all worn out by these attempts to gain attention and traction? Oh, actually, haha, we’re not really going at all. Naff off.

The idea of “Old Jamaica” is nostalgic for people of a certain generation like me. It’s Bournville rum and raisin, Spanish Gold shredded coconut tobacco, Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe on tv during the school holidays. It’s basically pirates. It’s sweetness that I’m thinking of…

https://youtu.be/JWsRz3TJDEY?si=zdGsjmcn0merUyrK

So there’ll probably still be Old Jamaica, but it will have been murdered by its children for a rebrand or relaunch. It just makes me hate the brand even more following its abandonment and the loss of Rum/Wray and Ting.

NOTE: If you fancy drinking fizzy drinks in the UK at a reasonable price point that are still full sugar in the UK, I’d suggest seeking out the Turkish brands. See also South East Asia. Mainland Europe is slowly capitulating to the sweetener style. There are some great Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean sugar only soft drinks but the import costs on those put them at the higher end. African soft drinks, if you can find them, are the dog’s bollocks.