Fanta Bottle Magic

Fanta Bottle Magic

Fanta is the famous orange flavoured fizzy drink and the favourite soft drink of my teenage years. I never saw nor had it in England until I went to Nigeria to live in the mid-1970s, I had preferred orange squash over here. Teenagers often drank Fanta as a combo while they nibbled malted biscuits. Together, the combo was a tasty, affordable and enjoyable treat for youngsters who were dating or shared among friends. Girls seemed to like more.

This piece is not about fizzy drinks. But looks at a different sort of drink that is not soft. The drink in question is among the hardest strongest kinds around and how it is sold to drinkers.

Goscolene is a fancy name for ogogoro, a strong spirit drink made from distilling palm wine. Most stories about goscolene sound similar with the predictable humour, shock or disgust; the one I tell here is different in the way it is told and its focus.

People do not enjoy drinking beer from plastic containers. Bubbles on plastic do not feel right to the mouth as it does on glass. Kids do not mind but adults do. Thus, it must be from a glass tumbler or bottle for alcohol is an adult drink.

Through years of keen and casual observing, it’s easy to see that goscolene sells to retailers in large plastic jerry cans or tin drums. However, drinkers buy it retail in used glass containers or bottles. The most popular bottle retailers of goscolene measure and sell it in the green Schnapps bottles. You can buy a full 70cl or a half bottle measure. Also, you can opt for the smaller quarter measure bottle.

“Madam, give me one quarter” is a regular order of drinkers who intend to drink just a little. Don’t believe them.

A guy I once knew in the town Orerokpe named Ilorin, often swore, “Today I will drink only one quarter bottle,” the reality is one day he drank twenty-six quarters and lived.

I often wondered why sellers do not use the colourless Gordon Gin, White Horse Whisky, or bottles of other strong alcohols to sell goscolene. Beer bottles are used to sell palm wine but not goscolene. A lady who sells the stuff at a corner shop one day told me why in the Delta Steel Complex camp, Delta State, Nigeria.

She explained the square green Schnapps bottle of the Warri or Delta person has long been their favourite from colonial times. I guess the green bottle is a habit.  More so, it is popular among men who drink roots for fire power, another big seller.

Next, she said something else I had seen for years but without taking note. People who sit in or outside drinking shops prefer to drink goscolene sold in Fanta bottles. How did that pass me by? It was too obvious.

“Madam, give me one Fanta bottle there,” was far more common than “Madam, give me one quarter bottle, half bottle or one shot there.” And the buyers pronounce Fanta with affect like when you call a sweetheart’s name.

Curious? How do you explain that?

Although I was a big Gulder drinker, curiosity made me wonder why the Fanta bottle sells strong drink.

Whether it is the Fanta bottle’s shape, ribs or label, I have no clue. Yet, sellers of goscolene understand they sell more to customers when it is sold in Fanta bottles. It’s has become a simple enough sales trick. The seller pours the goscolene with a small funnel from a large container into the Fanta bottle while you wait. The drinking thus begins.

But no one drinks goscolene straight from the bottle as local customs forbid it. The 5cl shot glasses, ganas, that comes with the Schnapps bottles are the standard drinking vessel for all strong alcohol drunk in the land. Guynes! For over 30 years, it surprises me how the mere sight of a Fanta bottle and a shot glass can alter the mood of a buyer even before tasting the first shot. A Fanta bottle contains six shots enough to raise your mood high or even higher.

The surprise increases when I also notice that the Coke bottle measure, though the same 30cl is not done. Bottles of Pepsi, Miranda, Gold Spot, Sprite, Guarana and Schweppes are taboos for the same purpose. Others tried to sell it in brown malt bottles, but they fail. If it is goscolene, it must be the Fanta bottle or Schnapps bottle. And the Fanta bottle is the favourite.

I have asked a couple of elite marketers who specialise in product design to explain why the Fanta bottle rhymes so well with goscolene sales and drinking. Their answers were simple. No one can explain why people go with certain product designs. It just works well without reason. The reason may hide in plain sight.

The thing I would still like an explanation for this is the drink and Fanta bottle design originated in wartime Germany to replace Coca Cola to sell to its citizens. How is it that same design improves the sales of goscolene, a strong alcohol drink, by the millions of litres every year in a small corner of Africa decades later?

Fanta Bottle Magic, I do not understand but it is real and here to stay. I do not know if the newer bottle has the same effect.