Snapple facts for kids
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| Type | Iced tea, juice drink, lemonade, water |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Keurig Dr Pepper |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Introduced | 1972 |
Snapple is a brand of tea and juice drinks which is owned by Keurig Dr Pepper, based in Plano, Texas, United States. The original producer of Snapple, a company that was known as Unadulterated Food Products, was founded in 1972. The brand achieved some fame due to various pop-culture references including television shows.
History
Snapple was founded by Leonard Marsh, Hyman Golden, and Arnold Greenberg in 1972 in Valley Stream, Long Island, New York. Their company, which was originally known as Unadulterated Food Products, was first conceived as a part-time venture to supply fruit juices to health food stores. Unsure if the business would succeed, Greenberg continued to run his health food store in Manhattan's East Village, while Leonard Marsh and his brother-in-law, Hyman Golden, operated a window washing business. In a 1989 interview with Crain's New York Business, Marsh admitted that when they launched the small business he knew "as much about juice as about making an atom bomb."
An early apple juice product led to the company's name, Snapple. Golden, Greenberg and Marsh had created a carbonated apple juice. One of the batches of apple juice fermented in the bottle, causing the bottle caps to fly off. The original name of that particular apple juice product, Snapple, a portmanteau derived from the words snappy and apple, became the new name for their beverage company. Thus the Snapple Beverage Corporation was born, beginning in the early 1980s. Snapple would not manufacture their first tea, lemon tea, until 1987.
As of 2016[update], there are many different types of Snapple: tea (multiple flavors, such as lemon, raspberry, and peach, all of which come in original and diet), juice drinks, lemonade, and bottled water. Snapple also comes in aluminum cans.
Snapple's brand slogan is "Made from the Best Stuff on Earth".
Snapple was known for a popular series of TV advertisements in the early 1990s featuring Wendy Kaufman (the "Snapple Lady") answering letters from Snapple fans. In an effort to counteract the Coke and Pepsi challenge commercials, Snapple began running a new line of advertisements in May 1992, which featured its trademark "Made from the best stuff on Earth" line in ads that spoofed earlier beer and sports drinks promotions; the ads received low marks from advertising industry observers. In addition, the company used its $15-million-a-year advertising budget to pay for a long-lived series of live radio commercials featuring controversial radio hosts Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh. At the end of the summer of 1992, Snapple conducted a five-week search for a new advertising agency that could better convey its corporate identity in preparation for a wider national push. Later that year, Snapple also signed tennis player Jennifer Capriati to endorse its products. By August 1992, Snapple had expanded its distribution to every major city in the United States and it signed new contracts with beverage distributors. The company owned no manufacturing facilities, but instead made agreements with more than 30 bottlers across the country. In this way, Snapple was able to keep its overhead low and its payroll short. The company administration consisted of just 80 employees, 50 of whom worked out of a modest office building on Long Island.
Thomas H. Lee, an American businessperson, financier and investor of Thomas H. Lee Partners (THL), acquired Snapple Beverages in 1992 on undisclosed terms. The three founders of Snapple, Leonard Marsh, Hyman Golden and Arnold Greenberg, said they would own about one-third of the new company and be involved in its management. Hellen Berry, vice president of the Beverage Marketing Corporation, a consultant in New York, estimated that Snapple, which had been for sale for more than a year and had $100 million in sales in 1991, sold for $140 million. Only eight months after buying the company, Lee took Snapple Beverages public and in 1994, only two years after the original acquisition, Lee sold the company to the Quaker Oats Company for $1.7 billion. Lee was estimated to have made $900 million for himself and his investors from the sale. Quaker Oats ran into problems and sold Snapple to Triarc in 1997 for $300 million. Triarc sold it to Cadbury Schweppes for $1.45 billion in September 2000. Snapple was spun off in May 2008 to its current owners.
Real Facts
Snapple is well known for printing interesting numbered List of Snapple "Real Fact" facts on the inside of their bottle caps. A list of these "Real Facts" is available on the company website.
Several of the facts on Snapple caps have been found to be outdated, incorrect or exaggerated.
| Fact # | Claim | Reality | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | Broccoli is the only vegetable that is also a flower. | There are other vegetables that are also flowers, such as cauliflower and artichoke. | False |
| 23 | The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monument. | The San Francisco cable cars are included in a group known as National Historic Landmarks rather than National Monuments, which are a different designation. There are many ships that are National Historic Landmarks, as well as a few roller coasters. | Exaggerated |
| 31 | The average human will eat an average of eight spiders a year while asleep. | This statistic is false and completely impossible, as noted by Scientific American. | False |
| 36 | A duck's quack does not echo. | This was tested by Snopes and MythBusters, both of which found that a duck's quack does echo but is hard to distinguish. | Exaggerated |
| 69 | Caller ID is illegal in California. | There is no law against Caller ID in the state, though there were lengthy debates about making it illegal in the early 1990s. | False |
| 77 | No piece of paper can be folded in half more than 7 times. | This myth was proven wrong by Britney Gallivan in 2002, when she managed 12 folds. In 2005, drawing on Gallivan's accomplishment, MythBusters folded a piece of paper 11 times. The piece of paper used in Mythbusters was an oversized piece of paper that was thinner than a standard 8.5" × 11" (21.59 × 27.94 cm) piece of paper. The wording of "piece of paper" is also a broad statement, as noted by MythBusters. | False |
| 89 | The average American walks 18,000 steps a day. | It was found that the average American only walks 5,117 steps a day. | Exaggerated |
| 114 | The oldest known animal was a tortoise, which lived to be 152 years old. | In June 2006 a tortoise named Harriet died at 175 years old. The oldest known animal to have lived was named Ming, a clam of the species Arctica islandica, who was killed by researchers at approximately 507 years old. | Outdated |
| 140 | Holland is the only country with a national dog. | Holland is a region within the Netherlands, but is not technically a country in its own right. The national dog of the Netherlands is the Keeshond, but other countries such as Mexico also have national dogs. | False |
| 146 | The smallest county in America is New York County, better known as Manhattan. | Manhattan is actually the second-smallest county by land area after Kalawao County, Hawaii. The smallest self-governing county is Arlington County, Virginia. | False |
| 162 | The temperature of the sun can reach up to 15 million degrees Fahrenheit. | The surface of the Sun can reach 6,000 degrees Celsius, or about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The core of the Sun though can reach 27 million degrees. | False |
| 163 | The first penny had the motto "Mind your own business". | The first pennies worldwide date back to the medieval era. The first official one-cent coin (known as a Fugio Cent) of the United States held the message "Mind Your Business". In 1793, the first one-cent coin was struck by the United States Mint. | Misleading |
| 744 | Polar bears can smell a seal from 20 miles away | According to Sea World, this distance is a much lower limit of about 1 km (0.6 miles). | Exaggerated |
| 761 | Owls are one of the only birds that can see the color blue | Birds in general have excellent color vision. Some are even able to see into the UV spectrum. | False |
| 793 | Broadway is one of the longest streets in the world. It is 150 miles long. | Broadway terminates 32 miles (51.5 km) from its Manhattan origin. It continues north of Sleepy Hollow, New York, as U.S. 9 and Albany Post Road. | Exaggerated |
| 794 | Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the continental United States, and Zabriskien [sic] Point, the lowest point in the United States, are less than eighty miles apart. | It is true that Mount Whitney is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, but the lowest point is Badwater Basin in Death Valley, which is 13 miles further than Zabriskie Point. In a nutshell, the lowest point is 84 miles from Mt. Whitney. | Partly true |
| 825 | Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing. | The average newborn's eyeball is 16 to 18 millimeters in diameter (axial length). The infant's eyeball grows slightly to approximately 19.5 millimeters and by age 3 to 23mm. The eyeball continues to grow, gradually, to a diameter of about 24–25 millimeters in adulthood. | Partly true |
| 853 | Hawaii has its own time zone. | Hawaii shares a time zone with the Aleutian Islands, though the population of the remaining islands is so small that 99.5% of people in Hawaii's time zone do live in Hawaii. | Partly True |
| 868 | Thomas Jefferson invented the coat hanger. | Claims that Thomas Jefferson invented the clothes hanger are unfounded, according to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello. The modern coat hanger has been patented over 200 times in the U.S. alone since the mid-1800s. | Inconclusive |
| 889 | The original Cinderella was Egyptian and wore fur slippers. | "Rhodopis" is considered the earliest known variant of the "Cinderella" story. In the story, Rhodopis is Greek and the slippers are consistently described as rose-gold rather than fur. While Charles Perrault's French re-telling of the story featured fur slippers, it is believed to be an urban legend that vair (fur) was mistranslated as verre (glass). | False |
| 904 | If done perfectly, any Rubik's Cube combination can be solved in 17 turns. | The minimum number of turns it takes to solve a Rubik's Cube is 20 in some cases. | False |
| 907 | Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors. | There is no evidence supporting the claim that dueling is legal anywhere in Paraguay. The U.S. Paraguayan consulate has, in fact, stated that dueling is illegal in the country. | Inconclusive |
| 921 | If you had 1 billion dollars and spent 1 thousand dollars a day, it would take you 2,749 years to spend it all. | When counting leap years, it would take you 2,738 years at 1 thousand dollars a day to spend 1 billion dollars. | Exaggerated |
| 975 | The letter J is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements. | This was true until 2012, when element 114 was officially renamed Flerovium from its initial placeholder name ununquadium. Now both J and Q are missing from the periodic table. | Outdated |
Snapple Theater Center
In 2007, Snapple opened the Snapple Theater Center on 50th Street and Broadway in the heart of New York City's Theater District. It has two theaters, one of which is a traditional theater, the other a thrust stage which can house plays. The center also includes a 40×50 ft rehearsal space which is available for rent. The theaters are considered off-Broadway because of their low seating capacities. The theater has since dropped the Snapple name and sponsorship and is simply known as The Theater Center.
Kosher certification
Most Snapple drinks do have a Kosher certification from the OK Kosher Agency. Exceptions include:
- Fruit Punch
- Grape
- Kiwi Lemon-lime
See also
