Grapette

Grapette is a grape-flavored soft drink that was first produced and marketed in 1939 by Benjamin "Tyndle" Fooks. Grapette is now produced by Grapette International, and is marketed in the United States by Wal-Mart as part of its Sam's Choice line of soft drinks.

Development

Grapette was developed by Benjamin "Tyndle" Fooks when, while working as a traveling salesman selling a product known as "Fooks Flavors", he noticed the popularity of his grape flavor. From this, Fooks, dissatisfied with existing grape sodas on the market, sought to develop a grape soda that tasted the way he believed that a grape soda should taste. Over the course of two years and tens of thousands of taste tests, by 1939, he had developed a flavor that he believed was superior to all other grape sodas available at the time.

To name the drink, Fooks turned to Hubert Owen. Owen and an assistant ran a local contest to come up with a name, but this failed to produce a suitable name. Owen then traveled to Washington, D.C. in 1939 to search the trademark files of the United States Patent Office for a suitable name. Here, it was found that a man named Rube Goldstein owned a trademark for the name "Grapette", "Orangette", and "Lemonette". Further research determined that Goldstein owned a small bottling firm that produced a drink that used one of Fooks' grape flavors, called "Tiny", which it distributed in...
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