The Snapple

In this episode, Sarah and The Shrub explore some fun history and facts surrounding everyone's favorite juicy, fruity, flavored-tea beverage with a pop: Snapple! Also, Drinking Dreams, and a scrumptious dessert (or breakfast!) themed shrub based on a classic.

This is not an official sponsorship of Snapple. No endorsements were made for the production of this episode.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapple

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/17/dining/the-snapple-deal-how-sweet-it-is.html?sec=health

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/snapple-rumor/

https://www.snapplecaps.com/real-facts/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/business/leonard-marsh-80-dies-a-founder-of-snapple.html?_r=1&

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Kaufman

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ig: @shrubbish_pod
email: shrubbishpodcast@gmail.com

While I want to bring levity to the table, this podcast does contain descriptions of substance abuse. If you or someone you know needs help, the SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) hotline is available 24/7 at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). 

Transcript

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Lick your lips and settle in. Life's a bumpy ride. Daily fresh-baked whores clamoring to get inside. There's so much rubbish out there, it kinda makes you think. Maybe I'll stay in today and sip a special drink. Hi, I'm Sarah McAfee. I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict, and this is Shrubbish. Another morning episode. It is morning, morning, and this is one of the first things I'm doing today. Um, but that's what it called for this week, so here we go. And I actually think, given the shrub that we're gonna have, um, that's kind of like a fun start to the day, because it's like one could have this food for breakfast if one was really feeling naughty. So uh that's the uh oh my god, could you imagine though? Could you imagine if if I said that and it was like an egg shrub? I wonder if you could do that. I don't think y you could, but I bet you could do like a shrub and then do like an egg. What do they do for like a gimlet or something? And then you had to do that, like the egg white situation. There are cocktails with egg whites, so I bet you could do a combo shrub, egg white situation, but there's no eggs here. No vinegar egg drink today. Um just me and some coffee and a shrub and a water, multiple beverages, and you, and we're here together. Um this is a light episode. There's just a lot going on out there uh in the world, and I was seeking something fun and light, and I hope that this serves a space for you to experience some fun lightness as well. Um, nothing heavy today. And let's get into this funny little topic. I just sort of like the thing that the first thing that popped into my mind when I was kind of like thinking about what are some other beverages that I'm curious about. And the first thing that popped into my mind was Snapple. So I decided to go down that avenue, and I'm glad I did, because I learned some fun facts. I'm always a little hesitant to do anything revolving around a brand. Um, I don't want to like shame people or put too much, you know, obviously this is not an endor an endorsement for Snapple or I'm not getting paid for this, um, and I don't really have like negative stuff to talk about. Uh so you know, I always err on the side of caution as a voice actor, like I don't want to get in trouble. Um, but hopefully we just all learn some fun facts about Snapple because it's actually kind of interesting. It's like a funny little history that reminds me a little bit of the okay soda episode, but not quite as extreme. That was hilarious. Listen, the beverage world prior to the year 2000 was wild. Wild. I mean, one could argue that it's even wilder now. We have we have four loco. But like and there's just like, I mean, there's, you know, a million, there's a million drinks. There's a million things in little cans that we can have. Uh but I just feel like the the like the vintage weird like quality of these products, and I guess it was because it was like a new thing. Um, like bottled beverages were kind of like a new exciting thing, and everyone was kinda trying to get in there and make a a cool logo and do interesting stuff. Uh now it's been done, and now we're just trying to make it more and make it weirder and make it healthier. So I feel like the magic is gone. Um, although for us addicts who love beverages and just can't get enough of anything, the consistent supply of oddly flavored, newly developed, various levels of carbonation, what have you, beverages is kind of fun. Uh tickles that part of our brain. So let's go back though to prior to that. Um Snapple was founded by um a company that originally was called the Unadulterated Food Products, which great name. The idea it was founded by these three guys, um, Leonard Marsh, Hyman Golden, and Arnold Greenberg, who were all, I think, friends from high school, these Jewish boys that lived in Brooklyn. They all went to the same high school, and I'm assuming that's they probably like grew up together. Um and they wanted to sell healthy drinks. So this was in it they started it in 1972. Um, it didn't really gain popularity until like the 90s. I don't really know that they knew they didn't know what they were doing. Like one of them sold eggs and one of them sold washed windows or something. Like they didn't have they weren't really in the like the health beverage sector. But also, I don't really think that there was like a health beverage sector. So these guys are definitely innovators and they had a great idea. Um they one of them had a health food store in the East Village, and they wanted to sell healthy drinks like out of that and then like sell it to other people. Um I also really didn't know that so much of this was about New York, which is kind of cool. I didn't realize that Snapple was so centered on New York, so that was exciting to learn. So yeah, they're they're trying to pedal these healthy fruit drinks to people. Um the original Snapple was an apple. Snapple apple. Uh I always think of it as Snapple as the teas, but the teas weren't actually introduced until 1987. How it got its name, though, is like they were trying to make an apple juice, because it didn't start as we're making Snapple, we were making a fruit drink, and then they made a an apple juice and accidentally carbonated it, which I so they just fermented it by accident. And the lid like popped off the can, flew, flew off the bottle. And so that was Snappy. Ooh, Snappy, Snappy Bottle, and then it's Apple, so that's how the name came to be Snapple, because of their first accident drink. So I think that they didn't really, they weren't really picking up steam, I guess, um, until the 90s. And one thing that changed was that they had I I don't really think feel like they knew their market exactly, but then in the 90s, they came up with these TV ads featuring the Snapple lady, um, which is a woman who actually worked for Snapple. Um, her name is Wendy Kaufman. She's also a New Yorker. Um the thing that they were looking for for this ad campaign was someone that was like a a cross between Oprah and Roseanne from Roseanne. And Wendy's white, but Wendy's definitely like uh gives that kind of vibe, that kind of energy. It's wild. Um but she like worked for them already in she was like answering fan mail letters. That can't be right. There can't be there couldn't be fan mail going to Snapple. No, it must just be like customer complaints or something. Why did I write fan mail? Um maybe it was, but I feel like that must have just been like the customer helpline, uh, except right writing it down. So she would respond to letters that people, the consumers wrote in as her job, and then she got hired to like be on a TV campaign where that she was also doing that. Like they would have these like fake people write in and she would be like, Hi, this is Snapple, and she was there and everyone was delighted by Wendy. Um, the Snapple lady, she has her own Wikipedia page. I love it. Great. And she's still alive, I think. Oh my god, and kicking, I think. I hope. Uh-oh. Snapple, Wendy. They're doing well. We've got we've got Wendy. But then in 1994, Quaker bought them. Great. Seems awesome. Great. They bought them for uh uh $1.7 billion. Good job, Quaker. Good job, Snapple. You've made it big. Um, but then they discontinue Wendy. They take her out. Not you know, but not that way, but they no more Wendy ads. And then the sales dropped because people were really, really digging Wendy. So they didn't bring her back though. This was one of the most interesting parts to me about this whole thing is that Snapple in 2003 became the official drink of the New York City public school system. It sponsored New York City public schools. What? Okay, but here's the thing. So, you know, we all know that sugar is not great for you. Um I used to drink an insane amount of apple juice growing up. And in the my early uh not days of sobriety, but when I was, I would say like my last like three years in in it, um, I was drinking a lot of juice. Like a lot of juice. I do remember specifically like right after COVID started, and I was drunk all the time, and I went to this um this deli near me had like the the big glass jar of of uh Martinelli's apple juice, the best one, right? And I was so excited. And I just needed like, I needed a win. I needed to pick me up. I went to the deli, picked up this giant, this giant glass bottle of Martinelli's apple juice. I was walking back to my apartment, and I used to drop things a lot when I was drinking. I think I've mentioned this here. Like I used to break glasses all the time just by accident. Like I just was so clumsy, even when I was sober, like my my like motor skills weren't doing well. Um, I used to drop stuff all like I can't even express, like all the time. I was always dropping things, and I was just walking back to the apartment holding this giant glass bottle, and it just fell out of my hand. Just shattered. Apple juice everywhere, glass ever, like it was it was sad. It was on the sidewalk. What are you gonna do? I can't c I'm not gonna clean that up. I walked away. What do you do when you drop like a giant product on the ground, like in public? Like you can't you're not gonna like go get a broom. I don't know, I think about that a lot though. Wow, I really went f on a long tangent there. Um, so we know that sugar is not great for you and that kids shouldn't be drinking so much juice. I mean, in 2003, there was like a ban on sodas in school. Um so Snapple came in and was like, we'll be the official beverage of schools, which is really not that much better than soda, is the thing, because it still has a uh high amount of sugar. And I I think at that point it had high fructose corn syrup in it. They no longer do. Now it's just sugar and natural flavors, um, and it's like fortified with vitamins and stuff. Um probably not that fortified, you know, it's probably not like better to eat a piece of fruit, but as far as drinks go, it really wasn't that much better for you. Um but they became, they like sponsored the school system, which I mean, the school needs money, so okay. There was like a little bit of pushback about like, what if our kid what if we don't want our kid to be drinking Snapple? Um basically they were like, well then they can have water. So the options in the vending machines at school were Snapple or water. Um, what do you think the kid is gonna drink? Probably the Snapple. Um there was a dietitian who suggested that the vending machines sell milk and apples. Yeah, because that's gonna go well. Again, the nine-year-old, let me think Snapple, water, milk, or an apple. There was also some sort of a concern that the kids would be like really like housing this Snapple at school. They'd be super into it, and then they'd leave school and then like be out in the world and be so hooked on Snapple that they would just keep buying Snapple and get like too overloaded with sugar. There was a lot of contention. I think parents were involved. Anyway, but it happened. They they they were the sponsor of the New York City public schools. And I have no idea when how long that lasted. I don't I mean, it it would be wild if in 2026 Snapple was still sponsoring our school system, but again, schools need money. What are you gonna do? One of everybody's favorite things about Snapple um are those little caps, right? Because they have little facts on them, called like real facts. So you op you have your bottle of Snapple, you open it, it gives it a delightful little pop, a snap, if you will, and you open it and under the cap is like a little fact about the world. I remember things about like the circumference of the earth, or like if you sent something to Mars, the ones I remember about space generally, I think. Um it'll be some sort of like a crazy, crazy fact. Uh there's a guy um named Chris Free. I did not reach out to him before this. So, Chris, if you're listening, I hope this is okay. Uh, he has a website called Snapplecaps.com. And Dude has been collecting Snapple lids for since like 2012 or something like that, for a while. And he's got a bunch of them. Um and he's got the li he's got the facts listed. He's got and he's got ones that he's missing that he's like, I don't think these exist. One of the ones that he thinks doesn't exist is number 666. I feel like that's probably intentional because you can't put the the devil's number on a lid of Snapple because the pushback from that would be crazy, even though that's bullshit. But you know, the the you couldn't do that. It's like you can't have the number 13 uh in a hotel. Oh, guess what? Floor 14 is is floor 13, it's just labeled differently. I hope that helps you sleep at night. But yeah, y I feel like Snapple doesn't want to put um the satanic number on a lid because people would lose their minds. Um Th there's about 2,000 of them. I don't know if they're still making more. I hope they're still making more. New facts have revealed themselves since 1972. Um I wonder if they were always there. Oh, I didn't look into that. I wonder when the real facts started. Shoot, I missed that bit of research. But his his website was last updated in 2024, so there's at least two thousand facts, and you can go on there and browse them. Snapplecaps.com. Um Chris Free, thank you for your service. Some other little silly things about Snapple. Um there's a lot of rumors. The original label, uh, or an old label, I'm sure they've had a couple different uh different styles, uh, featured a big ship. This must this was like whenever after they introduced T had a big ship on it, and that was to I I guess that was supposed to be like the T's, the Boston T ship harbor ship. Um, and but people were like, well, that's a slave ship, and that caused some issues for Snapple. And then um there was also there's like a K symbol on it, which I think is the kosher symbol, like K parv, right, so co uh kosher. But then there was a rumor started that guess what? Snapple is owned by the KKK. Um Snapple's not owned by the KKK, three Jewish men started Snapple. Um but then, right, we've quelled those rumors. Uh-oh, early audits, what's the next problem? Osama bin Laden owns Snapple. So yeah. So in case you were wondering, uh Snapple is owned by the KKK and Osama bin Laden. Um I personally oh it also it says that Snapple is sold in cans. Ew. No, Snapple should be sold in a glass bottle. And that's one of the main things that I will say that not only is Snapple like not great for you as a drink, um, but my my big issue with it is that when I used I used to buy the lemon tea Snapple, loved lemon tea Snapple. Um Or the peach no, the peach tea. Oh, peach tea Snapple was so good. That was another thing that me and my ex used to drink in an insane quantity. But it was fun because it was in a glass bottle and it would make the popping sound and it was delightful, and it's just not the same in a plastic bottle. It does not hit the same. Also, plastic. We hate we hate plastic, so um um that bumps me out. But other than that, that's um that's the basics I got for you on Snapple. So the sobriety section of today, uh, you know, everything is going pretty well in terms of my sobriety. Um therapy has been really helpful for some of my co-addictions, which is great. Um co-addictive mindset, whatever, what have you. So I was kind of like, I don't know, what do I what do I want to talk to you about? And then I realized one thing I haven't mentioned on here that could be kind of fun to go over for people that don't know or people who want to like feel the cringe too, because you do know, um, are drinking dreams, which delightfully, I have not had one of those in a while, but I did have a cr I actually don't really dream that much. Well, obviously we all dream, we just don't remember them, right? Um, but uh I don't remember my dreams that often these days. Uh, but I did have a dream about a week ago um that I was getting married to Channing Tatum, and I didn't want to. Like we were dating and he was really nice, and um I decided that he was like, let's get married, and I was like, okay, even though I knew I was settling because I wasn't actually in love with him. And then I got pregnant, and that was a nightmare, then it became a nightmare. It wasn't like things became dark and there was evil music playing. It wasn't that kind of nightmare, but it was just sort of like, this is not good, and I'm doing it anyway. So that sucked. Um, which I guess actually is kind of like a drinking dream. So, okay, so I'll just go through this if you don't know. Um, a big thing that's fun that happens in sobriety, it happens to all like I think every single person I know you stop drinking, and you get this like the kind of pink cloud a lot of people have of like, oh yay, this everything is great, and this is gonna be easy and fun. Um but relatively quickly, I feel like, at least in those first couple months, you start to have dreams that are hyper, hyper, hyper real that you have relapsed. And they kind of don't stop. So that's that sounds so bad. But it's kind of it, it's true. Like they're really I'm like getting sweaty thinking about this. They're really, really awful. Like for me, the big one will be I went out on um vodka and beer and wine. But okay, my my liquor of choice at the end was vodka. But my kind of like main love in this whole relationship was bourbon. And so in my drinking dreams, it's almost always bourbon. Um and I haven't I'm so glad I haven't had one of these in a while because they're just awful. It's sort of like a movie where it'll be, or like an episode of something where it'll just be like cut to I'm living life. And most of my life is probably pretty similar to the way it is right now. Um, I know all the same people, my job might be kind of similar. There, those kind of details aren't really important, but what's important is that I have decided I'm gonna have a drink. And it could be at a party, it could be I'm at a bar and I'm already drinking. It could be like one of those cut two, you're at a bar and you're drinking. But it's like the decision has been made. I have a glass in my hand, I'm gonna have a drink. And the thing I'm gonna do is that I'm not gonna tell anybody about it. I am lying to everyone I know. You know, I'm I'll still go to meetings, I'll still live my life, and I'll be like, oh my god, I've but I drank and I know that I drank, but it was only one drink. It's probably fine. Everything's fine, right? I don't have to tell anyone that I relapsed. It was only one drink. I didn't even get drunk. And then it'll either stay kind of in that anxiety, or it'll go to, well, I'm already on this path, I might as well keep going. And then you just drink more, and then you're still in the in the the lie. Um, uh the lie is a big, is a big part of the nightmare. Or it'll be I'm living my life as I am, and there's just like this general wash of knowledge that I never actually got sober to begin with, and that this whole thing has been made up. So a lot of it is about, for me at least, like the covering up of the drink, which I think plays into the type of drinker that I was, as you know, I was hiding it from from people, um, or and myself. Uh so there's different varieties of this, but it always like you're drinking in the dream, you know, you don't tell people. And the problem is that you wake up and it feels like it's real. This is something that uh like applies to me, and it for most of the people that I've heard talk about this, it applies to them too. It takes a solid while. Like I'm talking maybe like the day, like the first couple hours of waking up to be like, wait, is this have I been really like what's going on? Like your brain is really holding on to that idea. So it's pretty upsetting. Um, uh, it's real scary, and even me thinking back to these dreams, it's like it feels a hundred percent like reality. But the good news is that they go, they tend to go away um or like become less and less. I would say I probably get a drinking dream maybe maybe a couple times a year. But when I first got sober, I mean it was all the time. It was like at least once a week. Like just like the worst nightmare you could ever imagine. Uh, it's good. It's good. And to wrap this up, I have for you uh maybe a strange shrub. I think it could be fun. So remember when I said that this could be like a breakfast thing? So my mom was the best. And she used to, she made really great um she was she was a good cook. She made really good lasagna. We are not Italian, uh, we are Scandinavian. Scandinavian, but she made really good lasagna. And she also made really, really good pumpkin pie. And my mom always used to talk about how um it's good for breakfast because uh you know, pumpkin pie, it's got which is kind of not true, not wrong. It's got your uh your eggs, your milk, some sugar, uh it's uh your your gourd, your squash, whatever. Uh it's got all the all the basic ingredients you need for a hearty breakfast. So she would always be a proponent of pie for breakfast. Um so the shrub that I have concocted here is a blueberry pie shrub. Okay. Remember the the peanut butter and jelly shrub? That was a positive thing. That was really, really good. And I've I've done blueberry shrubs before, and they're a delight because blueberries are a universal fruit. They make good pie. You can eat them plain. Um, I like to eat frozen blueberries with like milk on them, and it sort of like makes like a little um like a slushy thing. Uh, you can blend them up as frozen things. They're good with smooth, like you blueberries are a perfect fruit. So I figured, let me just like go out on the limb and kind of add some like pie ingredients to a shrub with blueberries and see what it tastes like. Oh, I could I need to stir this. Oh dear, it's settled. Uh so I added um, so it's blueberries, regular white vinegar, sugar, oats, and uh cinnamon. So I have no idea, I have no idea what this is gonna be like. The I haven't ever put anything that was like um like a grain into a shrub. So this is the first like grain ready something product in a shrub that I've experienced. I do need to stir this. Okay, it's stirred. Obviously that's more like blueberry crumble, but it's the same, it's a similar idea. And maybe it will taste like blueberry pie. I don't know. It's not, it's not beautiful. And the that's a little thing that's a little concerning to me is that um usually like a blueberry shrub would be blue. Purple, what? This has none of that in it. So I don't know the blueberries, I mean, I was eating them solo as well, and they tasted really great, and they were juicy, and they were good. But this didn't develop any sort of that blueberry, so I've don't I'm a little concerned this actually isn't gonna taste like anything besides cinnamon. Um but we're gonna find out. We're gonna start with a smell test. That smells like blueberries. That smells like a like a blueberry crumble, for sure. It smells like obviously there would be some lemon involved for a blueberry dessert, but this um I didn't put any lemon in here. I kind of wish I did. That might have been fun. But I haven't tried it yet, so maybe that's okay. Um so it smells, it smells like a like a blueberry co like custard or la crumble or something like that. It really does. It has cinnamon, it has a little bit of like an OT note, and it ha OT note, and it has the blueberry, it does smell like blueberry. So okay, I'm really excited. Let's get in there. Okay, it's really good. I definitely should have used less cinnamon because that's overpowering. But do you remember? I think I made like an apple cinnamon one, and it didn't really taste like much. This tastes great. It's uh it's in line with the apple cinnamon shrub because the s the cinnamon is just so forward. I should have I should have reduced that for sure. Um but it's it's nuanced. There's layers. You can definitely get a sense of blueberry. And the oat kind of like balances it out. Like it's it's like um, it feels a little less acidic because of the oats, I think. The blueberry comes maybe second or third. It's definitely not the forefront. The forefront for sure is the cinnamon. But the c but it's it's not just straight cinnamon, it's like the oats are also playing a role. Okay, so I would be interested in trying this again with much less cinnamon, like the smallest, the smallest dash of the smallest dash of cinnamon. Um maybe cutting the blueberries in half to kind of like really ensure that the vinegar was penetrating them. Um and maybe just like add a tiny like little bit of lemon rind. It's hard because I'm making this in such small batches. It might be, it might be more efficient to do this in like larger batches for measurement purposes, but I'm not gonna waste that. So that's not gonna happen. Okay, fun. This is really good. This is sweet. It's very sweet. It's delightful though. Um, and also I used the I used straight uh still water this time as well. Because I didn't want to um obscure the flavor with bubbles. And I'm glad I did that. But I but this would be really, really fucking good with uh like sparkling, sparkling water. Okay. Well, that's that's the um blueberry pie breakfast episode for ya. Uh this started my day off to a to a great, great start. Haven't read the news yet, so that's fun. I I hope that you have a good rest of your day too. I hope you're enjoying listening to this, whether you're cooking or driving or walking your dog or whatever you're doing. Um, a pleasure to have you on the other end of this uh audio. So I will talk to you in a couple weeks. And in the meantime, don't let the shrubbish get you down. Okay? Take care. Bye-bye. Thanks for tuning in to Shrubbish. Of course, I wouldn't be able to do this alone. Research references are available in the show notes, and that spunky show art and design is by the incredibly talented Alex Crawford. If you're looking to connect, we're on Instagram at shrubbish underscore pod, or you can send an email to shrubbishpodcast at gmail.com