Ah
. . . summer in Detroit. The orange construction barrels, the potholes,
the constant sweating, the free outdoor concerts, the Faygo. That’s
right. The “Genuine,” “Dee-licious” and
ubiquitous soda pop that lines metro Detroit’s gas station
coolers and grocery store shelves is one of the more redeeming things
about another sweltering season in the Motor City.
When I moved here several years ago from New Orleans, I’d
barely even heard of Faygo. I grew up choosing between Coke and
Pepsi. In my neck of the woods, one might refer to a soft drink
generally as either a “Coke” or a “cold drink.”
Needless to say, I wasn’t prepared for the kind of brand loyalty
Faygo inspires among metro Detroiters. Faygo, as I gradually became
aware, is not just another off-brand pop. In fact, Faygo is its
own high-fructose phenomenon, with many distinct flavors and a cadre
of devoted followers who love it because it’s cheap and tasty
and it’s been around since they were kids.
Some of Faygo’s top-selling flavors, including Redpop and
Rock & Rye, were derived from cake frosting recipes that bakers
Ben and Perry Feigenson brought over from their native Russia before
starting Feigenson Brothers Bottling Works in Detroit in 1907. The
Feigensons, who later changed their company name to Faygo, started
out with three flavors—fruit punch, strawberry (which later
became Redpop) and grape—and sold their sodas from a horse-drawn
wagon for 3 cents a bottle or two for a nickel. Rock & Rye,
which Faygo introduced in the 1920s, was reportedly named after
a Prohibition drink that involved combining rock candy and rye whiskey;
it tastes a lot like cream soda but is otherwise hard to describe.
Strawberry? Cola? You decide.
Although Faygo Beverages, Inc. was bought by the Fort Lauderdale-based
National Beverage Corp. in 1987, most of the nation’s –
indeed, the world’s Faygo – is still produced and bottled
in Detroit. Faygo now annually produces millions of cases of soft
drinks per year in 52 flavors. Redpop and Orange are the top sellers,
followed by Root Beer, Moon Mist, and Cola. The company also produces
mixers and sparkling water and sells its products in Michigan, nationwide,
and in Ontario and Mexico. Today, a two liter of Faygo pop generally
costs 99 cents. Faygo’s low prices over the years have led
some to call it the “poor man’s pop.”
Inside the Faygo facility on Gratiot Avenue is humid and loud. The
air swells with a sweet, sticky soda pop smell. Through the long
glass window in one hallway, you can see hundreds of two-liter bottles
being washed, rinsed, filled and capped on conveyor belts that seem
to snake off into eternity. On a recent day, a man wearing ear plugs
and a shower cap could be seen working at the machine while the
pop puddled on the floor near his feet.
On the other side of the glass were me and Matt Rosenthal, Faygo’s
bespectacled marketing director and my tour guide. “We’ve
always hired from the neighborhood,” Rosenthal said. “I
can’t tell you how many people have been here 20 to 30 years.”
That alone is a good enough reason to buy this pop.
Those who grew up with Faygo love it. The website lookupdetroit.com
lists Faygo Pop, Better Made Chips, Vernors Ginger Ale and Sanders
hot fudge along with such other nostalgia as the giant tire on I-94.
Some locals remember the advertising blitz in the late 1950s and
‘60s that brought the “Faygo Kid” into Michigan
and Ohio homes before the product was even available outside Detroit.
Others know the “Faygo Boat Song” television commercial,
“Remember When You Were A Kid,” that was popular in
the early 1970s.
Comic books and rubber bands,
Climb into the tree top,
Falling down and holding hands,
Tricycles and Redpop
Then, in the 1990s, along came something completely different in
terms of Faygo promotion. It wasn’t innocent or evocative
of idyllic childhood moments. It wasn’t intended or planned,
and it certainly isn’t contained in any press materials. But
it’s probably the reason news of Faygo has now spread so far
beyond the Midwest, and why Googling Faygo results in about 34,200
hits.
“They sort of adopted us,” said Rosenthal, now sitting
behind his desk at Detroit headquarters. He was referring to the
Insane Clown Posse, or ICP, the controversial Detroit rap group
known partly for the profanity that caused Disney-owned Hollywood
Records to pull their 1997 album only hours after its release (Island
Records later released the album to fans who couldn’t wait
to get their hands on the banned material). At some point, ICP also
developed a proclivity for spraying Faygo all over everyone and
everything at concerts. The group’s fans, who call themselves
Juggalos, sometimes bring their own two liters. ICP even raps about
Faygo, which, according to the lore, was the only pop band members
Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope could afford while growing up. Supposedly,
they keep Faygo in the picture to remind themselves of their poverty-stricken
roots.
ICP has done a lot for Faygo. In addition to buying what must be
thousands upon thousands of liters of pop, the group has managed
to maneuver around the mainstream and promote Faygo to its teen
fan base in a way that doesn’t even really look like advertising.
It almost makes you wonder if Faygo had something to do with it.
“Any time a group does this much for your product, you’d
love to have a working relationship with them,” Rosenthal
said. But Faygo has no such relationship with ICP. After all, he
said, “Moms buy it (Faygo) for their kids.”
“We cannot affiliate ourselves with them (ICP) because every
other word out of their mouths is some kind of vulgarity,”
he said. “They swear too much. They swear all the time as
a matter of fact.”
Of course, these are hard economic times. I asked Rosenthal why,
if Faygo is so family-friendly, one of their recent ad campaigns
was putting young girls in scant, construction-worker type uniforms
on billboards.
“It’s probably not the best thing we’ve done,”
he said, casually turning our attention to this summer’s ads
by showing me some pictures. One picture, a smaller version of the
huge ad hanging outside on the plant itself, is of a man holding
a Faygo up to his sweaty bald head above the caption “Cooling
heads since 1907.”
Rosenthal later ushered me past Faygo’s product testing lab,
where an employee handed us small plastic cups containing Pom Pom
Lemonade, one of this year’s new flavors of Ohana, Faygo’s
non-carbonated line. It’s a pleasing, lemony pomegranate punch.
If it needs anything, I’m thinking, it’s Cuervo. Later
in the day I stopped by a party store for a 24 oz. Raspberry Blueberry
soda, another new Faygo flavor. Despite the beverage’s absence
of fruit juice and my reticence to put anything blue into my mouth,
it was gone within minutes.
According to a Faygo fact sheet, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent
of the company’s new flavors meet with commercial success.
Vanilla, Chocolate and Pizza Pop never met with mass appeal. Neither
did the wine-flavored Chateau Faygeaux, although Faygo Brau, a beer-flavored
beverage, was a brief hit in the 1960s.
Lately I’ve been developing sort of a thing for Faygo diet
soda. There are diet versions of the most popular flavors (Diet
Rock & Rye…um, rocks!) and three fancy “guilt free”
dessert flavors. The Diet Key Lime Pie is to die for – crisp
and refreshing, yet somehow creamy. “Funny,” Rosenthal
points out, “You can even taste the graham cracker crust.”
Diet Chocolate Cream Pie and Diet Coconut Cream Pie are not bad,
although the coconut reminds me a little too much of suntan lotion
and some will argue that sodas just shouldn’t be chocolate.
Apparently, I’m not the only one switching to diet. According
to Rosenthal, so is ICP.
“They found that the sugar makes everything sticky. It got
on their instruments,” he said. “So now they buy diet
products – to spray, anyway.”
Check out Faygo’s website, www.faygo.com, for where to buy
it, plus Faygo recipes and an online POPshop that will ship Faygo
anywhere in the United States.
Email
singleserving@annarborpaper.com
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illustration
by Raul Pena
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