Fanta is a popular soft drink in Singapore made by the Coca-Cola Company. This is how the drink looks like in the present time with its three different flavours here.

The drink has been enjoyed by generations of Singaporeans over the years. Older folks will probably feel a certain sense of nostalgia when they see Fanta in glass bottles of the past.

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Generally, Fanta has a wholesome jolly image in the present day.

But what might perhaps be unknown to many is Fanta's true origin, which might come as a surprise.

Created earlier than the 1950s

Although Fanta first emerged on the international market in the mid-1950s, its history actually dates slightly further back.

In 1929, the Coca-Cola Company established its branch in Germany. When the Nazis came to power in the 1930s, Coca-Cola had became the most popular non-alcoholic beverage in the country.

According to The Vintage News, about 50 Coca-Cola production plants were built in Germany, and roughly five million cases of the drink were sold annually.

Outbreak of World War Two

But then World War Two broke out in Europe, and the Coca-Cola Company branch in Germany ran out of the drink's key ingredient -- its syrup.

To make matters worse, it got cut-off from its headquarters in the U.S. due the trade embargoes that the Allies imposed on Germany.

Unable to produce any Coca-Cola, the head of the company's German branch, Max Keith, decided to create a new soft drink using ingredients that were available in Germany.

He made an apple-flavoured prototype of Fanta by combining whey (a byproduct of cheese production) and apple fibers from cider pressings.

Somehow managing to bypass the ban on the importation of sugar in Nazi Germany, Keith managed to make Fanta contain a higher amount of of sugar than any other soft drink, which made it a hit in the country.

The name "Fanta" was derived from the German word "Fantastich", which means "fantastic".

During the war, Keith also introduced an elderberry-flavoured Fanta to the Coca-Cola Company branch in Nazi-occupied Holland. It was also a hit.

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Discontinued then resurrected

After the war, Fanta was discontinued, as the German and Dutch branches of the Coca-Cola Company were reunited.

But that was not the end of Fanta, as history would have it.

In the early 1950s, the Pepsi Corporation launched some popular fruit-flavoured soft-drinks that prompted the Coca-Cola Company to resurrect Fanta in 1955, and it became the popular soft drink it is today in Singapore and the world.

Top image from Pinterest.

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