Snapple is ready for its comeback

Snapple might be gearing up for a long-awaited comeback by taking a page out of its ‘90s playbook.

On February 18, Snapple’s parent company, Keurig Dr Pepper, announced that the beloved tea brand is unveiling a refreshed visual identity designed to “return the Snapple brand to icon-status.” The new look, which will roll out beginning this March, includes new graphics, a logo inspired by the brand’s ‘90s look, and an updated bottle design that hearkens back to its original glass packaging. At the same time, Keurig Dr Pepper told Fast Company that it’s reinvesting in marketing efforts for Snapple, including through an ongoing campaign focused on the drink’s hometown of New York City.

For Snapple, the new look and marketing boost represent a return to form that’s been a long time coming. After Snapple’s heyday in the ‘90s—characterized by its scrappy roots, funky packaging, and wacky ad strategy—the brand has struggled to hold onto cultural relevance amidst a catastrophic sale, ownership changes, and several ill-advised rebrands. 

Now, it’s looking to tap back into the playful energy that once made it the beverage of choice for ‘90s kids. 

Snapple’s rollercoaster of a brand history

Snapple was founded in 1972 in Long Island, New York, by three friends. Their initial idea was for a company called “Unadulterated Food Products,” which would capitalize on a new wave of interest in better-for-you foods by selling fruit juices to health stores. One founder, Leaonrd Marsh, would later say of the venture that he knew “as much about juice as about making an atom bomb.”

As The New York Times noted in Marsh’s 2013 obituary, the three men “did wind up making a bomb of sorts: a batch of carbonated apple juice that accidentally fermented, shooting scores of bottle caps skyward.” Thankfully, this happy accident sparked a transition from the name “Unadulterated Food Products” to “Snapple,” a portmanteau of “snappy” and “apple.” Snapple’s bottles were made from a rounded glass, featured bright colors and a slightly cursive logo, and emitted a satisfying “snap” sound when the cap released the beverage’s carbonation. 

Snapple’s original business model involved partnering with independent distributors to stock the beverage in smaller stores. The brand truly took off in the early ‘90s, when it began to enter the cultural zeitgeist through a series of zany, irreverent ads that emphasized its underdog status compared to big names like Coca Cola and Pepsi.

Undoubtedly, though, its biggest asset was a spokesperson named Wendy Kaufman, who, after appearing in several ads, became a beloved representative known as “Wendy the Snapple lady” (see this spot and this spot of Kaufman answering fan questions). Between 1992 and 1994, sales jumped from $232 million to $774 million.

Then, in 1994, Quaker Oats acquired Snapple in a $1.7 billion transaction that would go down in marketing textbooks as a prime example of how not to make a deal. Quaker swooped in, sanded down Snapple’s edgy personality, made its bottles bigger, relegated Kaufman to the back burner, and scrapped its independent distribution model, only to sell the company just three years later to Triarc Companies for $300 million. A brand disaster, indeed.

A post-“Quakergate” challenge

Since “Quakergate,” Snapple has been fighting an uphill battle to maintain cultural relevance—a journey that’s involved multiple rebrands and several ownership changes. Along the way, it has shed many of the brand assets that originally made it an outlier on grocery store shelves. 

In 2008, Snapple became part of the Dr Pepper Snapple Group when Cadbury spun off its beverage business. Then, in 2018, Snapple joined Keurig Dr Pepper through a merger of Dr Pepper Snapple Group and Keurig Green Mountain. Between 2016 and 2017, Dr Pepper Snapple reported a 3% decline in the sale of Snapple products. According to Derek Dabrowski, SVP of brand marketing at Keurig Dr Pepper, Snapple has seen overall retail sales growth since the 2018 merger, but “more recently that momentum slowed as shelf presence declined and marketing support eased.” 

Undoubtedly, a not insignificant part of the brand’s struggles has emerged from the fact that Snapple has lost its quirk. The brand got refreshes in both 2008 and 2015, and in 2021 Keurig Dr Pepper gave it a full-on rebrand. Snapple’s new logo was ultra-modernized into a blue-and-white sans serif; its glass bottles were replaced with recycled plastic; and its charmingly kitschy graphics were swapped for more commercial imagery. The company also attempted to reach younger consumers with a new line called “Snapple Elements,” which ultimately fizzled out.

Longtime fans of the brand bemoaned the changes, with many claiming that Snapple tasted better out of glass. Gone was the quintessential Snapple “snap,” replaced with a quotidian plastic sigh.

A return to Snapple’s quirky form

Now, it seems, Keurig Dr Pepper is realizing that its rebrand may have been a bit too hasty. 

“Looking back, some of these efforts, especially chasing multiple trends at once, left the brand feeling a bit fragmented,” Dabrowski says.

Snapple’s upcoming brand refresh spans graphics, logo, packaging communication, and bottle design. The bottle’s illustrations will call back to earlier iterations of Snapple with bolder colors and a slightly more retro look. Flavor signalers like “Real Tea” and “Real Juice” will take center stage on the packaging, connecting to the brand’s origins as a “healthy” beverage. And the sans serif logo will be replaced with a modernized version of the Snapple logo that defined the brand in the ‘90s. 

“The new Snapple logo isn’t a carbon copy of the one from the late ’80s and early 2000s, but it’s very intentionally inspired by that era,” Dabrowski says. “We brought back the iconic racetrack shape and heritage cues people recognize, then refined them to work better on today’s shelves—with clearer readability, bolder color, and stronger flavor storytelling.”

Marketing to match

Snapple has also been slowly tapping back into its irreverent advertising roots. Last fall, the brand launched a new campaign called “Snapsolutely Refreshing” with a media buy in its NYC hometown, including out-of-home placements across subways, street panels, office elevators and Times Square. It ran a one-day bodega takeover featuring free Snapple and branded merch. For a limited time, the brand even brought back glass Snapple bottles at a few retailers across the city. 

And the ad accompanying “Snapsolutely Refreshing” feels charmingly similar to something Snapple might have made in its ‘90s underdog glory days: A man in an NYC bodega is confronted by a series of slightly creepy, talking “wellness culture” beverages, like kombucha and probiotic soda, before ultimately choosing to sip a Snapple instead. 

Still, for diehard Snapple fans, a key question remains: Will the glass bottle ever make a real comeback? 

That remains a bit of a mystery. Dabrowski says that in September, Snapple will roll out a new plastic bottle that mimics the original’s shape and embossed logo. And, when pressed, a spokesperson shared that the brand is “continuing to test glass bottles and learn from consumer response.”

Whether Snapple ever gets its “snap” back remains to be seen—but, for now, the brand is at least looking (and sounding) a little more like itself.