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In 1994, Coca-Cola went to work on a citrus soda that would be high in energy and easy to drink. After testing many formulas,
it came down to two. One was a green citrus soda that received most of it's energy traits from Coca-Cola's sports drink, PowerADE.
The other citrus soda didn't have the complex energy traits as the other and relied on huge amounts of caffeine.
After a test-tasting battle, the green drink won and was test marketed in 1996 under the name URGE while the other formula
was held for possible future use. After one year, in 1997 Coca-Cola brought URGE to the USA and dubbed it SURGE.
In SURGE's first year in America it was huge, selling 69 million cases. Due to the success of SURGE, Coca-cola wanted
to make a caffeine-free citrus soda. They found what they wanted in SURGE's other formula. They stripped the caffeine and
dubbed it CITRA.
CITRA had a slow start, but after a couple of years it outsold even SURGE. SURGE was depleting from stores in 2001-2002,
and Coca-Cola, unfortunately, has completely discontinued the production of the Fully Loaded Citrus Soda's syrup.
This left only CITRA, and after a few years CITRA died out too. It was thought we'd never see either of these sodas again.
(In my personal opinion the two greates sodas of all time. Number one being SURGE, and CITRA being number two.) But while,
we still haven't seen SURGE, in 2004 Coke re-launched CITRA under the Fanta line as Fanta Citrus.
Unfortunately, Fanta Citrus was only available in select markets and has since slowly died. There have been reports of
people finding Fanta Grapefruit, which is Fanta Citrus, but renamed.
Fanta Citrus deserves a national release, and that is what this site is all about
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