Josta
PepsiCo's high-energy guaraná drink, marketed as "Better do the good stuff now" and remembered for its dark snarling-cat branding. Often credited as the first energy drink from a major U.S. beverage company, it arrived years ahead of the energy-drink boom — and was gone by 1999.
PepsiCo introduced Josta in 1995 as a "high-energy drink" powered by guaraná and caffeine, positioning it as something entirely new in the American beverage aisle — it's often credited as the first energy drink introduced by a major U.S. beverage company. The dark can with its snarling jungle-cat motif stood out in the mid-90s cooler, and the slogan told you exactly what decade you were in: "Better do the good stuff now."
When PepsiCo pulled Josta in a 1999 corporate-strategy shakeup, its fans did not go quietly. A grassroots "Save Josta" campaign mobilized ahead of the official discontinuation, and devotees kept the savejosta.org fan site alive for years afterward. The drink still surfaces in unexpected places: a Josta ad poster hangs inside Madison Square Garden in the 1998 film Godzilla, and a can turns up as a period-perfect Easter egg in Disney+'s 2021 series Loki — a long afterlife for a soda that lasted four years.
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