Why is Snapple Called Snapple?

Real Fact #722: The peach was the first fruit to be eaten on the moon.

Since 2002, real fact #722, along with thousands of other “real facts,” can be found when you twist off a Snapple bottle cap. Yet, long before Snapple “real facts” became “disputed facts,” they were simply a juice company trying to join the natural food movement.

In 1972, childhood friends Leonard Marsh and Arnold Greenberg, along with Marsh’s brother-in-law Hyman Golden, decided to break into the burgeoning health food trend. They began selling ‘all natural’ fruit juices in intriguing blends to health food stores around New York City under the name, Unadulterated Food Corporation.

During this time they didn’t have enough funds to solely focus on Unadulterated Food Corps, so in tandem to this venture, they all kept their day jobs. Marsh and Golden continued running their window washing service, while Greenberg continued managing his health food store on the lower east side of Manhattan. In a 1989 interview with New York Business, Marsh told them that at the advent of this venture he knew, “as much about juice as about making an atom bomb.”

Why is it Called Snapple?

Snapple owes its name change to a bad batch of apple juice. One of the company’s earliest products was a carbonated apple juice. However, when one of these shipments fermented in bottle, it caused the caps to fly off. Because of this incident, they began calling this fizzy apple juice product, “Snapple,” which was a fusion of the words “snappy” and “apple.” They liked the name so much, it eventually became the new name for their beverage company, and by the early 1980s, Snapple Beverage Corporation was born.

Though they are now mainly regarded for their teas, they didn’t begin manufacturing their first teas until 1987. Prior to this, sales of their juice were slow and steady during the 70s and well into the 80s. They spent three years engineering an iced tea that according to Greenberg in an interview with the New York Times, “didn’t taste like battery acid.” Their trick to creating a tasty tea was bottling the tea while hot, before chilling it to eliminate preservatives.

Currently they have nine flavors of tea (including diet variations) as well as 22 flavors of juice. While peach tea is one of their better-known flavors, Snapple is also well known for printing interesting and numbered “Real Facts” inside their bottle caps. A list of these “Real Facts” can be found on the company’s website, however a series of articles from outlets like The Atlantic, fact checked their facts and several were found to be outdated, incorrect or exaggerated.

According to an interview they conducted with Snapple’s vice president of marketing, David Falk, these facts continue to be reviewed each year and some have been retired.

When you reach for a glass of Snapple and screw off the top do you fact check the Real Facts? Let us know in the comment section below.