Introduced 1963 Flavour various | Colour varies by flavor | |
Manufacturer Sunny Delight Beverages Distributor Dr Pepper Snapple Group (USA)
Saputo (Canada) Ingredients Water, High fructose corn syrup, and less than 2% concentrated juices | ||
Sunny Delight, marketed as SunnyD in some regions, is an orange-coloured drink developed by Doric Foods of Mount Dora, Florida in 1963. It grew so popular that additional plants were built in California and Ohio in 1974 and 1978, respectively. In 1983, Sundor Brands bought out Doric Foods; Sundor Brands was then purchased by Procter & Gamble in 1989. The drink produced an estimated $450 million in revenue for Procter & Gamble in 2004. In 2005, Sunny Delight was spun off into the independent Sunny Delight Beverages Company (SDBC). The beverage is also distributed by Dr Pepper/Seven Up (DPSU). In Canada, the drink is manufactured and distributed by Saputo.
Contents
The beverage was launched in the United Kingdom in Spring 1998 with a £10 million promotional campaign, and became the third biggest selling drink in the UK, behind Coca-Cola and Pepsi. It was sold in refrigerated cabinets and marketed as a healthy alternative to soft drinks, although it contains only 5% juice.
Reach for the Sun Bottle Hunt
In the mid-1990s, Sunny Delight sponsored an early Internet contest promoting their beverage. For the game, the Reach for the Sun Bottle Hunt, simple graphics depicting Sunny Delight "bottles" were incorporated into independent American web sites. The site locations were various personal home pages or more well-known internet resources. At the main contest site, riddles were provided weekly to help people discover each of the sites displaying a hidden bottle. Participants were encouraged to use the newest search engines in combination with the riddles. Initially appearing in 1996 and gaining widespread attention, the contest was repeated three times over the course of a year and a half, and over 4,000 prizes were awarded during each iteration, ranging from T-shirts to college scholarships. As a pioneering internet advertising meme, it set the stage for years of later web marketing promotions.
Peel 'n Taste Flavor Strips
In mid-2009, to promote the company's Sunny Delight Smoothies, the company partnered with Food Lion supermarkets to place SunnyD Smoothies Peel 'n Taste flavor samplers in the aisles where Sunny Delight products were located.
Reformulation
In recent years the artificial sweetener sucralose has been added in combination with high fructose corn syrup in order to cut the calorie count.
As of 2013, North American Sunny Delight contained less than 2% concentrated fruit juice.
Controversies
In the United Kingdom, there were many negative press reports about the product, following an investigation by The Food Commission, an independent consumer organisation in the UK. According to a BBC News report, the negative publicity escalated when a Sunny Delight television ad showing a snowman turning orange was released at about the same time as reports of a girl who experienced their skin turning orange – due to the UK product's use of beta-Carotene for colour – after drinking too much Sunny Delight. Sales had halved by 2001, and the drink was redesigned and re-invented in 2003 as "SunnyD". In the UK, SunnyD was again relaunched in March 2009 with a new formulation containing 70% fruit juice and no artificial ingredients or added sugar. However, amid declining sales, the product was further reformulated in April 2010 as a lower priced beverage containing only 15% fruit juice.