Snapple Elements: History, Flavors & Packaging

Snack History Nostalgia Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Snapple Elements first debuted in 1999. This was a Snapple flavor option that was based on the elements. Flavors included Fire, Sun, Rain, and Earth. The company later expanded the line-up to add tea and energy-infused offerings. Snapple Elements were discontinued in 2005, much to the dismay of many people who really loved this part of the Snapple company offerings.

Recent headlines have indicated that the Snapple Elements product was back on the market in select areas starting in 2022. If you have not already seen these super cool Snapple bottles on the shelves of your local grocery store, you can head online to find them. The new product has been revised to be healthier, but otherwise, the recipes are supposed to be the same.

History

Snapple is a tea and juice brand that is actually owned by Keurig Dr. Pepper. The company’s home base is in Texas. The original company name was Unadulterated Food products in 1972, and the products that owners Leonard Marsh, Hyman Golden, and Arnold Greenberg sold under this business name were mostly offered to consumers at health food stores. The fundamental goal of the Snapple product line-up has been health, but the nature of the products changed greatly when there was a shift away from the health food version of the company’s offerings to a more mainstream product line-up.

The original owners actually changed the name of the company to Snapple due to the success of one of their earliest juice products, which was made with local apples. This product was actually also carbonated, which made it stand out from the crowd and gave them the idea for future creative juice products. Because of the carbonation, the first round of juice that they made using this method made the cap fly off the bottles. This led to the now-famous name of the Snapple brand.

The Snapple Beverage Company was established in 1980, but the first tea and lemon tea was not offered for sale until 1987. The company still sells lemonade, bottled water, and juice products. They have mostly just added new flavors to these drink categories over the years, like Snapple Elements.

One of the early marketing gimmicks that were used to make Snapple more fun to buy was the placement of fun facts and information on the underside of the caps of Snapple products. These were called Snapple “Real Facts” and were a source of a lot of fun commentary. There are lots of exaggerated, outdated, and just plain incorrect Snapple facts that have been discovered over the years. Now that the bottles do not have these Snapple Real Facts on them, there is an entire list of the facts that were used in this marketing plan on the company website.

When the Snapple Elements product landed on grocery store shelves all over the US, the product was actually quite unique compared to lots of other juice-based products on the market at the time. Not only was the styling of the packaging really unique and interesting, but it was also a very different kind of idea for a drink product. The original products were: Fire, Sun, Rain, and Earth. The bottles were large and were made of glass, and there were not colorful in any way. This means that the drinks themselves were brightly colored to make the clear glass bottles more interesting.

Sun was orange in color and showed a picture of the sun with a large circular design around it. The font for all of the bottles was lowercase and meant to look like handwriting. Rain was the only clear juice, and the bottle simply showed a raindrop and the same graphic oval that was hovering around it. Earth looked a lot like cranberry juice, and its oval shape was blue on the side of the planet earth and green on the opposite side. Fire was bright red in color and showed a picture of a cartoony flame with a bright gold ring around it.

Fire was flavored like dragonfruit, Rain was agave cactus-flavored, Earth was grape-cranberry, and Sun was starfruit-orange flavor. Later there were many more different flavors added to the line-up that offered lots of unique ingredients like prickly peach and persimmon. The bottle design of this product line-up was so unique that it actually won the Beverage World’s Globe Design Gold Award for the best overall product design. Anyone who was living in the US during the early years that Snapple Elements was sold probably remembers this product due to its cool and sleek design, as well as the unique and refreshing flavors that it offered.

The Snapple Elements products were expanded greatly over the years, adding tea products, energy-drink products, and the “Metal” product line. However, over time, sales fell off, and Snapple decided to pull the product from shelves in 2005. Part of the reason that some of the products that were still selling well for Snapple were pulled from sales was also likely due to the attention that sugary food products started to receive in 2000. Many snacks and drink products were pulled from shelves during this time period. Sugar aside, there were a lot of people who missed their favorite unique Snapple products with really cool bottles.

The company has returned Snapple Elements to the shelves of select stores, and they are sold online as well. The recipe had to be changed to remove all the excess sugar that is no longer allowed in these kinds of products, and there were some adjustments to the flavor varieties that are currently on offer as well. The products are also sold in environmentally-friendly plastic bottles these days that are printed with the Snapple logo and pictures of each of the elements. The font is bold and simple, but the design is, once again, really eye-catching and unique.

You will find that the original elements are back, but just Fire, Rain, and Air. There has been no indication about how long these will be on the market or if this is just a trial run. Some people have balked at the cost of the Snapple Elements product as well, which might cause this new launch of an old classic to fail. Those who loved all the really unique flavors and energy-infused and tea-infused products are not likely to get to enjoy them ever again. 

As with many other relaunched products, Snapple Elements has had to undergo a lot of changes to be able to fit into the current market for drink products. Only time will tell if this spin-off from the original Snapple line-up will stand the test of time.

Logo

Flavors:

• Fire -dragonfruit
• Rain – agave cactus-flavored
• Earth – grape-cranberry
• Sun – starfruit-orange flavor
• Meteor – tangelo
• Spark- mandarin carrot
• Turbulence- shredded lemon
• Atomic – jacked apple
• Diet Air – prickly peach
• Diet Ice – ruby tangelo
• Velocity – grapefruit cranberry
• Volcano- indigo grape
• Voltage- citron
• Sky – passion fruit
• Gravity – carrot infusion
• Altitude – persimmon

Tea Line Flavors

• Moon – green tea
• Lightning- ginseng black tea
• Infusion – mango tangerine

Aluminum Energy Line Flavors:

• Fire- energy enhanced
• Rain – energy enhanced
• Meteor- energy enhanced
• Metal – blood orange
• Vemon – citrus
• Subzero – Siberian cherry

New Snapple Elements –

Tarot Snapple Elements first debuted in 1999. This was a Snapple flavor option that was based on the elements. Flavors included Fire, Sun, Rain, and Earth. The company later expanded the line-up to add tea and energy-infused offerings. Snapple Elements were discontinued in 2005, much to the dismay of many people who really loved this part of the Snapple company offerings.

The company still lists all of the different products as having the same flavors as they did when the brand first sold the Elements line-up. However, some people have stated that the taste is just not the same as they remembered, which is probably due to the lower sugar nature of the recipe these days.

Ingredients

From Snapple Elements Rain

• Filtered water
• Sugar
• Pear juice concentrate
• Agave nectar
• Citric acid
• Natural flavors

The kind of juice that is used to flavor each drink is different, but the basic recipe is otherwise the same.

Nutrition

Serving Size:	1 bottle	% Daily Value*
Amount Per Serving
Calories	110
Total Fat	0g	0%
Sodium	10mg	0%
Total Carbohydrates	25g	9%
Sugars	25g
Added Sugars	19g	38%
Protein	0g
Potassium	60mg	1%

• The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.

Pictures

Ads:

Ads for this product have varied over the years. They claimed in most ads that Snapple was, “Made From the Best Stuff on Earth” but the subject matter of the ad might vary wildly from product line to product line. The Snapple Elements line-up was always meant to be edgier than the other products that the company made, so it always got more unique and zany ads. 

Today’s ads for the re-released series of three Snapple Elements products are based around a sense of magic and whimsy and feature the same spokesperson in each one. All kinds of wild and wacky things can happen during these ads, and the sense that the face of the brand is someone like a genie or a magical being is leaned into a bit. The ad campaigns that Snapple is doing for the Elements line-up today are mostly being shown on TikTok. You can find an entire series of ads about Elements on the Snapple TikTok account.

Being willing to make the most of the newest advertising opportunities out there is in keeping with how brave the Snapple Company can be. You will probably like the new ads since they are wild and wacky and really fun in many different ways.