LEFT INSIDE: The Pepsi Generation

We have, in addition to my insanely large collection of vintage crime, adventure & supernatural fiction, a modest collection of vintage cookbooks thanks to Joe's interest in regional American cooking. The item below was found in a cookbook that appropriately enough focuses on low calorie dishes.

Who knew gardening burns more calories than a game of tennis? That seems wrong to me. I know I sweat a lot more gardening than I do bicycling, but that's mainly due to the unshaded place where we are growing our vegetables and sunflowers.

Pepsi-Cola was invented in 1893 by a druggist in New Bern, North Carolina and first was known as Brad's Drink. Five years later it was christened Pepsi-Cola, mostly to compete with the older Coca-Cola. Diet Pepsi didn't come along until 1963 and was the first diet soda sold in the United States. Originally it was called Patio, but I found that at Wikipedia so it may be dubious. It was primarily competing with Tab. Remember Tab? I think I saw a can of it somewhere recently. Who is making it again?

Pepsi has undergone a variety of changes in the formula, logo and its marketing jingle. I know the earliest tune was "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot/Twelve full ounces that's a lot/Twice as much for a nickel too/Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you." I sang it in a goofy little musical comedy called The 1940s Radio Hour back in my theater days and I managed through the miracle of YouTube to find a medley of the earliest Pepsi jingles in the clip below.


And for those of you of my generation or older (and perhaps a little younger) you may recall being part of "The Pepsi Generation." I thought this was the name of a long running jingle for Pepsi's ad campaign in the 60s and 70s, but the actual title is "You've Got a Lot to Live." It was on TV all the time throughout all of my teen years in the 1970s. "It's the Pepsi Generation/Comin' at ya, goin' strong" still pops into my head nearly every time I see a can of Pepsi Throwback -- the new name for the very old, original formula which is made with sugar and not the evil high fructose corn syrup that has ruined the taste of everything from soda to fruit juice to cereal. And I will dismount my nutritional soap box before I go off on a tirade.

Here's the full length 1970s version in a tempo I remember celebrating a variety of multi-cultural, multi-racial people in a typically upbeat and Utopian version of the turbulent 1970s: