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Product type | Root beer |
---|---|
Owner | PepsiCo (1986–present) |
Produced by | New Century Beverage Co. |
Country | U.S. |
Introduced | 1940 |
Previous owners | Belfast Beverage Co. |
Website | pepsico.com/mugrootbeer |
Mug Root Beer is an American brand of root beer that was originally produced in 1940 under the name Belfast Root Beer. It is now made by New Century Beverage Company of San Francisco, California, which was acquired by PepsiCo in 1986. [1] [2]
Mug Root Beer was originally sold under the name Belfast Root Beer in 1940 by the Belfast Beverage Company in San Francisco, California. The company had been known for making sparkling water and ginger ale since 1877. [3] Belfast Beverage Company was purchased around 1925 by New Century Beverage Company, which had successfully launched Crush Soda in 1918.
In 1936, New Century Beverage Company gained permission to franchise Pepsi-Cola products, and about four years later, it launched Belfast Root Beer. An advertisement for Belfast Root Beer appears as early as 1947. [4] According to the San Francisco Examiner, the catchphrase, 'You haven't tasted Root Beer like this in years!' filled 1950s newspaper advertisements." [3] An advertisement for Belfast Old Fashioned Mug Root Beer appears as early as 1952. [5] In the 1950s, the soda took on the title Belfast Old Fashioned Mug Root Beer before its name was eventually shortened to Mug Root Beer. [3]
In the late 1960s, Sugar Free Mug (now Diet Mug Root Beer) was introduced. [6] Mug Cream Soda and Diet Mug Cream Soda were later introduced, but they are not as widely available. Mug was purchased by Pepsi in 1986, and replaced On-Tap Draft Style Root Beer as Pepsi's root beer brand. [6] Mug Root Beer is manufactured by independent bottlers under the authority of New Century Beverage Company.
Since Mug Root Beer's acquisition by PepsiCo in 1986, the company's mascot has been a bulldog named "Dog" holding a mug of Mug Root Beer. [3] PepsiCo stopped producing its sodas in San Francisco in the early 1990s. [3]
Moxie is a brand of carbonated beverage that is among the first mass-produced soft drinks in the United States. It was created around 1876 by Augustin Thompson as a patent medicine called "Moxie Nerve Food" and was produced in Lowell, Massachusetts. The sweet soda is similar to root beer, but with a bitter aftertaste. It is flavored with gentian root extract, an extremely bitter substance commonly used in herbal medicine.
Root beer is a sweet North American soft drink traditionally made using the root bark of the sassafras tree Sassafras albidum or the vine of Smilax ornata as the primary flavor. Root beer is typically, but not exclusively, non-alcoholic, caffeine-free, sweet, and carbonated. Like cola, it usually has a thick and foamy head. A common use is to add vanilla ice cream to make a root beer float.
Cream soda is a sweet soft drink. Generally flavored with vanilla and based on the taste of an ice cream float, a wide range of variations can be found worldwide.
Barq's is an American brand of root beer created by Edward Barq and bottled since the beginning of the 20th century. It is owned by the Coca-Cola Company. It was known as "Barq's Famous Olde Tyme Root Beer" until 2012. Some of its formulations contain caffeine.
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A&W Root Beer is an American brand of root beer that was founded in 1919 by Roy W. Allen and primarily available in the United States and Canada. Allen partnered with Frank Wright in 1922, creating the A&W brand and inspiring a chain of A&W Restaurants founded that year. Originally, A&W Root Beer sold for five cents.
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Dad's Root Beer is an American brand of root beer that was created in Chicago in 1937 by Ely Klapman and Barney Berns. It is currently owned by Hedinger Brands, LLC, and sold and marketed by the Dad's Root Beer Company LLC.
Frostie Root Beer is an American brand of root beer that was originally produced in 1939 by The Frostie Beverage Company of Catonsville, Maryland, owned by George Rackensperger. In 1971, Frostie Enterprises, as the parent company was known, purchased a competing rootbeer brand and drive-in chain, Stewart's Restaurants. Another expansion happened in 1974, when Frostie Enterprises purchased the Dog n Suds Root Beer Drive-in and brand.
Monster Beverage Corporation is an American beverage company that manufactures energy drinks including Monster Energy, Relentless, Reign and Burn. The company was originally founded as Hansen's in 1935 in Southern California, originally selling juice products. The company renamed itself as Monster Beverage in 2012.
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Bundaberg Brewed Drinks Pty Ltd is an Australian family-owned business that brews non-alcoholic beverages. Based in Bundaberg, Queensland, the company exports to over 61 countries across the globe and is most known for ginger beer and other carbonated beverages.
Towne Club is a local brand of soft drink produced and sold primarily in the metropolitan area of Detroit, Michigan. It is also sold in Flint, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Saginaw, Traverse City, Tampa, Florida, Indianapolis, Indiana, Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio at one time.
Mason's Old Fashioned Root Beer is an American brand of root beer. It is owned by the Monarch Beverage Company of Atlanta, Georgia, but is not widely distributed.
Pepsi Spire is a touch screen soda fountain introduced by PepsiCo in 2014. The Spire's main competitor is the Coca-Cola Freestyle. Currently, Spire is available to retailers in two models, 2.0 and 5.0. It was designed by the Japanese machinery company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Seaman's Beverages was a family-run business involved in the manufacturing of carbonated beverages. It was established in 1939 by F.R. Seaman, and operated independently until 2002 where it was sold to The Pepsi Bottling Group. Only two of the beverage flavours survived into the modern era, and the brand was finally discontinued in 2020.
At that point, Mug Root Beer became part of the Pepsi family, which later got rid of the root beer vessel completely and opted for a bulldog — quirkily named "Dog" — as its new soda mascot.