Orbitz was a non-carbonated fruit-flavored beverage produced by The Clearly Food & Beverage Company of Canada, makers of Clearly Canadian. The drink was sold in five[1] flavors, and made with small floating edible fruit-flavored jelly beads. Orbitz was marketed as a "texturally enhanced alternative beverage" but some consumers compared it to a potable lava lamp.[2][3]
It was introduced 1996 and marketed as a “scientific marvel”.[4][5][6] It was discontinued by early 1999.[7][8]
Post-discontinuation
The product's domain name was bought by the Internet-based travel agency named Orbitz.
Unopened bottles from the drink's original launch have become a collector's item, appearing on online auction websites worth $30-$50 on online sales. The Clearly Food & Beverage Company states that the proprietary equipment that made Orbitz broke down and the trademark is no longer owned by the company.[2]
Ingredients
The small balls floated due to their nearly equal density to the surrounding liquid, and remained suspended with the assistance of gellan gum. The gellan gum provided a support matrix and had a visual clarity approaching that of water, which increased with the addition of sugar. The gellan gum created a very weak yield stress which has been measured to be ~0.04 Pa.[9]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
