Fantastic

This week the WBC challenge is "Urban", so here is a tangent.

It is an urban myth that Fanta was created by Coca Cola in order to enable the company to sell soft drinks to the Nazis during World War II so as not to worry about anyone seeing Hitler "having a coke and a smile."

Checking this out however shows there is a story here which is fairly innocuous.

Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Coca-Cola's only unqualified success on the international scene was its bottling operations in Germany.

The war changed that and with no means of getting ingredients, the man in charge, Max Keith stopped making Coca-Cola and began marketing an entirely new light-colored beverage that resembled ginger ale.

Fanta came by its name thanks to Keith's contest to employees to christen the beverage. He told them to let their Fantasie, German for fantasy, run wild. Veteran salesman Joe Knipp immediately blurted out "Fanta".

So Max wasn't a Nazi, apparently, just trying to keep the factory going and people employed during the war. Sort of, but not much like Mr Schindler, subject of a previous blip.

So here is Oscar with a bit of shameless product placement to illustrate the urban myth.