If you’re not outraged by what they’ve done to Lilt, you should be

Did you guys hear the news? The terrible, tragic news that will change the very social fabric of the United Kingdom for generations to come?

No, not that one. No, not that one either. (Wow, a lot of bad stuff happens in this country, doesn’t it? I guess I should be more specific.)

Brace yourselves: Coca-Cola (the company, not the drink) announced that it would immediately be discontinuing Lilt (the drink, not the affectation), and rebranding it as Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit.

To be clear, they’re still going to be producing the drink itself; but instead of selling it under the Lilt brand name, Coca-Cola will be selling it as part of the Fanta range of drinks, likely in part due to the fact that Fanta was about 17 times more profitable than Lilt by the end of 2022. Oh, and also because they made the switch in some markets three months ago and nobody even noticed until they announced it on Twitter.

I, for one, am outraged.

And I’m not alone. The drink trended on Twitter all day yesterday, with most users reacting to the news with a mixture of anger, disgust, and totally justified fear. Writer Steve O’Rourke tweeted: “I refuse to believe that Lilt will taste nearly as good out of a Fanta can”, while Paddy McGuinness expressed his frustration through the medium of Blade Runner quotes (the gentleman’s discourse): “All those moments will be lost in time. Like (clears throat) Lilt in rain. Time to die”.

Sure, I haven’t bought Lilt of my own volition in about a decade (which, as somebody with a caffeine allergy which limits my choice of soft drinks to about four brands, is a damning statistic in itself). And sure, part of me was under the impression that it had been discontinued in 2015. But it’s the principle of the thing.

By discontinuing Lilt, Coca-Cola is – in effect – discontinuing my childhood. I’m finally a man now. It took a lot to get me here, but I’ve finally arrived.

This must be how Gen X felt when they changed Opal Fruits to Starburst, or Marathon to Snickers, or Jif to Cif, or WWF to WWE. None of those brands ever recovered from having their names callously changed for absolutely no reason by big corporate. Every single one of them disappeared overnight, because frankly the new names just never caught on

(Well, apart from WWE, which just posted its most profitable year ever. And Snickers, which sponsored the SuperBowl last year. And actually, I thought Jif was a brand of peanut butter? Also, what’s an Opal Fruit?)

Actually now that I think about it, those brands all had pretty good reasons for changing their names in the first place: WWF is also the name of a wildlife organisation, which threatened to sue the wrestling company of the same name for copyright infringement, so they didn’t really have a choice. And those other changes were actually an attempt by those companies to bring parity to their brands – which were already known by other names in the US – in an increasingly globalised world (which is why they all happened at around the same time, when the internet was beginning to catch on as a mainstream utility and people from the UK were beginning to communicate more and more with people in other markets).

But none of that matters. What matters is that change is scary. Things should be constant, and static, and exactly the same as they were when I was a kid, because when things change it reminds me that I’m getting older every single day. What’s more important, Coca-Cola: making a few extra million on a drink that everybody forget existed in the late-90s, or preventing me from spiralling into an existential crisis? Don’t answer that; the court of public opinion is already firmly on my side.

The worst part of Lilt changing its name is that you just know that in 20 years’ time they’re going to bring it back for a quick nostalgia run. They’ll resurrect the slogan (which the internet informs me was “the totally tropical taste”) and run some classic Lilt adverts (file not found), and we’ll each get to stare into the void all over again. Only when that happens, we’ll all have thinning hair and be dealing with the consequences of catastrophic climate collapse, so in many ways it’ll be even worse. Just be glad that some of you reading this won’t be around to suffer that particular ignobility, since statistically many of you will already be dead.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll be stockpiling Lilt while I can, so I can pull out a bottle every now and then whenever it feels like the world is getting to be a little too much, and remind myself of its totally tropical taste (are we absolutely sure that was the slogan?).

I’m not going to let my past just fade away, as the past is often wont to do. I will not go gentle into that good night. I will not recognise the pineapple and grapefruit regime.