Save a Dying Brand? Send it into Space.

Today’s history lesson involves a 50-year-old brand that nearly didn’t make its five-year anniversary. Then, due to either extraordinary strategic forethought, or just dumb luck, the brand made it’s way onto a NASA spaceflight, and the rest is history. Literally.

Tang was, and is, a kind of weird powdered soft drink mix, originally marketed, in 1959, as a breakfast drink.

General Foods marketed it, and was about to give up because consumers didn’t really “get” it.

Then a NASA engineer working on the Gemini flights discovered a chemical reaction in the life support module that produced water as a byproduct. Nasty-tasting chemical-reaction water, which the astronauts refused to drink.

So they added Tang.

And GF was smart and nimble enough to advertise the hell out of it.

Now, 50 years later, Tang is marketed by Kraft, vitamin-fortified and has a huge following in Brazil, Mexico and China. It comes in 38 flavors, many of them specific to the regions.

And while it ain’t no Gatorade, it has a niche, and a loyal following, many of whom blog about it’s multi-functional uses as a cocktail (Jim Beam and Tang = Moonshot), a dishwashing detergent, and even an explosive (i swear it’s true; wikipedia says so).

But if it wasn’t for the fluke byproduct of the early space program, there’s a good chance Tang wouldn’t have made it out of the sixties.

One more note: the guy who invented it, Bill Mitchell, later invented Pop Rocks.

We so owe that guy . . .