Pepsi Once Made This Retro Chocolate Drink To Rival Yoo-Hoo

Everyone knows of the long-standing rivalry between Pepsi and Coca-Cola, which is why you'll never find both on offer at fast food restaurants. But a lesser-known beef was that in 1966, Pepsi found itself facing Yoo-Hoo, a chocolate drink brand. Unlike Coke, Yoo-hoo had zero stake in the soft drink market, but its success in chocolate beverages caught Pepsi's attention. Eager to claim a share of the market, Pepsi launched its own cocoa-flavored drink, the Devil Shake. But while Yoo-hoo may not have had Coca-Cola's size or influence, a disastrous oversight taught Pepsi that sometimes it's best to stick to what you know.

Purportedly marketed as a "glug of fun" (per Reddit), the Devil Shake was your standard chocolate milk recipe, featuring non-fat milk mixed with cocoa powder and sugar. But while Pepsi had all the resources at its disposal, it overlooked one of the most important features of dairy-based products: shelf-life. Maybe this crucial oversight was due by Pepsi never needing to worry about the shelf-stability of its previous products, but when it looked into high-tech pasteurization equipment, it turned out the — exclusive — owner was Yoo-hoo itself.

Instead of accepting the loss and walking away with its dignity intact, Pepsi made the strange decision to partner with Yoo-hoo and offered a staggering one million dollars for the right to use its proprietary equipment. You don't have to be a business genius to know that paying your competition might not be the wisest of moves. But regardless of Pepsi's intentions, Yoo-hoo (unsurprisingly) had no problem with this arrangement and gladly accepted the cash, beginning to produce the Devil Shake alongside its own products.

Looking at Yoo-hoo's history, it's remarkable that Pepsi even tried to challenge it. Founded in the 1920s, Yoo-hoo steadily built a loyal following before exploding into a nationwide success in the 1950s. Much of that success came from its partnership with baseball player Yogi Berra, who famously dubbed it "America's no. 1 chocolate soft drink." He also appeared in Yoo-hoo advertisements and eventually became the company's vice president, helping turn the chocolate drink into a cultural phenomenon.

Many fans still look back on Yoo-hoo with a sense of childhood nostalgia (although it was briefly a famous cocktail ingredient in the '90s). The same, however, can't be said for the Devil Shake. No one is calling for its return, and most discourse about the drink revolves around how spectacularly it flopped. Consumer interest was almost nonexistent, and most people remained loyal to its competitor. The ill-fated product reportedly cost the soft drink giant a staggering $5 million. This must have been a nasty surprise for Pepsi, which had previously estimated that the Devil Shake would outperform Yoo-hoo by a five-to-three ratio (per The New York Times).  

The Devil Shake story isn't a happy one, and the drink never ended up getting a redemption arc. After suffering massive financial losses, Pepsi scrapped the entire project altogether in 1967 and returned to its familiar rivalry with Coca-Cola, which had released the first diet soda a few years prior. In a fitting twist of irony, the company sold the Devil Shake brand to Yoo-hoo for just a single dollar. But even Yoo-hoo couldn't salvage the failed drink, and it quickly disappeared from store shelves for good.