On the way home from grabbing a quick bite at In-n-Out Burger, I suddenly thought of a popular 7Up cartoon character in Asia back in the 90s. To my amazement, Grace blurbed out “Fido Dido” in a flash. That name brought a flashback of memories from the 90s. Indeed, that was the name of the 7Up mascot.
Often associated with 7Up’s brand identity, Fido Dido was probably the most recognizable character in beverage marketing campaigns. Unfortunately the campaign did not run in the United States, home country of 7Up. It was a success in almost all of Asia, over taking Sprite by a long stretch. Thanks to Fido Dido, 7Up is still probably the most popular lemon-flavored pop soda there. Whereas in the U.S., 7Up has been increasingly more scarce to come by due to Pepsi’s distribution strategy (a poor one at that), and its biased towards a brand Pepsico started, Sierra Mist (which in my opinion, is not as good as 7Up) also didn’t help the shrinking market presence of 7Up.
The Americans missed out on a global phenomenon of this skinny bloke. I don’t think I have seen anything in the U.S. beverage industry that could match the success of 7Up’s Fido Dido with which it took the rest of the world by storm. Pepsi owes its success of 7Up in Asia to Fido Dido.