What Ever Happened To The Drink Tang?
For several generations during the last half of the 20th century, many of the most popular non-alcoholic drinks came in soluble powder form. From Kool-Aid to Taster's Choice coffee and Nestea iced tea, sweet, refreshing drinks were all about the convenience that post-war technology and your local grocer could manifest. For many people, Tang Instant Breakfast Drink was their first experience with powdered potables and was an important part of many a breakfast or after-school snack. But the 1980s and 1990s saw the growth of other packaged beverage options and trends for Millennial children, and Tang experienced a massive decline of sales over the next decade. Astronauts, by the way, also have a modern method of drinking liquids like Tang or cappucinos.
So, you would be forgiven for thinking that the breakfast drink quaffed by Buzz Aldrin and other early astronauts barely exists, if at all. In fact, Tang is doing just fine, particularly in Asia and Latin America. Where there were once only a couple of flavors (the original orange, along with grape and grapefruit), now there are many. Much the same way you can find a dozen or more flavors of KitKat in Japan because of who owns it, you can wander over to Brazil, China, or Costa Rica and discover the wide world of Tang.
Where Tang is still popular
While Millennials had their Lunchables and SunnyD, Gen-X had bologna sandwiches and Tang. The powdered orange crystals, introduced by General Foods Corporation in 1957, became synonymous with the Gemini and Apollo astronaut programs through the early 1970s. Rather than enduring the labor of squeezing fresh, expensive juice, or time spent thawing a tube of concentrate, all a working parent or solo latchkey kid had to do in the '60s, '70s, and '80s was add a couple spoonfuls of the sweetened powder into a glass of water and stir.
Sales in the United States declined rapidly into the 2000s as families and kids shifted to new brands and delivery methods. But parent company Kraft General Foods (General Foods and Kraft merged in 1989 under Philip Morris' umbrella, then spun off as Mondelez International), found it was doing great in Latin America and shifted its marketing focus and distribution in 2008. By 2009, Tang was a $750 million business, largely in Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe. It reached $1 billion by 2013, and has since dropped back to about $700 million as of 2018.
Of course, not everyone these days is interested in Tang the drink. An energetic dance style called tang or tangin' is popular on TikTok. Though there are a number of recent videos, the move goes back at least to 2012 and perhaps as early as 2007.
What Tang looks like now
Apart from shifting marketing dollars internationally, Kraft made two major changes in how Tang was packaged and distributed outside of North America. First the brand shifted away from 18-ounce jars to packets, which were much more popular. Second they expanded the available flavors way beyond a couple basic fruits. Today you can find numerous flavors, including Coco Plus Buko Pandan in the Philippines, Horchata throughout Latin America, and a wide variety of blends like orange/passion fruit/strawberry. You can even find good old grape flavor again.
When you start looking, you'll find Tang everywhere. You can order Horchata-flavored Tang online, or try the Guayaba (guava) version. According to Mondelez, in the Middle East, more than half of all its Tang sales happen during the six weeks of Ramadan (during iftar, the nightly breaking of the day's fast). And in case you were wondering, astronauts were still drinking Tang (which they dub an "orange flavored drink" to avoid naming brands) in the mid-1990s, and perhaps as recently as 2014 based on a Bill Nye interview with former astronaut Mike Massimino.