The Python Picked The Passionfruit

January 2nd may be too soon for some folks to start their year’s pubbing. Not so for a small band of hardy troopers last night - albeit each one having a soft drink infront of them. The conversation took its natural course, and we fell to discussing which five fruits constituted the popular carton-shaped drink Five Alive. Various guesses were made but I can now reveal that the classic flavour quintet is in fact orange, lemon, grapefruit, lime and tangerine. Thrilling! Alas only one of our party guessed correctly, the remainder declaring that Five Alive ’should have had a theme song, like Um Bongo’, to aid later ingredient recollection. Um Bongo of course is not the national drink of the Congo, a missed opportunity there. It probably isn’t even available in the Congo. Of course, if Libby’s were to venture forth into marketing the drink to either central African republic going by that name or even the entirety of the Congo river basin, the words of the song could be changed to “Um Bongo, Um Bongo, now widely available in the Congo.” Personally I wouldn’t change a thing, as apparently the original Um Bongo theme was sung by Tony Jackson, the singer from Rage! For younger readers Rage got to number 4 in 1992 with a bosh cover of Bryan Adams’ Run To You. Hurrah!

1. Pete on January 4th, 2007

   And you can hear the Um Bongo theme here:
   http://www.umbongo.com/mp3/um_bongo_lo.mp3

   And watch the (short version) of the advert here:
   http://www.umbongo.com/mp3/um_bongo_lo.mp3

   Though as that ad has the http://www.ubongo.com logo at the end it appears this has resurfaced for a new eco-friendly generation who appreciate fairtrade goods and packages which have been painted by parrots.

   Um Bongo now seems to be owned by the Gerber Juice Company too: who they? And losers. I went to the pub on January 1st!

2. Kat on January 4th, 2007

   The Quicktime video is actually here: http://www.umbongo.com/video/umbongo.mov - I think Pete’s copy/paste has gone awry above.

   Gerber Juice Co own Libbys and always has done, I think.

3. FT's Pete Baran on January 4th, 2007

   Apologies for scratty cut’n'pasting.

   Um Bongo was way ahead of the curve of smoothies and juce bars.

4. FT's pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør on January 7th, 2007

   now we need to establish the eight vegetables in V8!

5. Steve Goswell on February 26th, 2007

   Gerber Juice do not OWN either of these.
   Both of these products are produced under lience in the UK by Gerber Juice, but Gerber do not own them.

6. Kat on February 26th, 2007

   Thanks for that Steve. Once again the gaping holes in my research have been teased open by the grubby fingers of Fact.

7. Pete on February 26th, 2007

   I bet there is some sort of Libby’s Copyright Juice Recipe Division they spub off on original take-over.