At one point, Four Loko was the king of party drinks. The original formula included caffeine and high alcohol content which made it the goto for anyone looking to get smashed relatively quick. And for a while it was great if you liked the taste of gasoline with a hint of artificial flavor. But after the drink entered the mainstream and nicknamed “blackout in a can” by the media, US lawmakers clutched their pearls and banned the formula because the US hates people having fun. Four Loko hasn’t been the same ever since.
Now the brand is looking to make a comeback after hard seltzer started trending this summer. The current king of the game, the PSL of seltzers, is White Claw with an ABV of 5% and a 50% overall market share. With the debut of Four Loko’s own hard seltzer, the brand is looking to dunk White Claw’s proverbial head in the toilet by bumping their seltzer ABV to 14%. If White Claw is the drink of choice for barely legal white girls, then Four Loko aims to be the drink of choice for every type of bro out there.
Hard Seltzers ran so we could fly pic.twitter.com/g5ilBIyhl4
— Four Loko (@fourloko) August 13, 2019
The brand recognition, high alcohol content and clever marketing might let Four Loko’s seltzer eat away at White Claw’s market share. That or Four Loko could somehow still make a seltzer taste like 87 unleaded and be relegated to a novelty where the only time you’d see someone drinking it is if it’s preceded by the phrase, “Slam that s**t, you pussy!”