Prime number: 80 years of slush

Nick Illuzada

Wherever you stand on the great pulp vs. no pulp debate, if you prefer your OJ still a little bit frozen with a slight metallic tang, we’ve got some bad news for you. After 80 years, Minute Maid is discontinuing its canned frozen juice concentrates in the US and Canada. All five flavors—orange juice, lemonade, limeade, pink lemonade, and raspberry lemonade—will disappear from store shelves once they sell out. The story of frozen juice concentrate is a tale as American as Fievel’s: The product was born when the US army ordered 500,000 pounds of orange juice in 1945 from a company then known as Florida Foods—though the war ended before it could be delivered. The company made it commercially available in 1946 as Minute Maid. It caught on, and the Minute Maid brand was bought in 1960 by Coca-Cola, which didn’t bring out non-frozen juice under its banner until 1973. But now, consumer tastes have shifted away from the slushy stuff, and Coca-Cola said it was shifting its focus to what the people actually want. Although the outpouring of love for the nostalgic canned stuff on social media shows that tubular juice has still got its fans.