No-Cal Soda
Encyclopedia
History
Hyman Kirsch and his son Morris, both RussianRussians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
immigrants living in the Williamsburg
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Williamsburg is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, bordering Greenpoint to the north, Bedford-Stuyvesant to the south, Bushwick to the east and the East River to the west. The neighborhood is part of Brooklyn Community Board 1. The neighborhood is served by the NYPD's 90th ...
section of Brooklyn, New York, began selling sodas in 1904. Their involvement with the Jewish Sanitarium for Chronic Disease (now known as Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center), led them to the invention of a sugar-free drink to meet the needs of the hospital’s diabetic patients.
Hyman and Morris developed a line of carbonated, sugar-free, zero-calorie soft drinks which they called No-Cal, that they began selling in 1952. The soda was produced at the company’s plant in College Point, Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....
, New York.
No-Cal was known for special flavors like chocolate and black cherry.
Advertising
No-Cal used up-and-coming Hollywood starlets such as Kim NovakKim Novak
Kim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...
and Julie Adams
Julie Adams
Julie Adams is an American film and television actress, sometimes credited as Julia Adams or Betty Adams.-Life and career:...
in their print ads. Cartoonist
Cartoonist
A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...
Stan Goldberg
Stan Goldberg
Stan Goldberg is an American comic book artist best known for his work as a flagship artist of Archie Comics and as a Marvel Comics' 1960s colorist, who helped design the original color schemes of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and other major characters.-Career:Stan Goldberg began work in the...
became famous for his classic No-Cal pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
billboard.
Decline and revival
As major soda producers such as the Coca Cola Company and PepsicoPepsiCo
PepsiCo Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Purchase, New York, United States, with interests in the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of grain-based snack foods, beverages, and other products. PepsiCo was formed in 1965 with the merger of the Pepsi-Cola Company...
launched their own diet brands in the 1960s, No-Cal fond it hard to compete, lost market share, and slowly disappeared.