Brownie Chocolate Drink
When I bought protein powder, I purchased two flavors: Optimum’s Extreme Chocolate Milk and Dymatize’s Fruity Pebbles. I’ve mixed the Optimum’s in peanut butter and made protein ice cream, but when it comes to shakes, I’ve been all about the Fruity Pebbles. It tastes just like the leftover milk when you eat some Fruity Pebbles, and since that’s my all-time favorite cereal it really worked for me. Sadly, Dymatize realizes what a great flavor they got, and they price them accordingly.
Knowing that I’m almost out of the Fruity Pebbles powder, I decided to finally mix up some Extreme Chocolate Milk with my creatine and almond milk. I took a swig and I immediately thought of YooHoo. But then as I continued to drink it, I realized there was another flavor this more seriously resembled and that was a drink I have not though of since the 80’s or 90’s, Brownie Chocolate.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of information about Brownie Chocolate online, but here is what I dug up.
Brownie Chocolate was a whey-based chocolate drink, which makes sense why my whey protein reminded me of it. It was produced before the 1950’s an up until 2007, when it was discontinued. The drink was sold primarily in the south in States such as Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, and Indiana. It was usually found in drink machines that stocked RC Cola or Cheerwine, since it wasn’t bottled by Pepsi or Coke.
Brownie was originally released in glass bottles but did make an appearance in cans. The mascot was an elf.
The ingredients included: water, sugar, non-fat dry milk, solid cocoa, imitation flavor and stabilizer. It was canned by Monarch-NuGrape Company out of Doraville, GA and packed by the Custom Chocolate Company in Orlando, Florida.
Most of the bottles and signs I’ve found online are from what I had to imagine is the 1950’s-1970’s. The logo I’m more familiar with was the one from the 80’s and 90’s, which I could only find on a few hats.
The bottles in the 80’s, were not your traditional soda bottles, but short, fat bottles similar to what Pepsi came in during the 1980s. Monarch-NuGrape had another chocolate beverage called Chocolate Solider that was sold in a similar shaped bottle.
I preferred both Brownie and Chocolate Solider to YooHoo but was never a chocolate soda fan. I don’t think I’ve tasted a Yoohoo since my teenage years, and I would wager the last time I had a Brownie or Chocolate Solider was sometime in the mid-1990’s.
Oh wow. Not so much nostalgia for Brownie, but that picture of the Chocolate Soldier bottle really takes me back.
Brownie chocolate was carried by Pepsi in some markets. I worked routes in Wilmington NC and it was a good seller. My biggest problem was the coke man would follow me and drink a half a case a day if he could.
Ha! Thats so funny! I live near Raleigh so I totally remember it being sold all throughout North Carolina in the 80s and 90s. I didn’t realize Pepsi distributed it. Thanks for commenting!
Thanks for posting! We are clearing our land to build a house and found among other things bottles! Your post helped me identify one as a Chocolate Soldier!
Hi Nancy, You’re welcome. I’m glad I could be some help!
I was a 60’s kid. Grew up with the Brownie. I never even saw a Yoohoo until the 80’s. I tried Yoohoo then a couple of times and for me it didn’t hold a candle to Brownie even though I thought it was okay. Brownie was just different and then I started noticing it was getting hard to find and eventually just disappeared. Whenever I see a Yoohoo in stores, I automatically get mad because, thats the one ,to me, that should have been discontinued. I even remember that the bottles in the 60’s and 70’s had cork under the caps. The reason I found this thread is because I googled if they were still available somewhere. I feel the same way about another discontinued product, the Lance Big Town, which was like a Moon Pie but, way better. Usually found in vending machines and convenience store shelves. Does anyone remember those?