Jolly Good Soda was dead. Then a family legacy brought the Wisconsin-made drink back.

RANDOM LAKE - Before John Rassel's uncle passed away in 2013, the two had a long conversation about a brand of soda that didn't exist anymore. Bruce Krier was president of Krier Foods, the packaging company that had created the popular Wisconsin-based soda brand.

Jolly Good Soda had been a Wisconsin staple for almost four decades. But by that point, it had been out of production for six years.

The pair spoke about the rise in popularity of craft brewing and the dedication to Wisconsin-produced products throughout the state. They talked about the other vintage products that were coming back and having success. And they spoke of Krier's own defunct soda brand. Could it sell again?

Jolly Good Soda came in cola, root beer and lemon lime flavors. But it also came in cream soda, strawberry, ginger ale, orange, "sour pow'r" and cherry. And for thousands of Wisconsinites who grew up in the 1980s and '90s its block-lettered logo and sprightly commercial jingle are nostalgically linked to their childhoods. By the 1990s and early 2000s, though, pressure from large national brands and other changes to the business had pushed many regional sodas under. Jolly Good had been one of the casualties. Its rebirth would be a testament to the connection many in Wisconsin still felt for this particular brand of fizzy, sugary drink. 

With their 2013 conversation, Rassel's uncle put the idea of a comeback in the mind of his nephew. Two years later, as the new president of the Wisconsin company his family has held for generations, Rassel decided to act on it.

A soda packaging business that decided to try making its own

Krier Foods started packaging sodas in the 1920s, and for a brief period in the '60s packaged Coca-Cola in cans. That was when, Rassel said, the business's leaders got a taste for how profitable the soda business could be. 

"My grandpa, Ray Krier, decided to launch Krier Foods' own brand of soda, and that gave birth to Jolly Good," Rassel said. The company launched the brand in the late '70s.

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Today, Krier Foods is known for being a contract packaging facility that packages many nationally known soda brands. Soda and juice companies all over the country send Krier Foods the recipes for their products and Krier Foods makes the drinks, seals them in labeled cans and sends them back to the companies to be sold. 

Inside the factory footprints line the floor of where workers and visitors can step because every inch of the factory is used for storage of empty cans ready to be filled or filled cans ready to shipped out. Overhead, the production lines weave throughout the facility with quiet whizzes of a company that has been around for decades. 

The history of Krier Foods goes back to 1913. Rassel's great-great-grandfather — his mother is a Krier, making him the fifth generation of the family to lead the company — started the business as a vegetable grower and processor in Belgium. In the 1920s, the family moved the business from its Belgian facility to Random Lake, where it is still based, and expanded into packaging for soda brands.

Not that the move was easy. 

"The first day of production, a tornado came through and took it out. So they had to build the facility twice," Rassel said of the new facility.

'We made ice cream floats of different flavors'

Rassel said that initially, Jolly Good Soda was meant to lend year-round stability to their business. Krier Foods would process vegetables in the summer, package soda in the winter. Jolly Good was a part of the business they could sell all year long.

When the brand took off, though, it did more than just stabilize the business. It fueled Krier's growth for decades.

Through a dedicated sales team, Jolly Good sold at major grocery stores throughout Wisconsin. It expanded from Wisconsin to areas just south of the border in Illinois as well as border cities in Iowa.

"I didn't know at the time that it was a Wisconsin thing. I imagined everyone across the country drank Jolly Good Soda,"  Julie Brefczynski-Lewis said. "Now I realize it was kind of special."

Brefczynski-Lewis grew up in Manitowoc in the '70s and '80s. She is now a research scientist at a university in West Virginia.

"It was a staple when we had soda, and all summer long to go with ice cream," Brefczynski-Lewis said. "We made ice cream floats of different flavors."

Brefczynski-Lewis was one of dozens of readers who responded to social media requests from USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin for readers to share what they remember about the soda. 

"I went to college in Madison so a lot of people were familiar with it. But a lot of folks who were from out of state had no clue what we were talking about," said another reader, Julie Nault.

Nault grew up in Marinette and remembers having Jolly Good Soda as a child at every family gathering.

"I have an older brother, he's only two years older than me, and we would definitely kind of get into battle over certain flavors," Nault said. "At one point I found where he stashed the regular two cans of root beer and cream soda."

Jake Timm, who grew up in Manawa in the '90s, remembered being the only one in his group of friends who loved the sour pow'r variety.

Unlike traditional sodas at the time, Jolly Good Soda didn’t come in a pack of one flavor. They were sold by the can, so in order to make a six-pack, the buyer needed to select his or her preferred flavors.

"The flavors are what made it exciting," said Mike Huberty, who grew up in the Milwaukee area in the early '80s.

Huberty said his mom had a knack for winning radio contests, and whenever she won a prize, there was also a gift card for a case of Jolly Good Soda. His favorite flavor: grape.

Bright cans with vibrant packaging and funky names attracted kids (and parents), but another selling point for Jolly Good Soda was its affordability.

Timm and his buddies used to buy their cans for a quarter apiece.

"We'd ride our bikes down to the IGA in town," he said. "It was the cheapest thing we could get with our quarters."

All those memories are a source of some pride, now, for Rassel. 

"As you talk to the families that grew up with it, it became more than just a soda," Rassel said. "It became an experience."

Jolly Good ran out of shelf space

Business fortunes for Jolly Good Soda changed in the early 2000s.

"The brand was still strong," Rassel said. "Jolly Good was still selling off the shelves, but it was getting tougher and tougher to compete just based on some of the shelving contracts that these grocery stores were asking for."

He said that while the brand was still doing well on the consumer side, the high price of putting the product on shelves made it difficult for the company, and its owners at the time started to question the long-term viability of the soda. Meanwhile, the other side of Krier's business, Rassel said, was growing. 

"The production facility was getting busier and busier, with more contract packaging opportunities," he said.

After years of declining market share, the company stopped production of the brand in 2007.

The last case of Jolly Good's first run was produced in April of that year. 

"Once that last case was produced, we began talking to our distributors saying 'This is our inventory,'" Rassel said. "'Once this is gone, we're not going to backfill.'" 

Jolly Good Soda was no more.

Soda's rebirth was tribute to a dream uncle and nephew shared

Rassel was always interested in business but he wasn't sure where that would lead him after college. 

"My uncle got terminally ill while I was in college and sat down with me and said, 'Listen, if you're going to do anything on your own, why don't you just come take a look at what we're doing now?'" Rassel said.

After he graduated from college in 2004, he worked at the company for nine years.

Before his uncle died, he and Rassel had that conversation about the family's soda brand. It stuck with Rassel that bringing the soda back "it was something that my uncle and I had discussed."

Bruce Krier would die before the idea was realized. But after his death, Rassel felt that reviving the band would be a great homage to the man who led Krier Foods for 25 years.

"It was something that I at least wanted to experiment with," he said.

Bruce Krier died in 2013 and the business stayed in the family for two years before Rassel bought it in 2015 and took over as president. 

Using the original recipes, Rassel brought back a small number of the sodas. They tested sales in local Piggly Wiggly grocery stores the same year.

The response was astounding. Following a July 2016 report by USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin about the soda's rebirth, Rassel said he still gets calls about where to purchase it, and the company is working on getting it on more shelves due to demand.

"At this time we've run a really grassroots campaign. We don't have salesmen out there pounding the pavement," he said.

In 2018, Krier Foods sold 138,000 12-pack cases of Jolly Good Soda.

Many are stoked to see their childhood soda back in stores. Some who drank it as kids are excited to share the soda with their own children. 

Eight of the original flavors are now available: grape, cherry, pina colada, blue raspberry, sour pow'r, fruit punch, cream soda and orange. Six diet flavors — cherry, cream soda, grape, orange, sour pow'r and fruit punch — are also available.

"I haven't grabbed one since it came back but if I saw it at the store, if I was looking for soda, I would go 'That's cool' and grab one of those," Timm said.

While the taste is the same, there has been an upgrade in design and presentation. The colors are still vibrant oranges and blues but now Jolly Good cans have a sleeker feel to them.

Other aspects have also been modernized. At the bottom of original Jolly Good cans, there were jokes. Thirsty consumers would gulp down their favorite flavors to get to the joke. Now, because of new manufacturing processes for soda cans, the jokes can no longer be printed there.

But that doesn't mean there aren't any more jokes. The marketing team for Jolly Good now has an Instagram page where they post daily jokes.

Rassel says he's excited that others are happy about the re-launch. He says there are a number of ideas they're floating with regards to Jolly Good and he's excited about the future of the soda brand.

"It's just humbling that our family is able to be a part of everyone else's family," he said.

Where to buy Jolly Good:

• Trig's
• Piggly Wiggly
• Sendik's
• Woodman's Markets 
• jollygoodsoda.com