Kids love fruity candy. The Dutch love licorice. So if you are confectionary maker Van Melle and have a quite popular fruity chewy product, why not branch out and make a licoricy chewy counterpart?
The result, Droptella, didn’t live long past its initial launch in 1975. I don’t know whether that had something to do with these awful advertisments that ran in the last issues of Pep magazine before it became Eppo, but I’m pretty sure Lucky Luke creator Morris had anything to do with them.
It’s also remarkable that these ads don’t have any trademark or copyright disclaimer, which may have something to do with the fact that Lucky Luke ran in Pep. Similar ads with, equally ghastly, renditions of Popeye and Spirou did have such a disclaimer, and they were not part of the Pep lineup.
Like I said, Droptella didn’t last long (I distinctly remember it was bad). Fruittella is still going strong, and so is Van Melle, with a whole host of different brands.
