Darren Rovell's Gatorade blog

Buy Gatorade Pace Car!

This is the perfect gift for a Gatorade fan -- who has at least $75,000 to blow. Yes, this is the 2006 Corvette Gatorade Duel Pace Car driven at the Daytona 500. It's on eBay right now and someone has actually bid $75,000 on it. It says up top that it doesn't meet the reserve and you have five days to get in on this. The car is tricked out with all these Rain decals, which makes sense because Rain pretty much launched to the world this weekend. This is the second Gatorade car I've seen on eBay over the years, I couldn't convince myself to round up the $60,000 to get the Gatorade Hummer. If you want to bid, here's the link: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Chevrolet-Corvette-2006-Corvette-Gatorade-Duel-Pace-Car_W0QQcmdZViewItemQQcategoryZ6168QQitemZ4620671077QQrdZ1

Gatorade Lemonade Named "New Product Pacesetter"

A company called Information Resources has announced that Gatorade Lemonade is among the "Top 10 New Product Pacesetters," a ranking of the most successful new consumer package goods brands. Here is the complete list, which is ranked by Year One dollar sales across food, drug and mass channels, excluding Wal-Mart.)

2005 New Product Pacesetters: Top 10 Food & Beverage Brands

1. Slim-Fast Optima Diet Line              $166 million

2. Budweiser Select beer                     $123 million

3. Frito Lay Light salty snacks             $112 million

4. Nabisco 100 Calorie Packs              $107 million

5. Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper soda        $107 million

6. Kraft Carb Well multi-category line    $89 million

7. Bertolli Dinner For Two                     $88 million

8. Gatorade Lemonade                        $80 million

9. Coke C2 mid-calorie soda                $77 million

10. Banquet Crock-Pot Classics          $71 million

More Chocolate Milk Fallout

In making sure to keep on this chocolate milk study, I came across some interesting words in the Los Angeles Times yesterday. To recap, a recent study showed that chocolate milk was very effective as a post-workout recovery drink. But Robert Portman, whose company PacificHealth Labs makes EnduroxR4, pointed out that the Milk industry funded the report. "That's like a cigarette manufacturer concluding that smoking is good for you," Portman told the Times. Portman said that some of the results "contradict the large body of research highlighting the importance of carbohydrates." Bob Murray, director of the Gatorade Sports Science Institute told the paper, 'It's a matter of what the beverages were designed for. I wouldn't put Gatorade on my cereal."

New Hispanic Gatorade Commercial

I'm a sports writer and I've never -- never -- heard of Rolando Cantu. Well, Rolando Cantu is now a Gatorade athlete. Gatorade announced on Monday that will debut new spanish advertising featuring Cantu, the first player from a Mexican university to play in the NFL. The new spot, called “Chosen”, tells the story of Cantu’s entry into the league and the challenges he faced along the way to the roster of the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals. The spot, Cantu tells his story as he lines up for action on the Cardinals’ practice field. As he prepares for the snap, he recounts how people told him he wasn’t big enough or good enough to play in the NFL and how the game was too complicated for him to succeed. However, as the ball is snapped, those assumptions are squashed as Cantu dominates the play.

“We celebrate Rolando Cantu’s remarkable road to the NFL because of his continuing passion and dedication,” said Cindy Alston, vice president, communications and equity development for Gatorade, in a statement. “Honoring his achievement is a fitting tribute to all athletes who have overcome challenges to play at the highest level of their sport.”

“I am proud to be the star of my very own Gatorade commercial,” Cantu said. “Hopefully, my story will inspire future generations of athletes, including young Hispanic athletes around the U.S., to pursue their dreams of playing professional sports.”

Cantu’s dream began in 1996 as he watched the NFL’s American Bowl in his hometown of Monterrey, Mexico. Unable to play football until his teens due to weight restrictions, Cantu didn’t play his first snap until junior high. By 2003, Cantu was participating in the National Player Mini Camp in Tampa Bay, Florida and was allocated to the Berlin Thunder of NFL Europe. He helped Berlin win the NFL Europe World Bowl that summer and became one of four players allocated to an NFL team as part of the inaugural NFL International Development Practice Squad program. After spending much of 2005 on the Arizona Cardinals practice squad, Cantu was promoted to the team’s active playing roster earlier this year and took the field against the Indianapolis Colts. The ad debuts nationwide on Monday on Telemundo, Telefutura, Univision, GolTV, and Azteca America networks. The new commercial was created by Dieste Harmel & Partners and directed by Josh Taft.

Will MLS Players Drink Red Bull?

I'm not sure all of you have heard about this yet, but Red Bull bought a soccer team. They are changing the name of the MLS team to Red Bull New York and the new stadium that will be built in 2008 will be called Red Bull Arena. So with the energy drink market already pervasive in the locker rooms, the question now be comes will the players from Red Bull New York drink Red Bull on the sidelines? You'd have to think so, but I'm not sure how long Gatorade's deal last and I'm not sure if Gatorade considers this a violation of their exclusivity. Also, the great blog Adfreak featured a part of Red Bull's FAQ that asked: Is Red Bull Energy Drink suitable as a fluid replacement. And this is what it said: No. Red Bull Energy Drink is an energy drink. It has not been reformulated to deliver re-hydration. Adequate fluid intake is critical during intense and long lasting physical performance...As Red Bull Energy Drink has not been formulated to deliver re-hydration, we encourage people who engage in sports also to drink lots of water during intense exercise." Why couldn't I quote this all from Red Bull's Web site. Well, for some reason, it doesn't appear to be there anymore. If I'm missing something, let me know.

Gatorade And Tooth Erosion

Suffice it to say it's been a bad month for Gatorade from a scientific perspective. Not that anything bad has happened, it' s just that the chocolate milk study resurfaced and now there's been yet another study on tooth erosion. A University of Iowa researcher named Leslie A. Ehlen presented findings of his tooth decay study on Thursday at the annual meeting of the American Association for Dental Research. Ehlen's task was to find out exactly how much damage sodas, energy drinks and sports drinks did to teeth. "I don't think everybody realizes how erosive these things are, especially Gatorade and Red Bull," Ehlen told WebMD. "People need to be aware that all sorts of beverages can be causing dental erosion." Ehlen and his colleagues dunked the teeth into containers filled with Gatorade, Red Bull, Coke, Diet Coke and apple juice. They refilled the containers every five hours for a total of 25 hours. The study found that Gatorade was most corrosive on the enamel and the roots of the teeth, even though the other drinks contain more sugar. This mirrors a study done last year by the University of Maryland, which did the soaking for two weeks. But Gatorade officials are quick to say that the data is misleading because it doesn't simulate real world tooth decay. Two studies, at least one funded by Gatorade, convey that Gatorade not only doesn't have a significantly higher risk factor, but that athletes who drink Gatorade had the same amount of decay as non-users.

Here's Gatorade's new response to the University of Iowa study: "This new study does NOT replicate a real-world scenario. The teeth were studied outside of the mouth (soaked in beverages for 25 hours!), so the study doesn't take into account the protective effect of saliva and the natural biological system."

Here's a response from the American Beverage Association: "There is no single cause of dental erosion and there are numerous factors that can impact dental erosion besides various foods and beverages. Individual susceptibility to dental erosion varies depending on a person's behavior, lifestyle, diet and genetic make-up. Furthermore, there are numerous biological and behavioral factors that can help protect against dental erosion that were not present in the study, such as saliva, which has both diluting and buffering effects, intake of calcium, phosphate and possibly fluoride, in addition to good dental hygiene."

A Sports Drink Spiking Epidemic

Over the past couple weeks, I've written over and over again about Gatorade spikings. Well, I can't confirm that there was one Gatorade involved here (it's not exactly common in France), but this a pretty crazy situation. Obsessed French tennis father Christophe Fauviau was sentenced to eight years in prison today. He admitted to spiking the water bottles of 27 children who faced his son and daughter in tennis. "Not for one second did I think of hurting people. I realize now that I did," the former military pilot said. After Fauviau spiked the bottles with an anti-anxiety drug called Temesta, children complained of weak knees, dizziness, nausea or fainting. Fauviau actually is responsible for killing a kid. After a match against his son in 2003, 25-year-old Alexandre Lagardere complained of drowsiness. While driving home after the match, he crashed his car and died. Police believe he fell asleep at the wheel and that the children never knew what their father was doing.

Soft Drinks Down, Sports Drinks Up

If you follow the beverage industry, you know that Coca-Cola has struggled in recent times because it bet too much on the carbonated beverage market, while Pepsi went off and invested in non-carbonated brands like SoBe and Gatorade. So this news doesn't come as any surprise.Well, data released Wednesday showed that, for the first time in 20 years, the number of cases of soda sold in the U.S. declined. Case volume last year was down .7 percent to 10.2 billion cases.

For more specific numbers, we go to Beverage Spectrum, which provides us with this year-to-date data:

Soft Drinks -- Down .9 percent -- The greatest declines? Caffeine Free Diet Coke (-4.6 percent), 7-Up (-2.2 percent) and Pepsi (-1.4 percent). The greatest rises? Diet Mountain Dew (7.9 percent), Mountain Dew (3.6 percent) and Dr. Pepper (3.5 percent).

Sports Drinks experienced the greatest year-to-date rise, with a 23.6 percent increase. This beats out rises of tea and coffee (19.6 percent) and bottled water (17.7 percent). Here the specifics on the sports drink data. Note that this only includes sales from food, drug and mass merchandisers, excluding Wal-Mart.

PRODUCT                DOLLAR SALES            CHANGE IN SHARE FROM A YEAR AGO

Gatorade X-Factor         $95 million                                     47.9 percent

Gatorade All-Stars         $89 million                                     32.6 percent

Gatorade                      $665 million                                   30.3 percent

POWERade                 $196 million                                    25.2 percent

Gatorade Fierce            $104 million                                   15 percent

Gatorade Frost             $134 million                                    13.4 percent

Gatorade Xtremo           $23 million                                     1.1 percent

Gatorade Ice                 $19 million                                     -65.5 percent

Gatorade Endurance      $13.1 million                                  N/A

So here are my thoughts on this. It's amazing that regular Gatorade, given the volume already sold, could be up 30 percent. That is crazy. No brand that large in the entire industry had that kind of increase. X-Factor is obviously still kicking butt. It was a great idea, but it's strange that it's still doing so well without any new mixes of flavors. All-Stars for the most part is a smart packaging play that has clearly worked. Kids don't want to be drinking 20 ounces all the time. I'm surprised that Frost is such a big business. I hate the Frost line. It's so....ambiguous. Readers of this forum pretty much know about the death of Ice. Gatorade has pretty much put it on ice. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that drinking a flavored clear liquid is weird. The Endurance Formula is still being way over marketed. As you can see, it's a very small part of the Gatorade business, but for some reason they are still making room for it on everyday supermarket shelves.

Gatorade Spreads Throughout China

There's news today that Gatorade will finally be widely available in China in 20 cities, including Beijing and Tianjin. Last year, the brand hit five cities, including Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Shenzhen and Qingdao. One of the competitors is a sports water drink called Mizone.

Another Gatorade Spiking

As I've written before, Gatorade is going through a rough time of incidents out of its control -- Gatorade spiking is merely a result of people using the famous icon to murder and harm people. And it appears like the number of incidents are on the rise. Just last week I talked about the report that a sixth grader was hospitalized after she drank a bottle of Gatorade that had corrosive liquid inside. Tonight I read that a 6-year-old boy who was hospitalized after his Gatorade contained the date rape drug GHB. The drug was apparently brought into the house by a visitor, but further details are not known as an investigation is ongoing. There has been no tampering at Gatorade, but it still bad publicity for the brand.