Harvey Wallbanger: The Marketing Marvel of the 1970s
The Harvey Wallbanger was very popular in the United States in the 1970s, created in 1969 as a marketing campaign by McKesson Imports Company, importer of Galliano, as a means of promoting Galliano. The campaign was headed by George Bednar, marketing director of McKesson, and a cartoon character was commissioned featuring the tagline “Harvey Wallbanger is the name. And I can be made!” The Harvey Wallbanger character was a surfer, appearing in various advertisements during the campaign.
Of all the drinks of the Seventies known for their juice and size, the Harvey Wallbanger stands among them as an icon of an era. The Wallbanger, born of industry and marketing, was more like an accessory than a refreshment. It suited a self-empowered generation of young professionals, encouraged by a media landscape and eager to celebrate their newfound freedoms.
Its reign barely made it into the 1980s as it fell prey to changes in fashion, packaged juice and even Galliano. Perhaps the canned version is what helped eventually kill the Harvey Wallbanger. After all, made with fresh orange juice, it’s a great drink.
The Pink Lady: Victorian Elegance in a Glass
The Pink Lady is a classic gin-based cocktail with a long history. Its pink color comes from adding grenadine. The exact ingredients for the pink lady vary, but all variations have the use of gin, grenadine, and egg white in common. In its most basic form, the pink lady consists of just these three ingredients. According to the Royal Cafe Cocktail Book of 1937, it is made with a glass of gin, a tablespoon of grenadine, and the white of one egg.
This elegant drink was particularly popular in upscale establishments during the early twentieth century. The frothy texture from the egg white and the delicate pink hue made it a favorite among sophisticated drinkers. Yet as bartending became more streamlined and egg-white cocktails fell out of favor due to health concerns, the Pink Lady quietly slipped away from most bar menus.
The drink represented an era when presentation mattered as much as flavor, and when cocktails were seen as works of art rather than quick refreshers.
Sloe Gin Fizz: The Forgotten Fruit-Forward Fizz
A traditional sloe gin fizz contains sloe gin (a blackthorn plum flavored spirit), grapefruit juice, simple syrup, egg white, and carbonated water. Using sloe gin brought down the alcohol content. Sloe gin is typically 25-30% alcohol, 50-60 proof – compared to gin which is 40-47% alcohol, 80-94 proof.
Low alcohol cocktails are trending right now. The beauty of low alcohol drinks is that they are perfect for day drinking – think brunch or lunch or lounging by the pool or cuddled up by the fireplace. Despite this modern trend toward lighter cocktails, the Sloe Gin Fizz remains largely absent from contemporary bar menus. There are two types of Sloe Gin that you can find at the liquor store. One that costs about $15 dollars and one that costs about $35 dollars. The more expensive version is a more truer version of Sloe Gin.
The drink’s disappearance likely stems from sloe gin’s decline in availability and bartenders’ unfamiliarity with the ingredient.
The Grasshopper: After-Dinner Indulgence Gone Green
The Grasshopper is a sweet, mint-flavored, after-dinner drink. The name of the drink derives from its green color, which comes from crème de menthe. A bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, Tujague’s, claims the drink was invented in 1918 by its owner, Philip Guichet.
This dessert cocktail was once a staple at dinner parties and upscale restaurants, particularly during the mid-twentieth century. The vibrant green color and creamy texture made it as much a conversation piece as a beverage. However, changing dining habits and the decline of formal after-dinner drinks contributed to its disappearance.
Modern drinkers tend to prefer wine or spirits neat rather than elaborate dessert cocktails. The Grasshopper’s intensely sweet profile also clashes with contemporary preferences for balanced, less sugary drinks.
Singapore Sling: The Original Recipe Lost to Time
The original recipe was lost after the 1930s when the hotel stopped serving the drink. D. A. Embury stated in the Fine Art of Mixing Drinks: “Of all the recipes published for [this drink] I have never seen any two that were alike.” By the 1980s, in countries such as the United States, the Singapore sling was often little more than gin, bottled sour mix, and grenadine, a mixture showing very little relationship to the recipe used elsewhere under the same name. By that time both in the Raffles Hotel and Hong Kong, and generally in the UK, the recipe had remained standardised.
The Long Bar at Raffles Hotel sells 800-1200 Singapore slings every day. 70% of the total revenue of the bar comes from the sling, which earns the bar S$15 million in annual sales. While it remains popular at its birthplace, most bars elsewhere have abandoned the complex original recipe in favor of simpler alternatives.
The drink’s complexity and the need for multiple specialty ingredients make it impractical for busy modern bars.
Tom Collins: The Simple Refresher That Lost Its Identity
The Gin Fizz and Tom Collins are almost identical cocktail when it comes to ingredients, but there are difference that make them different drinks. The Gin Fizz and Tom Collins cocktails are often confused because they both have the same ingredients. While Gin Fizzes are well-shaken to make them foamy, Tom Collins cocktails are most often just stirred and have minimal bubbles. Gin Fizzes are chilled by being shaken with ice and then strained into a glass without ice, whereas Tom Collins cocktails are served over ice. Tom Collins cocktails are between 14 and 16 ounces.
The Tom Collins suffered from an identity crisis that ultimately led to its decline. As bartenders became less precise about the distinctions between similar drinks, the Tom Collins became interchangeable with other gin-based refreshers. This lack of clear identity made it easy to forget or replace with more trendy alternatives.
The drink is similar to a Tom Collins, with a possible distinction being a Tom Collins historically used “Old Tom gin” (a slightly sweeter precursor to London Dry Gin), whereas the kind of gin historically used in a gin fizz is unknown.
The White Lady: Prohibition-Era Perfection
The White Lady, created in the 1920s by legendary bartender Harry Craddock at the American Bar in London, is a perfect example. This cocktail strips away everything unnecessary to focus on just gin, Cointreau (orange liqueur), fresh lemon juice, and sometimes egg white.
This cocktail represented the height of 1920s sophistication, yet its simplicity worked against its longevity. As cocktail culture became more elaborate and showy, drinks like the White Lady seemed too understated for modern tastes. The use of egg white also contributed to its decline as health consciousness increased.
Despite its elegant balance and historical significance, the White Lady rarely appears on contemporary cocktail menus outside of specialist establishments focused on classic cocktails.
The Last Word: Fifty Years in Obscurity
The Last Word was created in the 1920s at the Detroit Athletic Club, then completely forgotten until 2004. This perfectly balanced mix combines equal parts gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur, and fresh lime juice. The revival of The Last Word happened thanks to a bartender in Seattle who found the recipe in an old book and put it on his menu. From there, it spread among craft cocktail bars across the country. Its comeback story shows how great old drinks can return if given the chance.
Unlike other drinks on this list, The Last Word has experienced a remarkable resurrection in craft cocktail circles. However, it spent nearly five decades completely absent from bar menus, demonstrating how easily even excellent cocktails can disappear from collective memory.
When mixed correctly, this pale green drink offers a complex taste experience that most modern cocktails can’t match. It’s proof that sometimes the best forgotten classics just need someone to rediscover them.
Purple Passion: The College Campus King
As early as the 1950s, college students had been mixing up their own “Purple Passion punch,” made by mixing Everclear with fruit and wine. In 1986, Everclear launched its own mass-manufactured take, also called Purple Passion. The David Sherman Corporation rapidly sold a million cases of the stuff, sold ready-to-consume in cans. While it was often remixed over the years, the last widely available version boasted 13% alcohol. In 2014, David Sherman Corporation successor Luxco released a limited-time only Purple Passion revival, but it’s since disappeared.
This ready-to-drink beverage represented a specific moment in American drinking culture when convenience and high alcohol content trumped sophistication. Its disappearance reflects both changing regulations around high-proof ready-to-drink beverages and evolving consumer preferences toward craft cocktails and premium ingredients.
The drink’s association with college party culture also limited its mainstream appeal as those consumers aged and sought more sophisticated options.
The Bee’s Knees: Prohibition’s Sweet Solution
During Prohibition, people had to get creative with their drinks because most illegal alcohol tasted awful. The Bee’s Knees was born from this need to mask the flavor of bathtub gin. This simple yet genius cocktail mixes gin, fresh lemon juice, and honey syrup. The name itself was 1920s slang for “the best,” which tells you how much people loved it. The sweet honey and tart lemon worked together perfectly to hide the harsh taste of homemade spirits.
The Bee’s Knees disappeared largely because its original purpose no longer existed. Once high-quality gin became readily available after Prohibition ended, there was less need for drinks designed to mask poor-quality spirits. The cocktail’s association with illegal drinking may have also contributed to its decline as society moved away from Prohibition-era culture.
Today, the drink has found new life in craft cocktail bars that appreciate its historical significance and simple elegance, though it remains far less common than it once was.
These forgotten classics remind us that cocktail trends are cyclical and that today’s popular drinks might be tomorrow’s curiosities. Each lost recipe represents not just flavors that have faded, but entire eras of social drinking and cultural expression. What do you think about these vanished cocktails?
