Afri-Cola is a cola soft drink produced in Germany. The trademark Afri-Cola was registered in 1931 by the company F. Blumhoffer Nachfolger GmbH. The same company also produced Bluna, an orange soft drink. Today the brand belongs to the Mineralbrunnen Überkingen-Teinach AG. Afri-Cola was once one of the most popular cola brands in Germany, but has lost considerable market share since the 1960s. History Afri-Cola was registered in 1931 by F. Blumhoffer Nachfolger GmbH, a company founded in 1864 and based in Cologne. After the Second World War, Afri-Cola became one of the most popular drinks in Germany and a symbol of the West German Wirtschaftswunder. In 1952, the company launched Bluna, an orange soft drink similar to Fanta, which also became a hit among customers. However, in the hard competition of the 1960s, Afri-Cola started to lose its influence on the German market to Coca-Cola and Pepsi. To update its image, the company hired designer and photographer Charles Wilp who created a controversial and attention-grabbing marketing campaign which positioned the brand at the cutting edge. The market share of Afri-Cola continued to dwindle during the 1980s and 1990s. Eventually, in 1998, German beverage company Mineralbrunnen Überkingen-Teinach AG bought all rights to Afri-Cola and Bluna. This company changed the recipe of Afri-Cola in 1998; the taste differed from that of the original. Also, until 1998 the caffeine content was 250 mg/L, which is higher than the average. At the re-release, it had a content below 150 mg/L so that the content does not need to be listed on the bottle. However, as with Coca-Cola's New Coke, the new recipe was unpopular. The mixture was again changed to taste more like the original one, the caffeine content was increased in 2005 to around 200 mg/L and caffeine was again listed as an ingredient on the label. This mixture was also not sufficiently successful and on April 1, 2006, the company finally changed back to the original recipe, with caffeine content of 250 mg/L. Since then, Afri-Cola has slightly regained market share. Availability outside Germany In the mid-1990s, Real Soda LLC, a U.S. company, started importing Afri-Cola into the United States, largely in the Seattle area. At the time, it was marketed as "highest caffeine content allowed by law" and positioned to compete with such high-caffeine colas as Jolt Cola and Fukola Cola. In the late 1990s, it was widely available at