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The word quatro (or perhaps more correctly quattro) was strangely popular during the 1980’s for some reason. There was leather clad rock chick Suzi Quatro, and the Audi Quattro, most recently made popular again by DCI Gene Hunt in Ashes to Ashes.
Software house Borland even named a spreadsheet program Quattro, the idea being that Quattro, meaning four in Italian, was one better than three, thus making their piece of software better than the then market leader in the spreadsheet market Lotus 1-2-3. I think perhaps that this particular one needs too much explanation.
However, possibly even worse than the number crunching software was a fizzy drink called Quatro. Packaged in a white can with four coloured squares (green, orange, yellow and reddish orange) and a stylised white letter Q, Quatro was a mixed fruit flavoured carbonated drink.
So far so good then. It even had a rather cool TV advert which looked like a mixture of Tron and Bladerunner, with a bit of Duran Duran video thrown in for good measure. According to this advert the drink supposedly consisted of pineapple, orange, plum and grapefruit (or possibly melon, the video I found on YouTube is a little grainy and it’s hard to be sure exactly what those last two fruits actually were), and this is where things start to go wrong.
Quatro, you see, was a very interesting bright green colour. It was the sort of colour that you can imagine the slime to be that converted ordinary pet turtles in turtles of the ninja (or hero) variety. Quite how the four featured fruits could combine to produce green I don’t know, which leads me to conclude that Quatro must have been full of all kinds of wonderful colourings and E-numbers, and this is probably the reason why it is no longer available.
To be honest I can’t quite remember what it tasted like. I don’t remember having that many cans of the stuff so I’m guessing it was mediocre at best, so I think it’s safe to say that this is one thing from the eighties which nobody is particularly going to mourn over. And to think they had the audacity to give it the slogan “It’s a miracle, but we’ve made it“.
August 7th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
LOL! I loved quattro, though I couldn’t tell you why now. Probably because it was bright green! Though it never eclipsed Lilt in the fuity flavour department.
January 12th, 2010 at 11:55 am
Orange, Pineapple, Passion Fruit & Grapefruit. And I mourned over Quatro for ages at the time, as it was my favourite drink as a kid.
June 2nd, 2010 at 8:12 am
I woke up this morning and the smell of a passion fruit shower gel (My Wife’s btw) reminded me of Quatro. I remember there being Quatro cards passed about with the logo on it, which as kids we thought were for Quatro only vending machines. Never found a machine. The strongest flavour from memory was grapefruit and the smell was obviously passion fruit. I loved the drink but don’t remember drinking that much of it.
June 2nd, 2010 at 2:48 pm
It’s funny how seeing or smelling something can suddenly awake an old memory of something completely unrelated. As to the Quatro only vending machine, I’m sure the only one in existence was in the TV advert, but as a kid you instantly assume they must exist because you’ve seen one on TV!
September 1st, 2010 at 10:01 pm
same happened to me , i just now opened a can of orange and passion fruit sunkist and the first sip reminded me of QUATRO , such a gret drink I still long for , after all these years, hopefully it may return just as WHISPA did ? fingers crossed
September 5th, 2010 at 12:52 am
Got a bottle of Tesco fizzy pineapple & passionfruit, colour was pinky orange, but it tasted exactly like I remembered Quatro. Seems that passionfruit is the magic ingredient here.
October 5th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
I loved it and wondered what happened to it – a sad day
October 23rd, 2010 at 6:24 pm
Anyone who wants to experience the taste of quatro, only has to go and buy a can of RELENTLESS in the GREEN can, this is very close in the taste department, it includes tropical juice so maybe the passion fruit is the key?
February 25th, 2011 at 8:20 am
I only had the drink a few times, but I bought it mostly because I thought the advert was the coolest thing ever when it came out. And the link with Audi Quattros didn’t hurt….
April 27th, 2011 at 2:33 pm
Well …good to see that despite the less than favourable post…everyone else mourns its passing !!
I was one of the team that launched it..yes indeed..it was ground breaking in terms of product (actually it was much higher fruit juice content than anything else in ths category then and NOT full of e numbers !!) and also in terms of advertising….
April 27th, 2011 at 8:07 pm
Good to hear it wasn’t full of E numbers Paul, I just kind of assumed that something that was such a bright colour had to be full of artificial this that and the other. Glad to be proved wrong.
There certainly does seem to be a lot of love for the drink though. Who made it originally, and could there be any chance of a come back?
October 30th, 2011 at 6:29 pm
I loved it, and the adverts. Just seeing it again brought back good memories. I mourn it’s passing if no one else does.Had one of the credit cards back in the day and wish I still had it.
November 1st, 2011 at 8:10 am
I loved Quatro ! So glad I found this site its bringing back
Some fond memories