Will “Spricy” Drinks Be The Next Big Thing?

We live in a swicy world, folks. Sweet and spicy food combinations have never been bigger, and drinks companies haven’t missed a beat in bringing a mixture of sugar and heat to the table. This year, we saw the return of Mountain Dew Mango Rush, a flavor that promised sweet-spicy flavors (and didn’t quite deliver on some of them, honestly, although not necessarily to its detriment for everyone). C4 followed suit with its Mango Fuego flavor – which, again, didn’t exactly hit us over the head with heat – and now, it looks like Coca-Cola might be entering the fray.

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It’s not swicy anymore, though, people. It’s SPRICY. And it’s soon to be official. 

Sprite + Spicy = Spricy?

Yesterday, Food Dive reported that Coca-Cola has filed a trademark application for the term “spricy,” and in doing so, has indicated that it has intentions to bring back some sweet-spicy flavors back to its portfolio. If it does, it’d be a remount of its previous attempts at doing so: Back in 2024, it released Coca-Cola Spiced, which lasted a mere seven months before it was discontinued (and let’s be real, it wasn’t that great). 

That drink was a little more focused on offering warmth instead of the more punchy heat that tends to define “swiciness,” though. This new trademark application could well hint that Coca-Cola’s trying to turn it up a notch – and it could be doing that with Sprite. As fellow Sporked writer Griffin Parker pointed out to me, “spricy” feels as though it’s a portmanteau of Sprite and spicy, and Food Dive also reasons that Sprite could be in Coca-Cola’s crosshairs here for amping up with a lil’ bit of fire. 

To be honest, if it goes in that direction, it’d probably fare better than it did with Coca-Cola. Swicy flavors work best when they’re simple, direct, and crisp: Hot honey essentially delivers a fairly straightforward combo of sugar and capsaicin, with a couple of other flavor notes mixed in. In a lot of ways, Sprite has that same straightforwardness, and the citrusy notes will likely lend themselves a little better to being paired with heat than the caramel flavors in Coke. 

We’ve Been Here Before…

Coca-Cola moving to get spricy with things (if it is going for a Sprite and spice combo) might not feel that new to some customers. For years now, people have been saying that McDonald’s Sprite has a heat to it; that it’s somehow spicier than it is when bought elsewhere. Back on April 1, 2022, Sprite jumped on this, publishing a fake image of a Spicy Sprite can on its official X account (then known as Twitter, of course – RIP). So…is it just, in a sense, codifying all this? Is it just bottling McDonald’s Sprite and rebranding it? We’ll be waiting to find out.