POCARI SWEAT
The Soft Drink Essential to Our Bodies

Date：31, Oct, 2012
Investigated and Written by Misaka Youhei
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In 1970, Japanese began to import Gatorade from United States of America. Exactly that was the beginning of Japanese recognizing sports drink. But they had not developed or manufactured Japanese sports drink yet. 10 years later, it was born.

Sports drink in Japan, when all is done and said, is Pocari Sweat developed by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. It is also called a drip to drink. The year they started to launch it was 1980.

An office worker of them suffered from strong diarrhea in Mexico and from lack of drink in 1973. The matter made them develop the drink good for us. They had originally dealt with Ringer's solution of drips for hospitals. So they tried to divert the know-how to soft drink.

Repeating trial and error, they finally developed delicious sports drink Pocari Sweat. It consists of ingredients akin to our body fluids and tastes thin grapefruits. Doubted at the first year, the sales figure never expanded. They kept, however, honest sales promotion like free distribution at sports meetings. And then it spread everywhere in Japan, just as Pocari Sweat pleasantly carries through your body.

Lately Pocari Sweat has been available in various overseas countries like China, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia and the like. And it has globally become familiar as health drink.

Moreover, their TV commercials have made a lot of hit songs like Music Hour by Porno Graffiti, Sunny Day Sunday by Sentimental Bus, Mirai by Mr. Children and so on. The songs have been impressed on most of Japanese. That also shows universality of Pocari Sweat in Japan.