Jolly Good is a Wisconsin soda brand produced by Krier Foods of Random Lake, and for many in the upper Midwest it is pure nostalgia in a can. It belongs to the large family of mid-century regional bottlers whose drinks never went national but became fixtures of a particular place, sold in local groceries and remembered fondly by the people who grew up with them.
A Wisconsin institution
Krier Foods built Jolly Good as an affordable, flavor-rich line aimed at families, and it thrived in the Wisconsin market on that basis. The brand became associated with value and variety rather than a single signature taste, offering a broad spread of flavors at a price that made it a household staple across the state. That regional loyalty is the thread running through this archive: a drink survives not because it is the best-marketed, but because a community decides it belongs to them.
The flavor lineup
Jolly Good is best known for the classic soda-fountain spread rather than one hero product. Cream soda and grape are among its most fondly remembered flavors, alongside the familiar orange, root beer and other fruit varieties that defined regional pop of the era. The brand has also leaned into novelty over the years, and its range has become part of the fun for collectors and nostalgia seekers who track down flavors they remember from childhood. The variety itself is the identity.
Decline and revival
Like many regional sodas, Jolly Good faded from wide visibility as national brands and consolidation squeezed the middle of the market through the late twentieth century. For a stretch it became hard to find, surviving mainly in memory and in the accounts of Wisconsinites who missed it. In more recent years the brand has been revived and returned to shelves, riding the same nostalgia wave that has brought back so many regional and discontinued sodas. That return is characteristic of the category: a local drink rarely dies cleanly, because the affection attached to it outlasts the business decisions that shelve it.
Why it endures
Jolly Good endures because it is inseparable from a specific place and a specific feeling. It is not a drink that travels well as a concept, precisely because so much of its appeal is the memory of buying it cheap by the case in Wisconsin. That rootedness is exactly what makes it worth documenting. In the wider story of American regional sodas, Jolly Good stands for the countless local pop brands that never sought national fame, served their own communities loyally for decades, and earned a permanent place in local memory that no national label could buy.
A collector’s brand
Part of Jolly Good’s modern life plays out among collectors and nostalgia seekers rather than everyday shoppers. Because the line ran to so many flavors over the decades, and because its availability shrank and then partly returned, tracking down a remembered variety became a small pursuit for people who grew up with it. That collector energy is common to revived regional sodas: the drink stops being an ordinary grocery purchase and becomes a way of reconnecting with a specific childhood and a specific state. Krier Foods has leaned into that affection with its returns to market, and the brand’s story now sits comfortably alongside the other Midwestern pops that survived less on strategy than on sentiment. In the broader map of American regional sodas, Jolly Good represents the dense cluster of Wisconsin and upper-Midwest bottlers whose names meant everything locally and almost nothing beyond, and whose survival depends on the loyalty of the people who still remember them.
A place on the map
On the wider map of American regional sodas, Jolly Good marks the dense upper-Midwest cluster of value-driven family bottlers, the pops sold cheap by the case and tied tightly to one state’s childhood. Its partial return from near-obscurity mirrors the broader nostalgia revival that has rescued so many regional and discontinued brands, and its collector following keeps interest alive between those returns. It endures for the same reason the strongest entries here do: a community decided the drink belonged to them, and that decision outlasted every business reason to let it go.
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