The Chero-Cola company began production in 1904. It introduced Nehi’s fruit-flavored sodas in 1924 which immediately outsold Chero-Cola and were so popular that by 1928 the company changed its name to Nehi Corporation. Their orange soda is a classic.
As a child, when we stayed at the same grandma’s where I walked to get the Kickapoo Joy Juice, if a lot of relatives were staying there we sometimes had this with breakfast! (This is the first pop I’ve shown that is flavored with the now standard high fructose corn syrup.)
In the early 20th century, the advertising logo of Nehi was a picture of a woman’s leg with stockings up to the knee, suggesting the phrase “knee-high”. The concept continued to be used for several decades.
In the perennial holiday favorite, A Christmas Story, a leg lamp (also known as a major award) figures prominently in the story.
Author Jean Shepherd was inspired to create the leg lamp after seeing an illuminated Nehi Soda advertisement. In the original story “My Old Man and the Lascivious Special Award That Heralded the Birth of Pop Art,” the leg was the logo of the contest’s sponsor, Nehi. (The details of the contest were not made clear in the film, A Christmas Story.)
I had no idea that Nehi played a role in Jean Shepard’s story (a favorite). I first fell in love with Grape Nehi because of Radar from M.A.S.H.