Kool Aid
Kool-Aid is a fruit-flavored soft drink concentrate made by Kraft Foods, Inc.. Kool-Aid is sold as a powder to be mixed with water, and versions are made with and without sugar (including an artificially-sweetened, non-sugar version, Sugar-Free Kool-Aid).
Originally, Kool-Aid was made as a liquid concentrate and was called Fruit-Smack. To reduce shipping costs, in 1927 Edwin Perkins discovered a way to remove the liquid from Fruit-Smack, leaving only a powder. This powder was then renamed Kool-Ade (and a few years later, Kool-Aid).
The product mascot of Kool-Aid, the Kool-Aid Man, is a gigantic anthropomorphic pitcher filled with Kool-Aid, frequently seen in television advertisements. These ads typically start out with children indoors wishing they had something to drink, whereupon the Kool-Aid Man bursts through the wall (inevitably accompanied by the character's catchphrase, "Oh yeah!"), Kool-Aid in hand.
Because it contains highly concentrated artificial colors, and because the unsweetened concentrate is very inexpensive (around US$0.20 a packet as of 2004), Kool-Aid is sometimes used to dye fabric and hair.
In 1978, 900 followers of cult leader Jim Jones committed suicide by drinking a grape-flavored drink laced with cyanide at their commune in Jonestown, Guyana. This drink is often said to have been Kool-Aid, and this popular misconception is so widespread that to "drink [someone's] Kool-Aid" and to be a "Kool-Aid drinker" has acquired the meaning of having been utterly deceived by someone to the point of destruction. In fact, the drink at Jonestown was Flavor-aid, a cheaper imitation of Kool-Aid.
