is a non-carbonated beverage from the Coca-Cola Company. Originally introduced in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 in 1999, Qoo is now available throughout much of Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 in a variety of flavors including grape

Grape

A grape is a non-climacteric fruit, specifically a berry, that grows on the perennial and deciduous woody vines of the genus Vitis. Grapes can be eaten raw or they can be used for making jam, juice, jelly, vinegar, wine, grape seed extracts, raisins, molasses and grape seed oil. Grapes are also...

 and orange

Orange (fruit)

An orange—specifically, the sweet orange—is the citrus Citrus × sinensis and its fruit. It is the most commonly grown tree fruit in the world....

. In Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, the product line was discontinued in November 2005.

The name comes from the mascot's reaction to tasting the drink. The mascot was designed by Momoko Maruyama, who created Deko Boko Friends

Deko Boko Friends

is a collection of 30-second Japanese shorts created by a pair of advertising creators, Momoko Maruyama and Ryotaro Kuwamoto to promote acceptance of people of different personalities and appearances...

. The Jingle, for the original Japanese version, is sung by Londell "Taz" Hicks, an American now living in Japan who also does the voice for the character Fo-Fo in "Deko Boko Friends"

Qoo is transliterated

Transliteration into Chinese characters

In Chinese, transcription is known as yīnyì or yìmíng . While it is common to see foreign names left in their original forms in a Chinese text, it is also common to transcribe foreign proper nouns into Chinese characters....

 in Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

 as 酷兒 (kù'ér). It evokes images of “cool kid” since 酷 (kù) is a transliteration of the English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 word cool

Cool (aesthetic)

Something regarded as cool is an admired aesthetic of attitude, behavior, comportment, appearance and style, influenced by and a product of the Zeitgeist. Because of the varied and changing connotations of cool, as well its subjective nature, the word has no single meaning. It has associations of...

 and 兒 (ér) means ‘child’ or ‘son’. However, in Taiwan, 酷兒 also happens to be the same transliteration as the English word queer

Queer

Queer is an umbrella term for sexual minorities that are not heterosexual, heteronormative, or gender-binary. In the context of Western identity politics the term also acts as a label setting queer-identifying people apart from discourse, ideologies, and lifestyles that typify mainstream LGBT ...

 referring to sexual orientation or gender identity.

External links

• Qoo Japan
• Qoo Official English website by Coca-Cola
  Coca-Cola
  Coca-Cola is a carbonated soft drink sold in stores, restaurants, and vending machines in more than 200 countries. It is produced by The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, and is often referred to simply as Coke...
  
   Singapore
• Qoo China
• Qoo Korea
• Qoo Hong Kong (uses Flash for a unique adventure game
  Adventure game
  An adventure game is a video game in which the player assumes the role of protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving instead of physical challenge. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media such as literature and film,...
  
   format for browsing; contains additional TV commercials with respect to the Singapore page but now has simplified as a HTML
  HTML
  HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
  
  site.)