The Nostalgia Trip: Are You Drinking for Comfort or Connection?

Nostalgia has become an emotional counterweight to TikTok-ified overstimulation and the uncertainty of our hyper-digital age and AI-fueled anxieties.

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By Bailey James, Managing Director of North America at Thirst

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Consumers crave experiences that feel more grounded, and in the beverage space, that desire is showing up across packaging, flavor, and brand expression, offering a sense of familiarity in a moment when almost everything else feels in flux.

Nostalgia has now evolved from a fleeting trend into a design language with real staying power, one that speaks to comfort, memory, and emotional connection.

In drinks branding, we often describe it as snackable joy: those small, sensory moments of fun, disconnection, and delight that offer a bit of palate-cleansing relief in a noisy world. When done right, nostalgia never looks backward. Properly executed, it creates a feeling of continuity, anchoring people in something they know, while offering just a smidge of newness to feel fresh.

Lately, we're seeing retro glass bottles, especially those with distinctive silhouettes and textures, enter the spotlight. Sunshine Punch is a brilliant example, a rum cream brand bottled in a textured, round format reminiscent of Orangina. It's nostalgic and tactile, and becomes one of those great centerpiece bottles you want to share at gatherings. It appeals to consumers for the same reason that Topo Chico has garnered such a cult following; it's a quality beverage, but it's also a great design object, from the shape of the bottle to the colorful vintage-inspired branding.

There's something powerful about nostalgia because it offers an alternative to sleek minimalism and sterile functionality. It taps into our desire to return to products that feel more handcrafted and joyful. When our agency collaborated with Boston Beer Company on the alcoholic juice brand Just Hard Squeezed, we embraced this idea. The brand channels sunny, juice-box nostalgia of childhood while landing firmly in the adult world of hard beverages. It's playful, referential, and slightly unexpected, offering a fresh take on a familiar memory. But it was the tension that existed somewhere between memory and novelty that made it resonate. That sentimental tug wasn’t a purely aesthetic move. We had to dig deep into the meaning behind the new-to-market brand and build out the identity from there. But we discovered it was an emotional and strategic tool that spoke to our evolving rituals around beverages. Just Hard Squeezed isn’t your standard-issue Capri Sun, but it is a wayback machine that can get you back to that place.

Consider Rhinestonet: it’s a non-alcoholic brand from Arizona that breaks from the wellness-forward minimalism that dominates the no-booze space and instead builds a maximalist world rooted in '70s western kitsch. The visual identity leans hard into graphic storytelling with bold typography, sun-faded color palettes, and offbeat flavor names like Desert Grapefruit to conjure roadside motels, vintage rodeo posters, and outlaw country energy. It's selling the memory of a world you maybe didn't live through but still long for.

But that feeling—that longing—is a key driver.

For many younger consumers, particularly digitally native Gen Zers, the draw of nostalgia isn't to their own childhoods or lived experiences, but to pre-internet eras they've only encountered through film, music, or aesthetics. It's a curious phenomenon: yearning for a past that never belonged to you. But it's real, and brands that speak to that desire with sincerity are cultivating the kind of emotional credibility that used to be reserved for legacy players.

Nostalgia becomes more than a reference point. It bridges generations, blending analog and digital, creating a space where memory and modernity coexist.

Brands like OLIPOP are doing just that. Though less than a decade old, the prebiotic soft drink company uses design and flavor to tap into collective memories of drinking familiar favorites like Cherry Cola, Cream Soda, and Root Beer floats, wrapped in a visual language pulled from decades past. Their connection to nostalgia isn't rooted in heritage, but cultural fluency: they know how to borrow emotion from the past and remix it with the wellness-forward values of the present. That idea came to life recently at their Los Angeles pop-up, where they transformed a Beverly Blvd lot into a retro-inspired drive-thru to celebrate the return of their Orange Cream flavor.

Visitors ordered playful mocktails—think Cereal Milk Soda and Spicy Pickle Pop—from a custom menu and turned it into a moment of delight and discovery. The pop-up also spotlighted limited-edition merch, including a collaboration with Crocs. Guests could even customize orange platform Crocs with soda-themed Jibbitz charms, a tactile, fashion-forward extension of the brand's identity that blurred the line between experience, memory, and design.

These activations aren't extras; they're an essential expression of brand storytelling. They're where emotional equity gets built in real time through shared experience.

In moments like these, nostalgia becomes more than a reference point. It bridges generations, blending analog and digital, creating a space where memory and modernity coexist. It offers both a safe place to land and a stylish place to play, and that is where some of the most resonant brand-building is happening right now. And in the coming years, we’re sure to see this play out in the form of “newstalgia,” as we seamlessly blend the past with design and branding that’s future-forward, something that stirs the old warm fuzzies, but can speak to younger generations.

In the case of Just Hard Squeezed, we weren’t trafficking in nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. We wanted you to feel something. Yes, creatives can embrace the past and experiment with it, but you still have to find something new to incorporate into the work. We turned the hard juice brand into an experience, and those forgotten favorites become a part of our new beverage rituals; it looks old and leans on a pop-art-inspired look, but it’s also something completely new.

Nostalgia isn't going away anytime soon. Its staying power lies in its ability to tap into something universal, something they genuinely need, whether it's comfort, ritual, joy, or familiarity. And it's especially relevant and necessary in times of uncertainty. But it only works when it's approached with care. The most impactful brands don't use nostalgia as a shortcut or aesthetic overlay but rather as a strategic tool—one that builds emotional resonance, invites connection, and turns memory into momentum.