Loki: What Is Josta?

The second episode of Marvel Studios' Loki dropped on Wednesday, and to say that the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe series on Disney+ has left viewers with more questions than answers would be a bit of an understatement. While most of those questions involve the nature of the Time Variance Authority and what the villain Loki variant is really up to, there are few other questions that may not be quite as huge. Among them? What exactly is Josta, the drink that Mobius (Owen Wilson) seems so fond of?

If you think that Josta is just something that Marvel's come up with for the series, then come with us on a little trip back to the 1990s. Josta was a soft drink brand produced by PepsiCo that was available for four years between 1995 and 1999. It has the distinction of being the first energy drink to ever be introduced by a major U.S. beverage company. The drink had a fruity taste and contained guarana and caffeine and was marketed as a "high-energy drink". The drink was marketed with the tagline of "Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda" as well as the slogan "better do the good stuff now" with commercials that featured older men reminiscing about their youth and all of the fun things they didn't do.

After the beverage's discontinuation, fans started a "Save Josta" campaign, complete with a website - and it is still online, you can check it out here - and even a Twitter account, though the Twitter account hasn't been updated since 2016.

As for how Josta ended up in Loki? Director Kate Herron told AV Club that it was done deliberately as the show's writers were adding various things that simply no longer exist.

"In the writer's room, they were adding lots of stuff that basically doesn't really exist anymore, so that's kind of a fun joke that we tried to continue," Herron said. "I'm not sure who picked Josta - it might have been Eric Martin - but yeah, it's really funny."

She added, "I just think it's fun, right? Because they exist outside of space and time and they have access to all the stuff ... It's just little details like that ... that you watch and you're like 'Wait a second. I know that drink.'"

Were you curious about Josta in Loki? Let us know in the comments.

Loki is now streaming on Disney+. New episodes arrive on Wednesdays.

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