FAB brands such as Bacardi Breezer and Smirnoff Ice have become ubiquitous in British pubs, bars and clubs over the last decade, becoming the beverage of choice for a generation of 20-somethings. But a recent report from market analysts Datamonitor suggests that as this generation has aged, its tastes have become more sophisticated, leaving the sweet, fizzy drinks facing a decidedly uncertain future.
"FABs are a victim of their own success," said John Band, consumer markets analyst at Datamonitor. "They have become mainstream, and therefore less appealing to the most discerning consumers." Sales growth was 6.3 per cent in 2003 (in volume terms), compared to 19.3 per cent just two years earlier, and Band predicts that this trend will continue. As a result, British FAB sales are expected to drop from today's £14 billion to £1.1 billion by 2008, a 23 per cent decline.
Although they are now being seen in a number other European markets, FABs have always been a predominantly British product - like warm beer and dandelion and burdock but with a bigger marketing budget. But while the decline in sales of real ale in the UK has been slow and steady since the 1980s with the arrival of imported bottled lager (itself the beverage of choice for the pre-FAB generation), the rise (and now fall) of premixed drinks has been spectacularly rapid.
The FABs market more than doubled in value, from £692 million in 1999 to £1.4 billion in 2003, but like any fad, FABs lived in constant fear of losing their cool - something which appears to have happened almost overnight last year.
Premixed spirits drinks became successful in bars and clubs, spreading to retail only later on. Indeed, 55 per cent of UK FABs volumes are still sold through the on-trade. Along with their less cloying flavours and their similarity to established grown-up spirits brands, the on-trade focus helped the brands escape from the unsophisticated image that alcoholic soft drinks once had.
Yet it is this successful drive into the mainstream which, ironically, looks set to consign FABs to the history books like their predecessors such as wine coolers and Babycham. "Clubbers have switched towards drinking white spirits such as Smirnoff and Bacardi, while cocktails have also made a comeback. Premixed spirits have acquired the 'drink-for-people-who-don't-like-alcohol' image they initially sought to avoid," said Band.
Not that Smirnoff or Bacardi - by far the two biggest names behind the FAB craze -are likely to be too concerned at consumers switching to the parent brands, of course. They created the FAB brands in the first place to revitalise sales of the main brand, with clear success, but they will also hope that the ''girly' image of FABs will not now transfer over as well.
"Being seen as a 'girly' drink is the kiss of death for any drinks brand that wants to target males - but women are not turned off by 'blokey' brands in the same way," said Band. "As 65 per cent of FABs in the UK are drunk by women, it's hard for a brand to avoid acquiring a girly image. Smirnoff Ice was launched as a drink targeted more at men than women, but it's now rare to see males drinking the standard product."
So as the big spirit players concentrate their efforts on winning back male drinkers and enticing female drinkers with more sophisticated cocktails, will FABs disappear completely, becoming nothing more than the drink fondly remembered as initiating a whole generation to the delights (or otherwise) of alcohol consumption - a sort of Thunderbird or Diamond White for the post-Millennium generation?
Well, yes. "A few years ago, premixed spirits looked like the future of the alcohol industry," said Band. "The leading drinks companies were falling over themselves to invent premixed versions of their spirits brands, from Gordon's Edge to Jim Beam & Cola. But it now looks like the premixed spirits boom was just a repeat of the mid-1990s alcoholic soft drinks boom.
"Young adults are big spenders on alcoholic drinks, but they're very promiscuous in their tastes," he continued. "An older drinker may drink the same brand of beer or spirits for years, but young adults vary their brand from one drink to the next - never mind from one year to the next. So life as a drinks brand aimed chiefly at young adults is precarious at best."
There could be some limited future for FABs in other markets, perhaps - Ireland and Finland, for example, both have consumption rates to rival those of the UK, albeit with far smaller populations - but with drinking tastes in many European countries already more sophisticated than the UK (and with governments there determined to stamp out the FAB fad before it starts by whacking up the duty rates), long-term growth there is unlikely, and the phenomenon will almost certainly never reach the same scale as in the UK.
Which is not to say, of course, that fads will disappear - the R&D departments of Bacardi, Diageo, Allied-Domecq and Pernod Ricard, among others, will continue to sweat over new means of keeping consumers, and particularly young consumers, interested in their products - and hopefully keeping them that way for the rest of their lives.
Details of how to order the Datamonitor report Beer, Cider andFABs in the UK to 2008 can be found by clicking here.