7UP Lemon Lime was the test. A&W Root Beer confirmed it. GHOST Energy clones a soda better than the original sodas company does. Zero sugar, 200mg caffeine, and none of that thin diet soda texture. Now give us GHOST Energy Dr. Pepper.
GHOST built a large part of its identity on collaborative flavors. But that identity is shifting, as we're seeing from their recent GHOST Energy launches. GHOST Energy x A&W Root Beer just opened its Secure-A-Can window this week, and it's blown basically everyone away.
Nine years into the collab game, GHOST isn't cloning candy into powder anymore. It's cloning soda into a can, and somehow doing it better than the original sodas!
This article is inspired by the video Ben put together that's embedded below, taking a stroll down memory lane, explaining where this thing is headed, and who the winners and losers are. Subscribe to PricePlow's GHOST Energy alerts below, and let's get into it:
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The Collab That Started It All: WARHEADS and GHOST Legend (2017)
Flavor partnerships are GHOST's whole language, and it started in 2017 with WARHEADS in the original GHOST Legend pre-workout. That deal set the tone for everything that followed: real licensing agreements with real candy brands, built to taste like the actual thing instead of a "kinda like it" flavor name.
GHOST x Yoo-hoo Chocolate Protein RTD is happening. 25g protein, 110 calories, 11 oz can -- and it looks exactly like the collab you'd hope for. No full nutrition panel or release date yet, but we're watching closely.
We didn't know it at the time, but WARHEADS (a collab that's still ongoing for GHOST's sour flavors) would be the icebreaker to change the entire industry. That revelation came next:
"Project X": When GHOST Leveled Up the Whole Industry (2018)
A year later, GHOST went much bigger. Under the code name "Project X", the brand licensed Sour Patch Kids and Swedish Fish for GHOST BCAA, debuting both flavors at a pop-up during 2018's Mr. Olympia weekend.
This was a collaboration with Mondelez International, a massive confectionary/candy company. Nobody in sports nutrition had pulled off officially licensed candy flavors at that scale before, but GHOST founders Dan Lourenço and Ryan Hughes had been chasing it, and they landed a big one. A two-year-old supplement brand had gotten two major CPG names to hand over their trademarks and their secret flavor profiles, and the rest of the world noticed.
Some of that attention turned into jealousy, then into competition. Other brands chased their own licensed collabs. Some were genuinely well done. Others were clearly copying GHOST's homework.
Either way, Dan and Ryan had already moved the goalposts for what a flavor partnership could look like.
RIP the Mondelez Deal: GHOST's Loss Isn't the Story, Mondelez's Is
Mondelez terminates their GHOST flavor collabs after KDP acquisition in a bitter ending to the partnership.
Mondelez ran flavors with GHOST for seven years, well before Keurig Dr Pepper ever entered the picture. When KDP took majority ownership of GHOST last year, the Mondelez partnership unfortunately didn't grow into something bigger. It unfortunately ended.
CEO Dan Lourenço confirmed the wind-down himself, and GHOST and Mondelez announced a 12-month wind-down last May, with Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish, OREO, Chips Ahoy, and Nutter Butter GHOST flavors phasing out through 2026.
That's an odd way for a seven-year run to close. GHOST didn't shrink into the KDP era, it scaled into it, and a partner that had already proven candy-flavored supplements could sell at real volume was standing right there for the bigger ride.
Yet instead of expanding alongside the brand, Mondelez apparently shot themselves in the foot on the way out.
We don't know the boardroom details, and we're not going to speculate on them, but what's clear is the outcome: GHOST didn't need Mondelez's permission to keep growing, and Mondelez walked away from an incredibly fruitful partnership that could have (and should have) scaled across GHOST's entire KDP-backed portfolio instead of ending. From our perspective, that one's on them.
The New Playbook: Liquid In, Liquid Out
Here's where the collabs are changing again, and it's the point Ben made in the video above: GHOST isn't translating candy into powder anymore. It's translating one liquid into another.
GHOST Energy x 7UP Lemon Lime went permanent. Zero sugar, 200mg natural caffeine, and the crisp lemon-lime taste you already know -- now in a can that actually does something.
An energy drink and a soda share almost the same bones: carbonated water, acids, flavor, and some caffeine. GHOST already had that formula figured out. What changed is which sodas it's allowed to clone. Once Keurig Dr Pepper took over, GHOST picked up access to KDP's own soda lineup instead of licensing outside candy brands.
GHOST Energy x 7UP Lemon Lime was the first proof of that, launching back in March. And interestingly... many reviewers deemed it the best lemon lime "soda" flavor they'd ever tasted. Even in comparison to the sodas.
And now GHOST just did it again.
7UP and A&W Root Beer: Besting the Originals
The newest one, GHOST Energy x A&W Root Beer, opened its Secure-A-Can window on August 6th ahead of a nationwide rollout on August 31st. It's the same formula GHOST fans already know: 200mg of natural caffeine, Carnipure L-carnitine, taurine, NeuroFactor, AstraGin, and zero sugar in a 16oz can.
The big thing that changed is the flavor target, a century-old soda fountain classic instead of a candy aisle staple.
"GHOST actually tastes better than the original soda, root beer, or YooHoo."
-- Ben, PricePlow
GHOST ENERGY added A&W Root Beer to the lineup, the brand's first team-up with the root beer name that's been pouring since 1919.
Our entire team has tasted them at this point, and we've come to agree that he's objectively right. These flavor in these cans is simply... uncanny.
What's wild is that a can of regular A&W Root Beer soda carries 46g of sugar or more. GHOST's version carries none, yet it doesn't taste thin the way diet soda usually does, because GHOST isn't just pulling sugar out and trying to make up for it with artificial sweeteners. It's replacing that sugar with an active formula built for energy and focus instead of empty sweetness. Same story with 7UP Lemon Lime.
And interestingly, because of those active ingredients inside, the texture is perfect, despite being zero sugar. Diet sodas are notoriously too "thin". GHOST Energy, with its gram of both carnitine and taurine, is not. Active ingredients that normally lead to tougher flavoring instead proved to be the bridge in soda texture!
So now GHOST gets to show off real flavor science on flavors it didn't have to invent from scratch, and KDP gets an R&D lane for its own soda brands that the original diet lineups never had. It's a massive win for everyone (except for Mondelez), and we've already told GHOST that the "LTO" on this A&W flavor needs to go away. This flavor needs to be permanent.
Why This Matters
In a monumental turn of events, Ghost Lifestyle has been acquired by Keurig Dr Pepper in a deal worth $1.65 Billion Dollars! Our only question is, when's the Dr Pepper energy drink collab?!
None of this works without the credibility GHOST already built. GHOST co-founder and CEO Dan Lourenço walked us through the brand's rise years before any of this KDP news broke, including on Episode #116 of the PricePlow Podcast, recorded right as GHOST Energy's growth was becoming impossible to ignore.
KDP handed GHOST the keys to its own soda lineup, and GHOST turned that access into flavors that hilariously dominated the source material. If 7UP Lemon Lime and A&W Root Beer keep performing, expect more of KDP's portfolio to get the same treatment.
So you know our next request: GHOST Energy Dr. Pepper. Make it happen, folks.
Sign up for GHOST alerts below if you want to know the second the next KDP soda gets the GHOST treatment. Mondelez can enjoy watching from the chair in the corner over there.
GHOST Energy Drink – Deals and Price Drop Alerts
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Disclosure: PricePlow relies on pricing from stores with which we have a business relationship. We work hard to keep pricing current, but you may find a better offer.
Posts are sponsored in part by the retailers and/or brands listed on this page.
