LISBON — Hawaiian surf culture meets Moxie only in Lisbon. Details of the luau-inspired theme for the 2025 Moxie Festival were recently announced with the tag line “Hang Loose, Drink Moxie.”

The three-day festival honoring the distinctive beverage July 11-13 will celebrate with hula dancing, as well as the more established events, including fireworks, a 5K road race, musical performances, vendors, a Moxie-chugging contest, and a Moxie recipe contest.

Since 1982 the festival and its bitter-soda roots have attracted crowds from across the country to participate in Moxie-themed events, swelling this town of about 10,000 residents.

The mystical beverage, first created by Augustin Thompson of Union, Maine, as a “nerve food,” has captured attention in Maine and the world for years. Derived from an Abenaki word for “dark water,” the word “moxie” has taken on a meaning of its own, encapsulating grit, determination and resilience.  

“It refuses to be defined,” says festival Co-coordinator Kate Madore when asked to describe Moxie. “There’s nothing like it and I think that people like that kind of standout quality, because we all have something about ourselves that kind of doesn’t fit in a box,” she said.

Madore began volunteering at the festival in 2018 and has led coordinating efforts since 2021. 

The beverage’s vibrant orange packaging and unusual flavor pack a punch. The soda takes its marketing from the reddish-orange color produced by its signature ingredient, gentian root. The drink was originally created as a wellness tonic by Thompson, a doctor then living in Lowell, Massachusetts, after serving as an officer in the Civil War. He soon carbonated it, his goal being to produce a drink without some of the harmful substances such as alcohol and cocaine found in some drinks of the day.   

While Thompson was credited with its creation, New York businessman Frank Archer launched Moxie to new heights with slogans including “What the country needs is plenty of Moxie” and introducing the “Moxie Man,” who points at the reader with the slogan “Drink Moxie.”  

Red Sox slugger Ted Williams helped revive Moxie sales following World War II when he endorsed the drink for $1,000 and stock options. By 1959, Moxie experienced its first profit in nearly a decade. Moxie became “Ted’s Root Beer.”  

Closer to home, Moxie’s marketing influence led Frank Anicetti, owner of the Kennebec Fruit Co. in Lisbon, to collect memorabilia for years. When author Frank Potter published his book “The Moxie Mystique” in 1981, Anicetti invited him for a book release at his store. Together, the Franks gathered a crowd of people intrigued by Moxie. 

Their efforts led to town leaders establishing the first Moxie Festival in 1982, succeeding a Lisbon Falls summer tradition called Frontier Days. 

What began as a single-day affair, now spans a full weekend with events all day Friday through Sunday. Activities including fireworks and a unicyclist show, dance demonstrations and musical performances, and a float parade are free to the public. The 5K run and car show are fundraisers and require an entrance fee.  

This year, the festival will add hula dancing lessons to match the luau theme and will feature tribute bands covering Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and The Eagles. Changes in Latitude, a Jimmy Buffet cover band, will also perform. 

As in past years, the festival will feature the popular Moxie recipe contest where participants create foods incorporating the soft drink. Kids can enter a whoopie pie eating contest while adults can compete in a Moxie chugging competition.  

What began as a tonic to combat “softening of the brain” and “paralysis” has “taken on its own life,” Madore said. “There are people in this town who the options are water, milk and Moxie. That’s just the thing you drink, and it just becomes part of your diet, part of your life.” 

The 2024 Moxie Fest 5K hosted over 700 runners, while the Moxie chugging contest has gained a media presence with Guiness World Record holder Eric “Badlands” Booker’s Moxie YouTube content. Using the handle @BadlandsChugs, Booker has an audience of over 3.5 million subscribers.   

A new wave of social media promotion is only the next evolution in the drink’s history.

“While Moxie is a soft drink, it’s also a state of mind and, in my opinion, represents an element of Americana that is becoming harder to locate in our rapidly changing culture,” says Lisbon native and author Jim Baumer in his book “Moxie: Maine in a Bottle.” Baumer attributes the drink’s long-lasting impact to a distinct form of American nostalgia.  

“People have so many memories. . . . That’s what they’re drinking,” Madore said. 

“It’s about connection, and anything that’s going to last in this world has to be about connection,” she said.