The Drink Was Named After a Birthday. The Birthday Was the Deadline.

The "100" is the company's birthday, and the birthday was the deadline. That accident of corporate timekeeping put 100PLUS on the shelf in Malaysia in 1983, years before the brand that invented the category dates its own arrival in Asia to 1987.

There's a can of 100PLUS in almost every coffee shop fridge I've seen in Singapore and Malaysia.

I always assumed the 100 meant something about the drink.

It's the company's age.

Fraser and Neave was founded in Singapore in 1883. The company's centenary was 1983. The drink was named after the birthday.

Here's the part almost nobody tells.

On 5 December 1982, Singapore held its first competitive marathon.

F&N's general manager was there. J. D. H. Neill, British. He had landed in Singapore in September 1945, aged 22, and stayed. The colonial service sent him to China in 1948 to learn Hokkien. He was still speaking it at 92.

Neill watched one of the first runners finish and thought the man was ill.

Are you sick or something?

He wasn't sick, the runner said. It was "that dreadful drink that I had at the last drinking station."

The next day Neill walked into the office and said F&N should make its own drink. His words: "we must have our own health drink and we can have it for the anniversary of 100 years in 1983."

A birthday is a date you can't move.

Ship in 1983 or the name means nothing.

F&N launched 100PLUS in Malaysia and Singapore in 1983. A sports drink. Singapore had just held its first marathon.

F&N's own brand site puts it gently. The company had to sell the idea to "the sporting community who were then unfamiliar with the merits of isotonic beverages."

The obvious version of this story writes itself. Local company copies the American sports drink, sells it cheaper, wins on price.

Check the dates.

Gatorade was invented at the University of Florida in 1965. The published histories have it staying mostly inside the United States for two decades. Gatorade reached regions of Asia in 1987.

100PLUS launched in 1983. F&N calls it the first isotonic drink launched in Malaysia. In the only interview he gave about the drink, he never mentions Gatorade once.

The copy story came later, from people who already knew Gatorade. Nobody checked the dates, because the tidy version explained everything.

By 2013 the managing director of F&N's drinks arm was telling The Star that 100PLUS held over 80 per cent of Malaysia's isotonic segment. 24 cans a second, he said, with no country attached. His figures, not an auditor's.

Here's what keeps coming back to me:

F&N never out-invented Gatorade. 100PLUS was on the shelf in Malaysia first, and stayed.

Being first in the world is a line for a conference. Being first where your customers already shop is a spot in the fridge.

F&N invented that deadline, and then couldn't move it. That's the mechanism. Not a better formula — a date.

Neill was 92 when he told the marathon story on camera, in 2015. Someone handed him the 100PLUS. "I still love it."

What would you ship next year if the deadline were already printed on the can?