Maine’s Moxie Festival Fizzles Out Again This Year

In the past there's been over 30,000 people in Maine that love Moxie enough to drive to a festival in Lisbon.  Unfortunately, they won't be making the trip this year either.

City councilors in the town of Lisbon have put the kibosh to this year's Moxie Festival, which is normally a huge celebration of all things Moxie, the official soft drink of Maine.  Councilors there voted 5 to 1 to cancel the July event according to CentralMaine.com.  The event was cancelled last year as well due to this nasty COVID-19 pandemic.

Although more and more Mainers are being vaccinated and the daily #s seem to be subsiding, councilors were frightened off by the amount of Moxie lovers that had shown up in the past, and decided to hold a few smaller events instead.

Get our free mobile app

Mark Stevens, who is the Parks and Recreation guy in Lisbon told his audience the other night “That doesn’t mean that we can’t do other things.”  He suggested a car show, fireworks and a road race.

The word Moxie means "courage", and as far as we're concerned, it takes a lot of courage to drink a carbonated beverage that started out as an patented medicine with a bitter root extract that was developed by a man from Union back in 1876.

But apparently, people dig it, as is evident by the above You Tube video. Enough so that it was designated our official soft drink back in 2005 by a bunch of bewildered state legislators.

But we know a segment of our audience is made up of Moxie lovers, and we truly hope that the annual salutation of the bitter syrup in an orange can will happen in 2022.