Pioneering Beverage Brand wildwonder Partners with RuPaul's Drag Race Winner Nymphia Wind for New Sparkling Prebiotic + Probiotic Health Beverage: Banana Queen

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Thursday, August 1st, 2024 — Today, wildwonder, the AAPI-founded brand behind the world’s first prebiotic and probiotic sparkling beverage, announces Banana Queen, a new flavor collaboration with Taiwanese drag star and RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Nymphia Wind. The most unique drink of the summer, which Nymphia debuted at her DragCon booth in Los Angeles, is officially out August 1st exclusively via drinkwildwonder.com.

Inspired by Nymphia Wind’s artistic journey, Banana Queen reflects the unique artist’s whimsical personal brand, marked by plentiful bananas (symbols of prosperity, growth, and abundance in Asian culture) and her signature color, yellow. Bubbly, refreshing, and tasting like banana cream pie, the Banana Queen beverage combines banana puree and cream flavor with fresh-brewed marigold flowers. In line with wildwonder’s mantra of “Happy Gut, Happy Life,” Banana Queen includes both live probiotics and prebiotic fiber, with the first ingredient of every drink a fresh-brewed herb — inspired by wildwonder Founder/CEO Rosa Li’s grandmother’s array of herbal tonics.

The Banana Queen beverage, which marks the brand’s first flavor collaboration, is non-GMO, vegan, caffeine—and gluten-free. It contains 5 grams of fiber, 1 billion probiotics, and only 40 calories.

Nymphia Wind with wildwonder’s Banana Queen beverage / Photo Credit: Tanner Abel

With this collaboration, wildwonder and Nymphia Wind proudly amplify Asian voices, art, and culture while celebrating self-expression, cultural pride, and fabulous flavor. Both pioneers exude uniqueness through their trailblazing efforts in their respective fields - Nymphia, being the first East Asian winner of RuPaul's Drag Race, and wildwonder founder/CEO Rosa Li, being an AAPI-female-owned standout drink brand in a male-dominated industry.

The partnership also continues wildwonder’s mission to create wonders in everyday life, especially for under-voiced communities. Five percent of profits from every drink go towards causes that empower women and marginalized communities. The brand, designed by a diverse female-led creative team, strives to bring more diversity and representation to retail shelves and uplift marginalized voices through donations and partnerships. Learn more here: https://drinkwildwonder.com/pages/impact

wildwonder Founder & CEO Rosa Li said: “wildwonder and Nymphia Wind share a mission to amplify Asian heritage and increase representation across our journeys. At wildwonder, we create flavors with Eastern herbal wisdom as a base for our drinks, and Nymphia puts her imaginative spin on Asian drag art, paving the way for future generations of Asian drag queens. The Banana Queen flavor fits each of our brands---offering unique and delicious wildwonder flavors and celebrating Nymphia’s love of bananas. We’re delighted with our collaboration and excited to introduce Banana Queen this summer.”

Nymphia Wind said: "I was intrigued when I first saw wildwonder on Instagram. It had a fun, fresh look, and the gut-healthy drinks drew me in. What meant most to me was collaborating with an Asian-owned business (even better, it's woman-owned!) to build the community. It's fun to take Nymphia Wind, the banana queen, into different scenarios, and wildwonder's team celebrates uniqueness and uninhibited self-expression. It's been an inspiring, fruitful adventure."

wildwonder founder Rosa Li & Nymphia Wind / Photo Credit: Tanner Abel

wildwonder is the world’s first sparkling beverage to combine prebiotics and probiotics for a happy gut. The brand was inspired by the healing tonics founder/CEO Rosa Li’s grandmother brewed for her as a child in China. Each can holds the perfect blend of heritage herbs and botanicals with the bold fruit flavors of a fruit stand in California, which Li now calls home.

A Fulbright Scholar, Tory Burch Fellow, Stanford Business School Graduate, and former private equity and venture investor, Li turned back to traditional herbal medicine as a solution to her Wall Street-induced stress and health issues. She learned that over 70% of the body’s immune system lies in the gut microbiome, impacting mood, energy, brain function, and metabolism. Using legacy herbs, she developed refreshing flavors with gut health benefits without the traditional bitter taste of medical herbs and spices.

Founded in 2020, just a year later, the company raised seed funding. Li expanded her business beyond Northern California and showcased her bold, effervescent flavors on Shark Tank in 2023, winning over guest shark and Doordash CEO Tony Xu. The business has continued to expand, and wildwonder beverages can now be found at Sprouts, Erewhon Market, and select Whole Foods, Target, and Albertsons Safeway locations.

About wildwonder

Founder and CEO Rosa Li created wildwonder sparkling beverages to reimagine the healing drinks of her Chinese heritage, where herbal wisdom and gut-supporting superfoods meet big fruit flavors. All everyday flavors of wildwonder beverages are USDA Organic, non-GMO, vegan, caffeine free, and gluten-free, containing 1 billion live probiotics and 5 grams of prebiotic fiber with only 6 grams of sugar and 40 calories. wildwonder provides a simple and refreshing remedy for a happy gut by simply cracking open a can.

About Nymphia Wind

Taiwanese-American Nymphia Wind is a highly successful drag performer acclaimed for using drag to reinvent and amplify Asian arts and history---especially Chinese opera, an art of cross-gender performance, visual symbols, and distinctive song and dance. She was born in Los Angeles and raised in Hong Kong until age six when her family moved to Taiwan. K-pop girl groups sparked her high school interest in fashion. An interest in drag grew in college, and she received a BA in Fashion Atelier from the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester, England. In 2018, Nymphia began performing in Taipei, with performances that often featured bananas and the color yellow. She won the NYX Face Award 2019 Taiwan and Make a Diva Season 2 in 2021. Nymphia produced her first show, Bye Bye Nymphia—Farewell Drag Show, in Taipei in 2022---it used a Taiwanese electric flower car as a stage. That year, she moved to Brooklyn and won the Mother Season 2 competition in New York. In 2024, Wind became the first East Asian performer to win RuPaul’s Drag Race and its first Asian winner in 13 years. She was congratulated by Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-Wan, who has championed LGBTQ+ rights. She was listed in the arts category of the Forbes 30 under 30 Asia 2024, and Nymphia and the House of Wind will perform at the 2024 Olympiad in Paris. Nymphia Wind has breathed new life into centuries of Asian drag.

Connect with wildwonder:

Website | Instagram | TikTok | Facebook |X (Twitter)

Connect with Nymphia Wind:

Website | Instagram | TikTok | Facebook | X (Twitter)

For more information about wildwonder, please contact:

Rebecca Shapiro, Mikaela Duhs, MC Miskell, Naomi Banks (wildwonderPR@shorefire.com)