Comments on: Old Rumors About New Coke

By: Classic Lover

Classic Lover — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 23:37:21 +0000

I was one of the people who vehemently protested the discontinuance of real Coke. My feelings were that if I wanted something that tasted like flat Pepsi, I’d buy Pepsi and open it long before I drank it. You’ll never convince me that it wasn’t a deliberate ploy to introduce HFCS-flavored Coke. But, when they reissued the new “Coka Cola Classic” it tasted so much better than “Coke” that I was satisfied. I’m still drinking “Classic” nearly 20 years later.

By: dleet

dleet — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:11:14 +0000

Coke should also be in a 6oz. glass bottle. Hawaiian bottled 7-Up uses cane sugar and it’s fantastic. Don’t know about coke there, I drink Pepsi. It is bottled in Copenhagen with real sugar and tastes as close as you can get to what I grew up with. btw, Schlitz had a new bean counter change their product over to 100% corn syrup–no malt sugar, never recovered. Con Agra, and Archer Daniels, took America’s taste buds hostage years ago, we’re still paying the ransom.

By: Nerdfury

Nerdfury — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:36:45 +0000

A friend of mine, years ago, took me past his great-uncle’s house where he asked us if either of us youngin’s had ever had a REAL Coke.

So he took us to his basement and revealed a stockpile of well-preserved ye olde Coke. According to him, it was bottled sometime in the late sixties or somewhere near there. He had them preserved in a little cold room and when he pulled out a couple of bottles to give us, they tasted SO DAMN GOOD.

Much better than the battery acid we have to drink these days.

Woefully, when he died, his son sold most of it to avid collectors for far less value than the pure happiness that stuff could cause.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:38:30 +0000

You can still get Coke sweetened with cane sugar by importing it from Mexico or Central America. It tastes like in the good ole days. And yes, it’s in glass bottles, the way God intended .

By: Sandy

Sandy — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 16:45:48 +0000

I was in college when it happened — just outside of Atlanta, in fact — so it was a huge deal there (since that’s the brand’s headquarters).

When they heard the news, I remember several friends’ parents going out and buying up all the “old” Coke they could so that they wouldn’t be forced to consume the new stuff. A few of them actually bought enough to last until Coca-Cola Classic was introduced a few months later.

And, I’ll say this: Anyone who hasn’t tried Coke out of a glass bottle from a soda machine that’s cranked up really cold, so that there’s just a hint of ice in the neck, hasn’t really had Coke. It’s just not as good in cans or those blasted plastic bottles.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 03:36:26 +0000

How many MF readers were actually around when that happened (and remember it?)

One theory that you missed, and the one that I’ve always believed to be the true story, is that Coca Cola orchestrated the whole thing to both solidify their “user base”, and to shut down the Pepsi Challenge campaign in one fell swoop.

If I remember correctly, it all happened when Pepsi was at the high point of their campaign, which consisted of blind taste tests between Coke & Pepsi. The campaign was showing some success, with many people saying they preferred the taste of Pepsi over Coke. Coke responds by coming up with a new recipe that just happens to taste a lot like Pepsi, rolling it out with much hoopla and promises/threats that the old Coke is gone. Die-hard Coke drinkers overwhelmingly reject the new product. Coke humbly follows its customers wishes by dumping the new flavor and returning to the original.

Just as planned.

And it worked. Before the New Coke subterfuge, Pepsi’s market share was exceeding Coke’s in some markets, and a close second everywhere else. Coke firmly trounced Pepsi thereafter.

By: evan

evan — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:22:53 +0000

i actually have a bottle of crystal pepsi on my desk right now. because it came in glass bottles, it has long outlasted its 1994 expiration date.

truth be told, i cracked open a bottle at a wedding last summer. it wasn’t that good.

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:33:25 +0000

Right now, I can’t get that song out of my head. The Crystal Pepsi ad featuring Van Halen, which premiered during Super Bowl XXVII in 1993, is over at YouTube. Just search “Crystal Pepsi.”

I could not find the SNL “Crystal Gravy” parody. Sorry.

By: Jarred Hanson

Jarred Hanson — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 18:25:25 +0000

While we are on this subject of cokes does anyone remember Crystal Pepsi? Maybe the fact that the commercial featured the Van Halen song “right now” will jolt a memory? …Anyone?