Episode 19 is out for those following along. This week we are again joined by Shawn Robare from Branded in the 80s. this week the guys and I discuss a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Soda.

As you know, I talk about soda A LOT on this blog. I’m a big soda enthusiast so this is a fun episode for me. We don’t touch on the big topics like New Coke or Crystal Pepsi in any type of depth, but we do mention them. Honestly, discussing those two soda disasters could take an entire episode on its own.  But we discuss many other sodas.  We talk about our personal favorites, some favorites that have been cancelled as well as a nice discussion on the availability of Coke and Pepsi (or non-availability) in restaurants.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner. And yes, we are still on the Zune Marketplace.

A few years ago I wrote two articles for the Archie McPhee website Monkey Goggles. They also republished two other articles I wrote here (Glorious Glass and Origins of Our Favorite Toys).  It was a fun little site with quirky humor/pop culture articles and I was glad to contribute.  My buddy Shawn over at Branded in the 80s also wrote a few articles for the site.

Anyway, it seems that the Monkey Goggles website has stopped updating.  There haven’t been any new articles for the last year or so (since editor Geoff Carter left).  So, like Shawn, I decided to archive my articles here before they are swallowed by the Internet.  Today, you are looking at the first all-new article I wrote for the site.  It’s about failed soda.

The Cola Wars of the ’80s and ’90s really brought about a lot of competitive creativity between Pepsi and Coke (and to a lesser degree, 7-Up). They threw whatever soda flavor they could conceive of against the wall to see what would stick. Some worked (Cherry Coke, Mountain Dew Code Red), and some blew up in their faces like a novelty cigar (New Coke, Crystal Pepsi).

Instead of marveling at the thrills of victory, let’s wallow in the agony of their failures. Here’s a list of some of the most spectacular soda failures from the long history of the Cola Wars.

New Coke - No list like this one is complete without mentioning the Godfather of all soda failures. Released in 1985, New Coke caused the collective soda-drinking world to lose its damn mind. Coke drinkers actually tried to levy a class action lawsuit against Coke for releasing the new formula. (Seriously.)

It was a fiasco. Coke was forced to bring back Coke Classic not three months after releasing New Coke. After the return of Classic Coke, New Coke was re-branded Coke II and then died a slow death in 1992. The “Classic” moniker still exists on the can to this day. (Read a more complete history of New Coke here).

Crystal Pepsi - Apparently Pepsi wanted in on all the hate mail and lawsuits Coke got for New Coke. So they decided that they too would try something new. In 1992, Crystal Pepsi was released with great fanfare, including a high-profile commercial during that year’s Super Bowl.

Unfortunately, Crystal Pepsi failed to live up to expectations. A clear cola that didn’t have a lemon-lime taste frightened and confused the soda-drinking public. It became more a novelty than a soda to be taken seriously. Many people don’t remember, though, that for its first year Crystal Pepsi sold well enough to grab an 11% market share (and caused Coke to release the next item on this list). After that banner year, however, the bottom dropped out and Crystal Pepsi’s sales plummeted.

As a last ditch effort, Pepsi reformulated Crystal Pepsi with a lemon-lime flavor and re-branded it as Crystal by Pepsi. Too little, too late.

TaB Clear – Coke released this clear soda in 1992 after the strong first year sales of Crystal Pepsi. After the clear soda crash that same year, it was quickly discontinued.

OK Soda - In 1992, Coke decided to try something new and released this less carbonated, more fruity soda with anunconventional marketing campaign. Fliers, soda “manifestos” and “underground” phone numbers with voicemail were used to target the youth market. This tactic was definitely different, but it backfired as the targeted audience realized it was being marketed what executives at Coke believed to be an “edgy” soft drink. After poor sales, OK Soda was discontinued in 1993.

7 Up Gold – Released in 1988, 7-Up Gold was a real departure for 7-Up. It had a spicy taste similar to Ginger Ale and it contained caffeine. According to reviews, the taste was terrible and the soda was canceled within a year.

DnL – This second departure for 7-Up came in 2002. DnL was formulated to be the opposite of regular 7-Up (the logo is even the 7-Up logo turned upside down). 7 Up is a clear soda in a green bottle. DnL was a greenish soda in a clear bottle. Also, unlike regular 7-Up, DnL was heavily caffeinated and had a more difficult-to-identify, citrus-y taste. It was discontinued in 2006 after poor sales.

Mountain Dew Sport – This 1990 release was designed as a “sports drink” to compete with Gatorade. A diet version was also released the same year. In 2001, ten years after Mountain Dew Sport was canceled, Pepsi decided to simply buy Gatorade outright.

Mello Yello Melon and Afterglow – In order to spice up flagging Mello Yello sales (and in response to the success of Mountain Dew Code Red), Coke released these two flavor extensions around 2003. However, peach- and melon-flavored Mello Yello did not exactly set the soda world on fire and they were canceled within a year.

Pepsi Patio - Released in 1963 as a response to Diet Rite cola, this was Pepsi’s first diet drink. There were several Patio flavors: cola, orange, grape, strawberry and root beer. Patio was canceled within six months of its debut due to poor sales.

However, it was not a total loss.While the other flavors in the Patio line were dropped, the cola flavor was reformulated and re-introduced as Diet Pepsi in 1964.

Coke C2 and Pepsi Edge - Both released in 2004, these rival beverages were meant to be “full-flavored” diet sodas (meaning: they were somewhat “in-between” sodas that weren’t fully diet, but not full-calorie, either). Coke and Pepsi had trouble marketing the sodas, and sales of both suffered. Pepsi Edge was discontinued in 2005, but Coke stuck with Coke C2 until 2008. Interestingly, Pepsi Max and Coke Zero now fill the void these two sodas left behind.

Coca-Cola officially released New Coke on April 23, 1985. Which makes it 25 years old this month. Hard to believe that whole reformulating Coke debacle was over two decades ago. I was eleven years old.

Go back and read about the history of that troubled beverage in my 3 part retrospective on New Coke called Misunderstood.

Let’s take a look at some “New Coke” commercials.

This commercial was originally for regular Coke, but was changed after the release of New Coke. It features the slogan Coke Is It! I’ve always liked that jingle.

Bill Cosby was one of the big celebrities who helped launch New Coke. Here he is introducing the reformulated Coke in 1985.

Max Headroom was another “celebrity” used to market New Coke to the younger generation.

This commercial aired during Super Bowl XX (Chicago vs New England) in Jan 1986. It’s a combo commercial advertising both New Coke and Coke Classic. It features Jim McMahon and William Perry from the 1985 Chicago Bears.

Here’s a 1985-1986 Pepsi commercial that takes advantage of the New Coke debacle.

I don’t know about you, but as a lifelong Pepsi drinker, I actually liked New Coke better than Coca-Cola Classic because that’s what it was formulated to taste like.  But that’s just me.

So celebrate New Coke’s birthday by drinking a Pepsi.

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Now, let’s take a look at the other side of the coin, Coca-Cola. They have come up with some pretty famous commercials of their own. Let’s take a look back in time at some of Coke’s most famous TV ads.

Coke’s 1971 Teach the World to Sing commercial (video above) is undoubtedly their most famous advertisement.  It is so famous that it received two official sequels.  First, during the 1971 holiday season, Coke released a Christmas version of the commercial that ended in darkness with all the candles the people were holding in the shape of a Christmas tree. Then, in 2005, Coke inexplicably allowed singer/songwriter G Love to create a horrible douchebag hipster alternative rock version called Teach the World to Chill.  Might have been a worse idea than New Coke.

If the “hilltop” commercial above isn’t Coke’s most famous, then this 1979 Mean Joe Greene commercial is.  It’s still today a fantastic commercial.  Of course, in 2009, Coke filmed a sequel to the Mean Joe Greene commercial with Troy Polamalu.

The 11:30 Diet Coke break from 1996 is another popular Coke commercial.  I remember it airing what felt like every 5 minutes.  And, wait, I’m shocked to say this, but, in 2007 Coke filmed a sequel to the 11:30 commercial.  Talk about milking a concept dry.  I wonder if any of Coke’s commercials haven’t had a sequel.

In 1994 Coke started it’s “Always Coca-Cola” campaign. And with it, this commercial which is one of my favorites. The song is so catchy. I remember it playing in movie theaters before the feature during the commercial break. I loved it and usually sang along with it. Fantastic jingle and I love the fonts and design of the commercial.

I can’t do a Coke commercial article and not talk about New Coke. When Coke launched their reformulated “New Coke” in 1985, it trotted out as many stars as they could find to get people to buy the new formula. Max Headroom was chosen to bring in the young people. In this commercial he interviews a Pepsi can about being second best. For the older crowd, they trotted out Bill Cosby.

In the ’90s, Coke signed Paula Abdul to market Diet Coke.  This led to the above commercial which has Paula dancing with Gene Kelly and hobnobbing with Cary Grant and Groucho Marx.  A very cool commercial.  Also, for the campaign, Paula teamed up with Elton John on several commercials singing “Just for the Taste of It…Diet Coke!”

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There have been rumors about this very thing for years. Coke and Pepsi have so many flavor variations around the world and the US really only sees a SMALL portion. Grape Vault? Are you kidding me? I really want to try that.  I’ve heard of Raspberry Coke in New Zealand, but it doesn’t sound THAT appetizing.  How about the discontinued Coke with Lemon?  It’s all up for grabs with this new machine.  However, don’t expect things like New Coke and Surge to be available, because this isn’t a time machine, it’s a soda machine.

Check out a video demonstration of this glorious machine here.

Now that the technology is here to let the dispensing machines do all the work for us, how long is it before we get into a SkyNet situation? I mean, are we just a lightning strike away from one of these machines going Johnny Number 5 on us? Will this be fun Johnny Number 5, or laser weapon fry your ass like a Roman Candle Number 5? How long before we see this:

Run tiny, Japanese children!! Run like the wind from the giant Coke branded inhuman monstrosity!!!! Save yourself!!!  It feeds on CHILDREN!!!  CHILDREN!!!!

Speaking of bad ass Coke dispensing Terminator machines, people have been hacking vending machines for years to make them better. One of the more popular things to do to a Coke machine is to connect it to the internet. Connecting your Coke machine to the internet allows you to check inventory levels and dispense sodas remotely from your computer. While this is quite awesome, it also calls onto the carpet not only your laziness, but the fact that you can’t even wait 30 seconds to put money in the machine and make a soda selection.  No surprisingly, this trend was started by Computer Science students.

One of the first and most popular of the online Coke vending machines is the remote controlled vending machine at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU). This machine even made PC Magazine’s Top 10 Greatest Hacks of All Time. The machine began as an idea by a few students in the early ’90s who had to walk several floors to the soda machine. They felt there had to be a way to put the machine’s load status on their school’s network so they could avoid wasting trips to an empty machine. After building hardware and a software interface they attached the device to the innards of the machine.  Once online, the team was able to query the machine using Unix to find out where exactly the coldest bottle of soda was, what the inventory in each bottle column was and what the purchasing statistics and history of all the bottles was. Anyone with access to the school’s computer network could query the machine to find out the info.  Since the soda interface was Unix based, it was command line driven and provided no graphical tools.

Several years later, students in the Computer Science House at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) hooked up their own Coke machine and used a graphical user interface (GUI) instead of the earlier Unix interface.  The GUI for this machine was much more user friendly than the earlier CMU incarnation.  This version also got a mention in the PC Mag 10 Greatest Hacks.

Today there are tons of online vending machines.  Here is a list of remote controlled vending machines. As you can see, they are everywhere now.

As a matter of fact, here’s a random dude that put his personal Coke machine, dubed “Coke-puter”, on the web — Click here for the “Coke-puter”. You can see the history of purchases as well as inventory (he has not only Coke but Guiness and Cheerwine in the machine).

Eventually, I wonder if all Coke machines will be attached to a national network so people can query them to see if their particular soda is empty or not.