New Coke

[Olivia Bauer]

So, to celebrate the season three premiere of Stranger Things Coca-Cola temporarily re-released the infamous "New Coke".

From what I understand Coca-Cola was getting its ass kicked by diet drinks in the 1980s. So, to try and win people back and save their stocks, they released a new formula for Coca-Cola.
It was commonly referred to as "New Coke" because the can says "NEW!" in big, bold letters. Apparently New Coke was a massive flop that was hated by Coca-Cola fans.
They brought back their old formula as "Coca-Cola Original" and made it at the same time as New Coke which was rebranded "Coke II". However, Coke II would finally be discontinued in 2002.
Some have actually speculated New Coke was terrible on purpose so that people would miss the old Coke so much they'd be happy to drink it again. Who knows?

I always heard bad things about New Coke and even on Stranger Things they made a joke about it being so polarizing. Well, I figured it'd be now or never to find out how New Coke tasted.
Out of morbid curiosity I purchased a Stranger Things themed set of Coke products from the Coca-Cola website. The box contained two cans of New Coke, one bottle of Coca-Cola Classic, and one bottle of Coke Zero, all of which have the Stranger Things logo on them. The set came in today and I finally got to have my taste of New Coke just a few minutes ago AND...!

...It's not bad. Not great, but pretty decent.

So what about you guys? Who among you had the opportunity to drink "New Coke" and what did YOU think of it?

[Rev. Powell]

I lived through it. "New Coke" tasted like Pepsi. I was a Pepsi drinker anyway so I didn't care. Dumb move by Coke, but they survived it just fine.

[Svengoolie 3]

along the lines of new coke, how about orange vanilla coke?

(Ducking into my flame proof space shuttle tile lined bunker in case anyone really hates that stuff.)

[FatFreddysCat]

Every time I hear "New Coke" I think of an old "Simpsons" gag which featured Danny DeVito as Homer's half brother, Herb Powell.

The first time Herb was introduced on the show, he was a rich, powerful head of an automobile company. When he learned of Homer's existence, he offered Homer a job at his company and gave him the task of designing their next new vehicle, which of course turns out to be a total disaster and leads to Herb's total financial ruin.

A few seasons later, Herb is living in a Hobo camp, sitting around a fire with the other tramps telling them his sad story. He sez "They called it (the car Homer designed) the biggest mistake since New Coke!" and one of the other hobos pipes up, "HEY! I invented that!"

[lester1/2jr]

new coke would win taste tests because it was sweeter, but a whole can of it was sickening, basically.

[Gabriel Knight]

Funny how people always thought it was intentional, as in, they deliberately made a crappy soda just to make people miss the old one and give anything to have it back. The company had to send a message to say "no, we really screwed it up".

The episode of Futurama in which they travel to the Slurm factory have a nod to this "conspiracy".

[Svengoolie 3]

new coke would win taste tests because it was sweeter, but a whole can of it was sickening, basically.

We coke might be better marketed in the new smaller cans then.