My Compulsion to Collect

I have a weird compulsion to collect things. Nothing outlandish like naval lint, body parts or other people's souls, but things more under the pop culture umbrella. I've tried to collect things since I was a little kid. I remember having a bottle/can collection in our garage when I was 8 or 9. I was made to throw it away because my parents thought it was just "taking up space". What the hell does that mean anyway? Doesn't the car take up space? Or the hundred pounds of crap I push under my bed when I clean up my room? That takes up space, too. Hey, what do I know, I was just the innocent child permanently scarred by my uncaring parents (I see an episode of Oprah in my future). After that I collected Garbage Pail Kids for a few years. Those were AWESOME. I collected them in 5th and 6th grade. I think I still have them at my dad's, but they may have been thrown out because...that's right...taking up space.

In seventh grade I started my first big collection; comic books. From seventh grade through twelfth grade my friend Steve and I collected comics hardcore. We frequented this comic shop in Hoover called Curious George Comics and Arcana. It was run by this guy who I think is crazy, but I KNOW is a dirty hippie. I have no idea if his name was in fact, George, but Steve and I called him Curious George anyway. Years after his store closed I saw him at the mall. He was working as a telemarketer (surprise, surprise) and he was wearing a suit and tie carrying a briefcase....and he worked as a telemarketer. That's what I'm talking about. I still called him Curious George when I talked to him. What a wacko (him, not me). But I digress (I do that a lot), I still have my comic collection in my garage. I thumb through it every once in a while. Looking through my hundreds of comics takes me back to a simpler time, a time before I was married, with a mortgage, and a job, no cat and no car. Damn, it certainly WAS a simpler time, I didn't have anything.

Comic collecting faded for the most part when I went to college. Partly because I didn't have the time nor the room to do it (nor the money). The only thing I could say I collected in college was books. I frequented a used book store and bought a ton of used books very cheaply to read. That's the closest I came to a collection until my last year at Auburn; 1997. That is the year I started collecting Star Wars. That particular collection would consume me from 1997 until the end of 2004. I realize this may label me as a dork, but I'm sure I was labeled that before some of you knew this (haha). Many of you had seen my Star Wars Room back when I lived in Birmingham. It was a spectacular site, but it is no more. I stopped actively collecting Star Wars stuff when I moved to Jacksonville in Feb 2005.

So, what am I collecting now? Odds and ends. Kool aid packets and soda cans (stop laughing, that was serious). I enjoy finding oddball sodas you can't find in a lot of places. I have old cans of Pepsi Free, Crystal Pepsi, Mountain Dew Pitch Black and New Coke. I have a can of Russian Pepsi Ice Cream and Taiwanese can of Pepsi Gold. Crazy ass things like that. It's something to do. I'm weird, what can I say? I'm glad Steph married me when she did, I have her completely fooled (well, probably not). I'm also glad she puts up with it.

I'm a lucky man with a garage full of comic books and soda cans.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Technorati Tags - random personal collecting Pepsi Coca Cola comic books

Misunderstood: The Saga of New Coke Pt III

Happy Monday, people! Before I present to you the final engrossing chapter of New Coke, I thought I'd pass along a fun little news article about fried Coke (pictured left). Apparently an enterprising man by the name of Abel Gonzales, Jr. created a recipe that uses Coca-Cola syrup mixed into a funnel cake batter that's deep fried and served with syrup and cherries on top. Wow. Nice. My wife and I always talk about how, in the South, they fry everything, including the Iced Tea. Maybe we should amend that to Coke? A completely Southern idea, fried Coke brings us one step closer to this. Consider me in love.

Anywho, on to the matter at hand. If you missed Part I or Part II of this article just click the appropriate link. Otherwise continue reading and see the exciting conclusion to the New Coke story.

After the fallout from New Coke’s disastrous introduction, Coke had a big problem. How do they market two Cokes? Coke Classic didn’t need any marketing as the brand now sold itself, but what about New Coke? It could no longer use the slogan “The Best Just Got Better”, so, what to do? Coke decided to market New Coke to their lowest performing demographic, kids and teens. Ads for Coke included Max Headroom in fast talking commercials berating Pepsi for lack of originality. These ads did fairly well and were well recognized, but sales of New Coke couldn’t recover from the beating the drink got over the summer. The writing was on the wall for New Coke.

In 1992, New Coke was re-branded Coke II in hopes that it might refresh interest. It didn’t and by 2002, the drink was pretty much eliminated from all but the smallest markets. Supposedly, Coke II can still be found in stores and vending machines in smaller markets like Micronesia and American Samoa. Though New Coke is considered near dead, it will never truly die. CEO Goizueta still preferred New Coke so he continued to have it produced for his own consumption until right before his death. You only have to mention New Coke to somebody and they immediately know what you are talking about. It’s not just a drink anymore, New Coke refers to a mistake so disastrous, one may never recover. It’s part of the pop culture lexicon.

Years after New Coke’s birth and supposed death, urban legends continue to swirl around it. There are people that believe that Coke orchestrated the whole New Coke failure to breathe life back into Coca-Cola’s flagging sales. While the end result may have done just that, I think Coke President Donald Keough said it best when asked about that very scenario. His answer: “We're not that dumb, and we're not that smart”. Well said.

So, can one still find New Coke on today’s store shelves? While Coke II may be dead, is the formula hidden within another product? Coca-Cola C2, perhaps? Or maybe Coke Zero? While New Coke’s exact formula won’t be found, the closest drink you will find to it is, in fact, Diet Coke. Take a look at the Diet Coke can as it’s very similar to the New Coke can with the red/silver colors reversed. Diet Coke is marketed as Coke while other drinks are marketed as Coca-Cola. New Coke was actually derived from Diet Coke’s formula. As mentioned earlier, Diet Coke is not really a diet version of Coca-Cola Classic as its formula is completely different. Diet Coke could be renamed Diet New Coke, or Diet Coke II. The true diet versions of Coca-Cola Classic are Coca-Cola C2 and Coca-Cola Zero.

As for me, what do I prefer? To be perfectly honest, I am a Pepsi drinker. My favorite soda is Diet Pepsi. I prefer Pepsi to Coke Classic and I don’t really even like Diet Coke (though I’ve recently started drinking it). When this whole New Coke fiasco went down, I was 11 years old. I remember my dad and I preferred the taste of New Coke to the original (as we were Pepsi drinkers so we liked the sweeter taste). I remember buying the 2 liters of New Coke and getting strange looks from people. EVERYONE in my neighborhood hated it. I can’t remember one person who would admit to liking New Coke at the time. I sure kept it quiet for a while. Now though, I think memories have softened and people would admit it wasn’t the taste they didn’t like, it was the idea of Coke changing the formula at all. They may even admit that they liked the taste of New Coke. Maybe.

What do you think? I really want to know. Email me or comment on this article and let me know what you thought of New Coke and if your views have changed since then. Till then, drink what you like and like what you drink.

Fun Coke/Pepsi Commercials:

1. New Coke Commercial featuring Max Headroom

2. One of a series of Pepsi commercials from the '90s featuring Hallie Eisenberg and a member of the Sopranos cast

3. This is a Cherry 7-up commercial I remember from the early '90s starring Matt LeBlanc, pre-Friends

4. Another classic 7-up commercial -- Make 7 UP YOURS!!!

Misunderstood: The Saga of New Coke Pt II

Welcome to Part II of The Saga of New Coke. If you missed Part I, then just click here. When you are all caught up, then continue reading for the exciting second part of our story. Like last time, check out the classic soda commercials at the end of today's installment.

On April 23, 1985 the Coca-Cola Company announced its intentions to introduce a brand new, reformulated Coca-Cola to the American public, dubbed Coke, and the systematic phasing out of the original formula. The new slogan was, “The Best Just Got Better”. What should have been a glorious day about Coke came up flat, so to speak. Coca-Cola CEO Robert Goizueta was ill-prepared for an event like Coke’s giant press conference and didn’t handle the media’s probing questions very well. When asked about New Coke’s flavor, he simply responded, “[It's] smoother, uh, uh, yet, uh, rounder yet, uh, bolder ... it has a more harmonious flavor.” In reality, the formula change made original Coke taste more like Pepsi, and made it a true full-calorie version of Diet Coke. Due to Goizueta’s lack of poise, all who attended that press release left with much doubt about the prospects of Coke’s new flavor, which, not surprisingly, would affect the news stories written about New Coke in its first 30 days.

That New Coke was a complete failure from day one is the common misconception. By and large, people really liked the new formulation and continued buying Coke in their usual amounts. Where the discourse began was in the Southeast, where Coke was originally formulated and sold back in the late 1800s. People were reacting to the fact that Coke was changed, not to the bad taste of New Coke. Most of the protestors didn’t even drink soda, much less Coke; they just didn’t like the idea of Coke changing something that apparently meant something to them. The interesting thing is, if Coke, before the change, would have meant enough to these people to buy it, then the company wouldn’t have changed the formula in the first place. It’s your classic Catch-22. Due to the extremely vocal minority, it became “chic” to bash New Coke. Protestors were so vocal about not liking New Coke that anyone who did like the new formula would be scared to say so. These “coke crazies” as I call them, formed a group called Old Cola Drinkers of America which lobbied The Coca Cola Company to reintroduce the original formula. They even tried to levy a class action lawsuit against Coke (wha-huh?!) but the case was thrown out by a judge (sometimes the legal system works). People continued to be so outraged at the new formula that they were trying to obtain cases of original Coca-Cola from overseas as New Coke had not been introduced over there yet. The Coca-Cola Company was at a loss for the huge debacle they had created for themselves.

Despite the chaos in the Southeast, sales of New Coke everywhere else were doing very well...at first. After July, however, the sales starting leveling off. Coke executives were scared that peer pressure against New Coke was affecting the sales numbers. What to do? Well, naturally, they panicked and hastily set out to re-introduce the original formula of Coca-Cola. On July 10th, Peter Jennings broke into normal television to inform the world that Coke was bringing back the original flavor of Coke, now dubbed Coca-Cola Classic. The founders of Old Cola Drinkers of America were given the first cases.

At first, sales after the re-introduction of Coke Classic showed Pepsi gaining more market share, but by the end of the year, Coke Classic outsold New Coke and Pepsi. While Coke did reach number one again after re-introducing Coke Classic, recent research into sales that year have shown that the quiet introduction of Cherry Coke that same year was really the reason for Coke’s resurgence. Regardless, by the end of 1985, Coke was back on top of the cola wars.

The exciting conclusion to this story will be posted in the next few days. Stay tuned.

More Fun cola commercials:

1. The classic I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke commercial on the mountaintop.

2. Local TV News story from 1985 about the release of New Coke.

3. Classic Pepsi commercial with Cindy Crawford.

Technorati Tags - Pepsi Coke Coca Cola history cola wars cola commercials pop culture

Misunderstood: The Saga of New Coke Part I

I love soda. I mean, I REALLY love soda. It’s almost an unnatural love…..a forbidden love, if you will. Due to this, I’ve been fascinated for years by the cola wars between Coke and Pepsi. My formative years were right in the middle of the ‘80s; the Vietnam of the cola wars. During the 1980s, Coke and Pepsi threw out more gimmicks than a used car salesman trying to hawk his wares during a “Sales Event”. It was a soda lovers’ nirvana (and I don’t mean the alternative rock band). One of the more infamous ploys of this period was the introduction of New Coke. Never has a company’s promotion and decision making been so thoroughly bitch-slapped by the American public. It was embarrassing, and, in my opinion, a complete over-reaction. In this three part article, we will look at the saga of New Coke, from inception all the way to the bloody aftermath and what Coke gained or lost by their gamble. I’ll even ponder if New Coke might actually still be on the shelves…but under a different name, and at the end of each article (including this one) I'll provide links to classic Coke and Pepsi commercials. So punch 1983 into the flux capacitor and let’s get this bitch up to 88 miles an hour because our story starts, not with New Coke…………but Diet Coke.

1983 was a tough year for Coca-Cola. For decades, Coca-Cola had been the preferred soft drink in America, but market research had proven that consumers in the early ‘80s preferred sodas with a sweeter taste than traditional Coca-Cola. Most sodas at this time were using aspartame or a similar, cheaper sweetener to flavor their drinks while Coke continued to use cane sugar or another sweetener very similar to cane sugar. Also at the time, diet drinks were becoming extremely popular as more and more people were becoming aware of the high amount of calories found in Coke, Pepsi and other soft drinks. Diet Pepsi was the current king of the low calorie, artificially sweetened soda. Years before, Coke released its own diet drink, TaB, but refused to market it as Coca-Cola because they did not want to dilute the Coca-Cola brand with more drinks, but, in essence, TaB was Diet Coke. No matter what Coke did, though, they continued to lose market share to Pepsi and they decided something had to be done about it.

In 1980 Roberto Goizueta (seen right) took over as CEO of the Coca-Cola Company. He let it be known that all traditions are “out the window” and it was time for Coke to “shake things up”. Seeing the success of Diet Pepsi and the relative obscurity of TaB, Goizueta used the market research mentioned earlier and decided to reformulate TaB using similar artificial sweeteners (i.e. aspartame) found in Diet Pepsi. Thus, the end product was formulated to be very similar to Diet Pepsi, and not really a diet version of Coca-Cola. Against company tradition the resulting product was branded as Diet Coca-Cola and released in 1983. Over the next few years, Diet Coke would outsell all of Coke’s other products by a wide margin. Not helping things, Pepsi’s enormously popular “Pepsi Challenge” further eroded Coke’s penetration into the soft drink market causing panic in the Atlanta based headquarters of Coca-Cola.

With Diet Coke siphoning sales from other Coke products and the Pepsi Challenge causing the buying public to lose faith in the Coke brand, CEO Roberto Goizueta thought it was time for more drastic measures. Having quietly tweaked Coke’s formula before in foreign markets to help drive up sales, Roberto had little qualms about altering the secret formula for Coca-Cola Proper here in the States. He believed the flavor change should be done with a huge marketing campaign and not kept secret from the public. So preparations were made to re-formulate Coca-Cola’s flavor to be more like Diet Coke and completely eliminate the current Coke product. After extensive formula research and market testing Coke finally stumbled on a concoction that tested through the roof with focus groups. The newer formula even bested Pepsi and Diet Pepsi in taste trials. It looked as though Coke had a winner. Goizueta had his marketing department work in absolute secrecy on a campaign, even going so far as having them work in another building after hours so nothing would leak to the press. The Coca-Cola Company planned on unveiling the new formula during their centennial year, 1985.

Don't miss Part 2 of this article on Wednesday or Thursday where you'll read about the introduction of New Coke and the initial public reaction.

Classic Coke/Pepsi commercials:

Pepsi:
Jackson Street - One of my favorite Pepsi commercials of all time. Michael Jackson meets a young Alfonso Ribeiro from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for a dance off. I LOVE this commercial.

Coke:
Mean Joe Green - The classic Coke ad with Mean Joe Green throwing his jersey to a kid. Still makes me tear up.

Technorati Tags - Pepsi Coke Coca Cola history cola wars cola commercials pop culture

Coffee Flavored Soda: Something Wicked This Way Comes

The apocalypse, the end of the world. You might think this is foretold by simple things like locusts, oceans flowing red like blood and the sky turning black as a death shroud. I have a different, yet all the more deadly and horrific sign: coffee flavored soda. I am aghast at the mere mention of this unholy union, but being the purveyor of pop culture that I am, I have to try it. There are really only two I care about right now, and they are Coca-Cola Blak by Coke and Pepsi Cappuccino by, of course, Pepsi. Other smaller companies make a version of this deadly brew, but I am only going to try Coke and Pepsi’s offerings because that is my prerogative and I don’t actually think I have the testicular fortitude to try more than 2 bottles of this Death Juice (i.e. coffee flavored soda).

Before I get to the reviews, you should know that I LOVE soda. Love, love, LOVE it. Also, I HATE coffee. I hate the smell, I hate the taste. I hate coffee ice cream. This should be interesting.

I work for the corporate office of Winn-Dixie and they recently threw us an employee barbeque. Coca-Cola catered the drink portion of this event. They were giving away Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite and Coke Blak. Recently, Coke has been giving away bottles of this stuff all over the place trying to get people to taste it, but it has yet to really catch on. I have a guess why, but I’ll taste it first before I make any snap judgments.

I took my first sip, and after gagging and coughing for 10 minutes I thought that God hated me and that's why he created this drink. Then, being the connoisseur of cola that I am, I had to try to finish the bottle. During the torture session of finishing this bottle, I can only think of my cousin Mike as he recently tried to finish a tiny can of low sodium V8 juice. My face puckered, my fingers closing my nose and a look of absolute disgust on my face I soldiered on and had two more sips before nearly puking up my kidney and half my lung. Awful, nasty stuff. I asked a coffee drinker what he thought. He said, at first, the coffe/cola flavor is nice, but after multiple sips the taste somewhat sours in your mouth and you realize that your taste buds were pulling the long con on your brain.

Final Verdict: If you value your life and your sanity, stay away from this hateful, hateful drink.

You are probably not going to be able to find my second drink, Pepsi Cappuccino, in your local 7-11. This is really only marketed/sold in Europe and Russia. I was able to procure this can through much barting with overseas contacts. You don't want to know what it took to get it, but let me just say this, it involved 3 goats, a marriage proposal and a pair of Levis button-fly 501 jeans with the ass cheeks cut out. Oh yes, I just said that.

I haven't actually opened the can, so I'm doing it for the first time right now. After 2 rounds with the devil's urine above, I can only imagine what lies in wait in this can of Pepsi Cappuccino. The verdict is....hey, this isn't too bad. The hell? The taste is mostly Pepsi, but there is a subtle hint of chocolate. Now, since I hate coffee, I don't really know the difference between a cappuccino, an espresso or a latte. I would be interested in trying a cappuccino after trying this. I like that Pepsi doesn't hit you over the head with the coffee flavor. It's subtle. It's sexy. I like it. Holy crap. This article isn't ending the way I planned. This is a most unexpected development. Hooray for Pepsi! This is why I prefer Pepsi products over Coke.

One thing I will mention, Pepsi makes other coffee colas called Pepsi Kona (which was discontinued) and Pepsi Tarik. I'm not sure if both of these are the same thing and just named differently in different markets, but the logos are similar. I am still trying to procure one of these. It may be that Pepsi Tarik/Kona is actually closer to Coke Blak than Pepsi Cappuccino. When I get a can, I'll let you know.

So what have we learned? We have learned that Pepsi Cappuccino is actually a pretty tasty drink. We have also learned that if Coke Blak were a person, I'm pretty sure he'd beat his kids and cheat on his wife and maybe even drink Coke Blak. Maybe they should rename it "New Coke" because I think this drink is headed in the same direction as that fateful drink in 1985, directly for the pop culture trash bin.

Technorati Tags - Pepsi Coke Coca Cola coffee cappuccino humor pop culture