As a former Coke executive once put it when asked about the theory that they failed New Coke on purpose so that Coca Cola Classic could succeed “We’re not that dumb and we’re not that smart.”
I could totally see that being uttered by a Simpsons Character. Maybe Mayor Quimby. Maybe the bald guy with the Moustache. Probably the bald guy with the moustache.
I heard it's because they released Coke Classic with high fructose corn syrup instead of real sugar so people wouldn't notice the switch from the original Edit: He just mentioned it in the video lol I didn't get that far
@@poika22 no, they’re genuinely not that smart. in retrospect it seems like a solid idea, but the logistics of creating, marketing and distributing an entirely new product costs billions all for the potential bump in sales it could bring to the existing formula. it would be way too risky for anyone to sign off on even if they had that idea, but i doubt they’d even considered it until new coke had already launched and failed.
@sisuphos They also did it in the Bongo comics, in an issue where Sideshow Bob has apparently had plastic surgery, and Bart and Lisa are trying to figure out which of three newcomers to Springfield is actually him, one of them is a homeless man who turns out to be the creator of New Coke.
"The release of new coke was the only time he ever agreed with Castro" as someone who has grandparents who escaped Cuba, that is the most savage roast I have ever heard from a Cuban relative.
@@1ntenc0 I'd be impressed in either one of the cases. In case he really stood by it, shows he has (or rather had, during his life) a vision. In the other case, if he was petty, then that's a simple statement about sheer willpower. Both are commendable in my opinion
The fact that people spoke about new coke as if a family member had died just goes to prove what kind of grasp some companies have on us. Literally it was like they stopped manufacturing water.
It's a bit disturbing. I enjoy products from certain companies, McDonald's, Apple, etc. But if say McDonald's changed the secret sauce on Big Mac's... I'm not gonna go bother protesting it. That would be ridiculous.
From what I've heard, New Coke was better tasting when you just had a few sips, but was much less enjoyable if you had multiple cans or a big bottle. Coke's biggest consumers were (and are) the people who practically drink it instead of water. Imagine if they somehow changed the taste of all the water you drank, and you couldn't stomach it anymore, you'd probably start protesting.
That raises another good point; did the little taste testing ad campaign Pepsi did DIRECTLY just... fuck Cola over? With a single ad, they fucked up Coca-Cola's entire marketing LOL
I think you hit the nail on the head. I can only tell the taste of Pepsi because I am/was one of those water drinkers. Just the slight off sweetness is enough for me to tell. I couldn't do that as a kid.
The crazy thing is that the marketing is so ingrained in our culture that it has literally become color association. Early in the video when you removed the coke logo and made it grey my mind instantly went to Diet Coke because that’s how they do their branding.
The trouble is that the Old Coke had cane sugar as the sweetener and now it uses Corn Syrup. The taste is very bad and very inferior to coke made with cane sugar.
@@spacecadet35 as a Brazilian which only has cane sugar Coca Cola, I'd love to taste the corn syrup one just to bash on any American saying how much ours is superior
@@spacecadet35 coke had already started phasing in HFCS into their drinks before the new coke fiasco. By the time new coke debuted, old coke was already completely sweetened by corn syrup. People didn’t notice it then, and they probably don’t notice it much now.
Reminds me of when they stopped making twinkies in 2012 for a while. I remember one woman on the news crying not just at the thought of her never eating a twinkie again, but of her kids never getting the experience either. That was when I realized how strong the bonds of branding can truly be, and none of us are safe from it.
I saw a news story about a whole neighborhood of people that had gathered around the property where a Taco Bell had burned to the ground. These neighborhood people were crying uncontrollably, singing songs of tribute to the burned Taco Bell, getting on their knees and praying for the restaurant to be rebuilt very quickly because "we just CAN'T do without Taco Bell for that long. We'll have to move." The songs of tribute they were singing to the burned Taco Bell were written by those in attendance so it was all so bad it was making my ears bleed. But these people were being so serious and emotional and acting like someone had just murdered some people or something. It just made me sick to my very soul. I was like, "As a society, THIS is where we are now?" We might as well just go ahead and nuke ourselves at this point and start with the burned Taco Bell neighborhood. Then my neighborhood so I don't have to wait long. 🙄
My grandpa worked for coke for decades. As a salesman he was able to keep some bottles of the old coke, new coke and classic coke. He keeps them up on a wall. Pretty cool
Fun fact about Coke: In the Soviet Union, Coca-Cola was considered a symbol of American imperialism. When Dwight D. Eisenhower befriended Soviet general Georgy Zhukov during World War 2, he introduced Zhukov to Coca-Cola and he loved it. In order to avoid being branded as a traitor, Zhukov requested a colorless Coke so he could disguise it as vodka. It was pretty much Crystal Pepsi but fifty years early.
Its just funny to think that a messed up marketing campaign not only generated huge revenue for coke at the end but also saved them from a PR nightmare that would have happened if bill cosby didnt stop doing buisness with them....maybe subway shouldve changed the taste of their sandwiches to achieve the same effect
I've had New Coke, if anyone wants to know what it EXACTLY tastes like, get a can of Pepsi and a can of Coke and mix it 80% Pepsi, 20% Coke and you have New Coke.
I wonder if the same people who can't tell the difference between coke and pepsi, are the same folks that value odd things, like -cockroaches from the ocean- lobster.
I'd say close but not exactly... add a tiny bit sugar or corn syrup, maybe. I was there during that era and I tired Coke 2 plenty of times but I NEVER finished a can of it because it was too sweet (but not overly sweet). It was one of those thing where it tasted good at first but the taste would wear on me..... kinda like the Burger King Whopper. It seemed like Safeway always had 16oz tall boy cans of Coke 2 on sale until 1987.
"I've got a feeling that for most people, Coke isn't supposed to taste good. All it has to do is taste how they remember." I recently came to a similar epiphany when it came to my favorite fast food, In-N-Out Burger. When people who didn't grew up on the west coast try it, they're often underwhelmed. Their burgers taste good, sure, but for people who swear by In-N-Out, I think it has more to do with the fact that a Double Double purchased today tastes identical to the Double Doubles they ate as children, whether that be 10 years ago or 50 years ago.
I feel the same way about my neighborhood pizza place. No matter how many new pizza places open and become more modern .i still put the local one in my top 10
All they have to do is think it tastes identical. Coke switched to HFCS after preventing everyone from tasting the real original coke, then claimed that was the original coke.
My father worked for coke as a driver during the whole fiasco. He thought that the 'New coke' was a marketing ploy to make Coke back on the minds on every American, no matter the reaction. Basically, they just wanted a major change no matter what that change was, because it got everyone thinking about them. Then, they very, very quickly had already sent Coke Classic cans to distributers to roll out, which was weird because making those cans and changing production facilities' formulas should have taken a lot longer. Guess that's why some coke-spiracies came out.
To quote an ex coke executive “we’re not that dumb, and we’re not that smart.” Maybe they just rushed the rebranding because they needed to meet financial goals. I can’t imagine a difference logo and formula would take that long for factories to adjust.
@@faithlifeworshipcenter460 I mean that sounds super compelling, but they took of the classic and are back to Coca Cola, and it has a different recipe. Also, not being able to keep the same name while changing the recipe sounds kinda unbelievable. Like, coke had changed it recipe a few times and I know for a fact other companies change recipes but keep the same name. If I am wrong here than egg on my face but it all just sounds like a stretch.
When you mentioned the CEO was a Cuban refugee, I was like "Wonder why he bothered to mention that" The irony the Fidel Castro set off the dominos that killed his favourite drink was such a hilarious connection to make.
When I was a kid we always went to this one ethnic gas station because they imported coke bottles from Mexico- the reason why we did this was because these particular bottles of coke still used cane sugar instead of corn syrup. I can’t tell you how much better this version of coke is. It’s just as sweet without the terrible aftertaste- it’s like a capitalist ambrosia.
I buy cases of cane sugar Coke from my local Costco. One thing I've noticed with that stuff is that it doesn't leave a film on my teeth like corn syrup soda does.
@@triggered977 I'm literally holding a glass bottle of mexican coke in my hand right now, and the ingredient label says cane sugar. You are incorrect. "Ingredients: carbonated water, cane sugar, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, caffeine." And I can taste the difference, it's night and day.
You know, as a kid, I once saw a bottle of Coke II at a video rental store and didn't know what the deal was. I had always been fascinated by the idea of a SEQUEL to a soda. Because it's just so dumb.
Now the question is...the question is...was he raping before his credibility was hurt by New Coke, or after? Cause if after, I think we have a smokin' gun! /s (we don't)
To think that people really used to think this channel was dying out a few years ago. Right around when the downward spiral started I had almost completely lost interest in YTPs and a lot of other content I'd been watching at the time like let's plays and such. I took a year off of TH-cam for the most part and when I came back I saw how different the channel was and that it turned into what it is now. This is the only channel that I "grew up" with. It stayed in my interest for years longer than any other. When my old account of seven years was terminated, the first channel I decided to subscribe to was this one because it's almost synonymous with my TH-cam experience as a whole. My old channel has been here since the 10k mark. It's a neat phenomenon to grow up alongside a TH-cam channel, and this is the only one I've ever heard of doing it.
The reason New Coke failed is similar to why Oldsmobile took a hit in the '80s. Their advertising campaign was meant to appeal to the younger generation with the tagline "Not Your Father's Oldsmobile" which only served to push away the target demographic who were actually interested in the cars their parents owned, as well as alienating the already loyal consumers who thought the advertising campaign meant that something about the cars had been changed. New Coke tried to advertise how different it was from classic Coca-Cola, but Pepsi wasn't successful just because it was different from Coke. The only soda that profited off of Coke being Coke was Coke.
Reminds me of when Scion tried appealing to young people but got mostly old people to buy them since they are just easier to enter than old sedans with higher ground clearance. ...also, boxy cars are the last thing I would think young people would have wanted, I have no idea what was Toyota thinking...
I know Emp said in the video that New Coke was the outlier against the phrase ‘any publicity is good publicity,’ but in the end he was wrong. It was a hugely successful mistake that made people appreciate what they had (shitty sugar water with a different label on it ❤️)
I bet new coke was a disguise to make people forget what old coke taste like so they can remove the cocaine from it then bring it back but everyone would have forget the cocaine taste. Massive conspiracy theory i just made.
The failure of New Coke had nothing to do with the formula. They could have rolled out the new formula with a small announcement and no new branding and we would still be drinking it today. Changing the font on the cans at all was probably the largest marketing misstep ever.
New Coke was an intentional failure designed to disguise the fact they changed the formula. As evidenced by the fact that "Coca Cola Classic" was not the pre-New Coke formula.
People in the 80's: "This is awful, now our kids and their kids will never know the taste of the REAL Coke" Their kids and grandkids: "This is awful, now we'll never know the taste of improved Coke"
@@zzz_zzz_ZZZ_zzz_ZZZ_ZZZ_Z_z-ZZ I don't care, I prefer Pepsi. It's just funny to observe. I'll cry about Crystal Pepsi though, but at least it was cancelled by Pepsi Co., not by the masses.
@@bradr3541 If so, it worked, but it's a pretty risky strategy honestly. I just can't imagine an entire boardroom of experienced businessmen would go, "Yes, let's risk our entire reputation on this plan." Maybe, but I doubt it personally.
@@DiamondDust132 I honestly can’t think of any other realistic reason. I was alive when this happened. I never heard a single person say New Coke tastes better, ever. To be that big a company with a successful formula and try to literally throw the recipe away makes zero sense. Ok I came up with 2 possibilities. Maybe the ingredients had gotten more expensive and they were trying to cut costs Or maybe they pay some kind of huge payments to someone to use the original formula and we’re trying to end that by using a new formula. I don’t think either of those two are likely. By that point the recipe would be fully owned by coke.
I was an avid Coke drinker and worked at my parents’ grocery store during the switch. Having tasted Coke all my life and preferring it to many different drinks that I had access to, the taste of new Coke was absolutely different and much sweeter. We knew nothing of all the publicity stunts, we just knew people hated the taste. We kept cases of the old Coke, thinking we could sell them years later but then they changed back so quickly that we didn’t sell them. We all thought the “Classic” was different from the original so we tested the old Cokes against the Classic and there was a definite difference. The Coke of today is not what we drank up to that summer.
@@deaj8450 They do not. Mexico switched a while ago. Coke sells glass bottles in some supermarkets that are made with cane sugar that say they're mexican but they aren't, they're just coke with cane sugar. You can go to Mexico and see that they use corn syrup.
@@n646n those are the bottles I mean. Didn't know they weren't really Mexican, but that's what I've always heard them called and as you say what is printed on them. I'm certainly not suggesting anyone go to Mexico or ship it or something to buy coke
This is really going to date me. Those taste tests lasted into the late 90’s. I remember only having only Coca Cola in my house growing up. My Dad hated the flavor of Pepsi. I ran into one of those taste tests in a mall in a Sam Goody. I was able to pick out the Coca Cola. The Pepsi spokesperson was not necessarily happy with me. I’m still to this day not exactly sure why.
I 100% can tell the difference between the drinks. I cannot put my finger quite on the difference, but there is for sure! If I had been old enough for the taste test, I would have been honest too. 🙂
In my PR classes in college we weren’t allowed to do projects on New Coke because it was such a widespread disaster they figured there’s nothing more of value that can be said😂 glad someone made a video tho it is a cool topic for people who haven’t heard of it
when was this? depending on the time frame this could be from amusing to hilarious. like, im just imagining the semester directly following this starting and the professor standing up, very first words to the class, being 'yes, we all heard about new coke, we all know what an absolute fuckup of a disaster it was, if you so much as ask if you can do this or that project on new coke you're booted from this course and you are fundamentally flawed human being. hello, i'm dr james, i'll be your marketing 301 professor for this semester'
Honestly, I think the taste difference mostly boils down to cane sugar vs HFCS. There's a reason many people buy "Mexican Coke" despite the price difference. As a comparison point, I tried A&W root beer with cane sugar, and it blows their HFCS root beer out of the water.
90% People probably can't tell the difference despite what you may believe. Infaxr Mexican coke now has a 50/50 of being cane sugar or HFCS, the preference is illusionary. Though some claim it does effect the "mouth feel" of it, that may be an illusion as well. I've even ran experiments on myself and my family to see if any of us could correctly guess which one was which. In many tests both were American coke and both were Mexican coke, to see if anyone could tell if they were tasting the same soda twice. Nope, none of us could. Its probably just the allure of the glass bottle or that it's slightly less carbonated that makes it preferred for some, but as of right now, I'm pretty confident in saying 99% of people will be unable to taste the difference.
The difference between corn syrup and cane sugar is overblown, but I'm sure plenty of people can taste a difference. Also, a lot of people assume that since it has a longer and more "scientific" name, that it must be some harmful chemical. As far as I know, nutritionally it makes no difference. They're both bad for you in significant quantities. I think the main reason why corn syrup is used so much is because the US government provides big subsidies to corn farms, which makes corn syrup very cheap.
It's funny how so many companies nowadays refuse to listen to a story like this. They change the formula, then blame the customer for not liking it, instead of just releasing it along side the old thing
@@OhSoKatelyn1 Which doesnt matter if you think about it if you have 20% market share with 1 product or 20% market share with 5 products doesnt matter At the end of the day you have 20% of the market and thus the money it brings. And a company like Coca Cola cannot claim how much more expensive it is to sell 2 diffrent Colas as to why they remove the old one. If you remove well liked stuff from your service you always will have complainers (if they have a reason or not doesnt matter// Remeber Windows XP and how outraged people were when the Microsoft support ended in 2014, 13 YEARS after release and either 2 or 3 newer OS (at least Vista and 7 were out at that point) have been released) If they wouldnt have SUCH a big company behind them, that drink wouldnt exist anymore. The risk is WAY to high. Also, since they fundamentally make the same drink both drinks costs the exact same, so no money lost. Also by diversifying your product range you actually get more attention than before (look at Cola now, they never have looked back) Thats for example why the super exclusive iPhone is now sold in 3 diffrent sizes at release instead of waiting half a year for an "S" version (well they still sell an S version after a year but still). Apple wants the people that like big phones and the want the people that like small phones. And coke just want to sell a drink. Give people options, step up your marketing and there you go. If you just release it separately you still have the potential to grow your market share (look at Coke Light or the newer Coke Zero)
These videos are so incredibly well researched and put together. I teach atomic structure to 15-17 year olds and I've shown several classes the video on the cold war when we've been doing radiation - they really responded to it because it was made by someone who understood what their generation found appealing and didn't talk down to them. Keep doing what you're doing and take as long as you need between videos because these are genuinely some of the best things I've found on TH-cam.
No doubt. I love seeing his video essays, partly because they're on such random topics that I didn't think could warrant an essay. I'm always intrigued, and they're always fun and educational to watch even though, and maybe especially because, I have no interest to learn of these things by myself.
These companies tend to forget after a while that the entire point of having a brand is consistency. Adding on top of is an entirely different ball game to completely replacing your flagship product.
I wonder if they were going for a "coca-cola was for boomers" thing in response to Pepsi's "younger generation" campaign? But yeah - companies do a mind-boggling amount of needlessly screwing with what works imo.
This could possibly be the reason why American luxury brands - Cadilac, Lincoln, and Chrysler - seem to grasp no baring of for newer generations, especially now. These brands threw away the old-school, couch-cushion, land yachts in order to appease the "sporty" and "stylish" designs the Europeans were riding on. Now, those brands are having a hard time even justifying keeping living on because they don't seem to have anything that made them. Yes, bad management and all that happened, but the thought's still there.
Not always. That's actually been McDonald's go to strategy since the start. Ray Croc wanted to create a restaurant chain who's whole appeal was that it would be consistent no matter where you found it, since the consumer would be assured that at least they'd know what they'd be getting where ever they were. The same philosophy works with chain hotels as well.
This is a really interesting video about consumerism. Even though I wasn’t alive to experience new coke, I’ve noticed the difference in taste between regular coke and the “Mexican coke” at chipotles and other places, the ones that still have cane sugar. I seriously prefer the cane sugar coke, even if it’s more expensive, but I know that they won’t switch back, and your video kinda proves that, even if they did switch to corn syrup. It’s a shame :(
Nostalgia is the most effective marketing tactic the world has ever known. Linking people to times that are ostensibly more simple by comparison will win out in the end nearly all the time. As we stray farther into the future, there will always be part of the brain that yearns for the past. Discounting that fact is one of the biggest contributing factors to the fall of New Coke.
It’s like Oreo. Oreo can literally sell the exact same cookies in the exact same package for the rest of time and make a billion dollars. Oreo makes alternate flavors all the time, but they never replaced the original. Coke thought re inventing the wheel was a good idea, should’ve just spent more on ads.
I was about 12 years old when this happened, and my dad drove trucks for the local coke bottler at the time. We were fierce coke partisans in the soda wars, and felt utterly betrayed by new coke. My dad stashed away several cases of old coke and we rode out the summer of discontent with a healthy supply of the real thing. The cokes we drank that summer tasted 10x better than any soda I've consumed before or since.
The story of New Coke remains influential as a cautionary tale against tampering with a well-established and successful brand We were taught that in my college marketing courses with New Coke as a key case study
Haha that reminds me of in my graphic design classes where we used minute maid for the same purpose, tweak the imagery of ur brand and people stop wanting ur product
New Coke is actually a tale about how gullible and reactionary consumers are. People act like it almost ruined Coke but in reality it basically made them way more money in the long run
Sometimes I feel like things moving too fast and people making rash decisions only happen because of the modern internet, but seeing a guy start a whole organization and make merch to oppose a soda that was only originally around for under a year grants me some sobering perspective
Well now you know. Trust me, things moving too fast and people making rash decisions were occurring for as long as humanity existed- tens of thousands of years before the internet was invented
one question tho, have you sticked to your guns and stayed with coke, despite the peer pressure it gave you when you drank the new formula? or did you switched to pepsi?
I was there for a tour, yeah I was in the shit, I had a New Coke t shirt, so I was New Coke in the streets but I was a Coca Cola Classic between the sheets as it were.
In the summer of 85, I was 12 turning 13... and I was at a summer school program at Purdue University. We were staying in one of the dorms and there were a couple of Coke machines on the main floor. We quickly depleted the old formula cans, which got replaced with New Coke, which was nowhere near as good. It was flatter and too sweet. A few of us explored the entire dorm, including the basement... and the little known, little used Coke machine down there... that was still full of the Real Thing! We held onto the secret the entire two weeks of the program!
The most surprising thing to me was when you mentioned that Coke Classic wasn't even the same formula, since they had started using corn syrup, yet no one raised a huge fuss over that change. This means you were comparing the taste of New Coke and Coke Classic, but no one will never have the chance again to compare the taste of New Coke and Old Coke (the version from before New Coke).
Technically even Old Coke isn’t really the original recipe since the coca leaves now have to be stripped of cocaine. Who knows how that affected the flavor.
But Old Coke is essentially what's being sold in any country banning GMO foods, and some others I assume. Here we use beet instead of cane sugar, but sucrose really is just sucrose.
@@diwajerebation4077 what do you mean Original sonic design from original games everyone loved (coca cola) 2019 movie reveals bad design (new coca cola) Paramount backtracks, spends a buncha money and goes to a more classic design and releases the movie with the bad design all but forgotten (coca cola classic)
i’m not sure if he brings it up in the video or not but sometime around 2019 for the release of stranger things season 3 coke did a limited rerelease of new coke using the original formula, which i was quite interested in so i bought a case. it came with two cans of new coke and two stranger things theme coke glass bottles. if you’re wondering what it tastes like i think the closest thing that i could compare the “new coke taste” to would be modern diet coke, its just slightly sweeter coke. it left the same sort of aftertaste that diet does. TL;DR new coke basically tastes like diet coke.
I've heard somewhere that while Pepsi was the preferred drink in taste tests, people actually preferred drinking coke over longer periods of time than just a few sips. The conclusion was that people prefer sweeter flavors in more moderation. And this was the exact issue that plagued new Coke since it was sweeter than both old Coke and Pepsi
23:50 One of the most interesting parts about Coke swapping from cane sugar to "high-fructose corn syrup" is the difference of canned coke vs the "Mexican Coke" glass bottles. Essentially, Coke made the egregious swap from cane sugar to "high-fructose corn syrup", but the so-called "Mexican Coke" is still made with cane sugar to this day. A lot of people think its just some hipster thing because of the bottles aesthetic but its funny to see the difference in formula and preference still.
Yeah I feel popular sports teams are a great example of overcharging mundane products. Likke a single chelsea mug can be sold for like 12 pounds while you could just get a 4 generic functional mug set for like 8 quid on the same site. That's the power of expert branding folks!
I believe in pure evaluation of the goods but I know that takes too much energy so people prefer going to reliable brands. Yet branding doesn’t make something good right? Confusing.
Branding does more than that. It acts as a promise of consistency, security in the quality of the product. You get a coke, you know what you are buying. Go to McDonalds and you'll know the quality will be on par with pretty much every other McDonalds. This promise and the ease of making it known is why they can charge a premium, average quality or not. The Branding where you put a brand lable on something that isn't actually that product is just a way to create a cult. It's replacing religious iconography with product placements, and worse those who fall into it only exacerbate it. Die hard Fandoms are the ultimate form of these cults. They don't just like the product or comany, they worship it.
Yeah, imagine learning how to pronounce the name you're going to say in your scripted video. Real tired of the whole "Probably butchered that name lol" thing when you can just look it up
To be fair i absolutely hate to hear "Im pronouncing it wrong" because yeah, most of the time they do pronounce it wrong, but thats not the problem. I would never scold someone because his german is shite, especially foreigners AND especially specially foreigners that never learned the laguage it in the first place. But on the Internet you HAVE to be perfect or act like you would be sorry because Jeremy cant deal with the fact that spanish isnt spoken by everyone.
@@el_tristo Imagine being so upset that people do not speak your language. Also its rather difficult to "research" pronounciation. And even when you hear it, you have to LEARN it properly. If you disagree i would like to hear you say "Eichhörnchen" (Squirrel) without practicing it for hours. You are the problem people need to fcking APOLOGIZE for NOT speaking one of the thousands of languages of humankind. Imagine being that narrow minded
@@gandalf_thegrey I really love that germans never scolded me over my terrible language production skills when I was still actively practicing my language on poor tourists whenever I saw them, most old folks were really sweet and spoke slowly to me if I requested it. Frenchmen on the other side...
Americans constantly give English people shit for how they pronounce words in their own language. “Omg why do you say choobe instead of tooobe” 🤤 they can’t even say ‘pasta’ correctly
Old fogie here. I was around for all of this. Back then Coke Classic wasn't as sweet as it is now. The cane sugar they used to use was a different sort of sweetness (you can get cane sugar sweetened coke, though it's not QUITE Coke Classic). New Coke was much sweeter, and much more like today's Coke. High fructose is just a much more potent sweetness. When Classic came back, it definitely was NOT the same as the original formula, but it was decidedly less sweetened. Over the years I've noticed they stepped up some of that sweetness. So, in all likelihood, we're all drinking New Coke now.
There's a lot of assumptions and biases that influence how we see coke, new coke, and today's coke. I doubt it's as simple as today's coke being new coke under a different label though
@@azazellon Mexican Coke and American Coke are two very different tastes. As a Mexican who drinks Coke pretty much every day, and travels to the USA often enough to taste American Coke occasionally, I can assure you that I can very easily tell when I'm drinking the USA product or the Mexican one. American Coke is definitely sweeter, but in a more chemical-like way. It leaves me a bit of an aftertaste, although it's still good. These last couple of years I've mostly switched to Diet Coke or Coke Zero (known as Coca-Cola Light and Coca-Cola Sin Azúcar where I live), and they do taste much more similar to the American product. As a side fact, American Coke is much higher in calories than Mexican Coke; an American 20oz (591ml) bottle will have about 80cal more than a Mexican 600ml bottle. Cane sugar really makes a difference.
@@nocunoct I've only recently found out that Mexican Coke exists, and I highly prefer it over American Coke. Great to know it wasn't just my imagination when I thought they tasted different!
Crazy how hundreds of thousands will protest and rally because a company made a drink that studies showed was more enjoyable than their old one, but nobody says anything of the atrocities that Nestle commit lmao
They don't care cause it affects poor brown people thousands of miles away. No matter how much americans claim to fight racism, most of us are still like slaves to them
I'm 100000% convinced New Coke was a way to switch to High Fructose Corn Syrup. Give people a completely new tasting beverage, then switch back to the "old" beverage but change the sugar. Mexican bottling facilities still use the original sugar, and I can tell you it tastes very different. Coke switched to fructose because it's much cheaper with all the corn subsidies the US govt puts out.
Well my theory is that the current Coca Cola is actually New Coke. They've been increasing the sugar content slowly since 1995. And the actually Formulation difference is they made the original Coca Cola sweeter. if you want to approximate what 1980's Coke tasted like you get a 100% sugar cane bottle of coke or you can 3 parts coke to 2 parts club soda mix a can to get a feel of the difference.
@@lordlouie3550 There's so-called "Mexican" coke which does use cane sugar. But it is produced for the US market only. Usual Coke in Mexico doesn't use cane sugar either. But I don't think that's what OP's post was about. He stated that Coke has become sweeter in general.
New Coke did have a different taste to it. Emp simply failed to cover the difference in taste or the change in formula in his 30 minute video on the subject. To quote the 2000s: "Epic Fail".
@NarlepoaxIII. It may not matter to you and it may not matter to me or thousands of others but it certainly matters to some and it mattered a whole lot. It's fascinating for sure.
holy crap, New Coke has an INSANE amount of sugar, even by soft drink standards! I knew it was sweeter, but I never realized just how much. And this reminds me of a possible explanation for the results of the Pepsi Challenge: people liked Pepsi better because it was sweeter and, crucially, the serving size in the experiment was pretty small. A sweeter beverage is better if you're only drinking a small shot, but drinking an entire can or a 2-liter bottle is an entirely different thing, and most people in that case would go for something a bit less sweet, a bit more refreshing. I can't imagine a drink that's 10% sugar by weight to be that refreshing.
As someone who lived through this, including actually taking the Pepsi challenge in the parking lot of an A&P, I would say of course new coke doesn't taste different to you from Coca-Cola with corn syrup. You would have to drink the closest thing to what we drank at the time: Coke with real sugar. You can find this as "Mexican Coke" imported from Mexico where they still bottle it. It's significantly less sickly-sweet and as an OG Coca-Cola fan the only good Coke. Also, thank you for mentioning that Coca-Cola Classic was not actually original Coca-Cola, most people miss that little trick by them. Imagine if they hadn't switched the brand to New Coke- the introduction of corn-syrup coke would have been reviled instead. For me the whole video was a nostalgia trip and quite accurate. Incidentally back in the challenge I picked Pepsi because it was noticeably sweeter and, hey, I was a kid - we were just stoked to be getting free sips of soda and at the time I remember thinking sweeter must be better (which goes back to not really knowing the taste: Coke is sweet, sweet is soda, sweeter must be better, pick the sweeter, that was Pepsi).
@@otterno.1128 bro, coke in Mexico was still made with only cane sugar until a few years ago (think 3-4 years max), since then it's been a "sweetener mix" and the change was made when they changed the label to "Reducido en Azúcar" (reduced in sugar) to account for new regulation concerning food labeling. Crystal Coke is still made with cane sugar only and the taste is REALLY distinctive from the plastic one. Also there's a lot of parts in the world where coke is made with beet sugar and it tastes absolutely different (I can speak for argentina, uruguay and chile) whereas in Brazil the coke is made with only cane sugar; they basically use what's cheaper in the production area and while you may be correct in that in the north of the country they may well still be getting coke produced with cane sugar (and haven't tasted it) on the south cane sugar is way cheaper and that's whta they use on the production plant outside my town.
Yes exactly. It's a travesty Coke won't just sell me a real sugar Cane soda. Call it a throw back like Pepsi did and charge me a but more if necessary. I hate the corn lobby 😒
@@otterno.1128 "it only tastes better because of the glass bottle". Dude what? The ingredients say cane sugar right on the label. Its the original Coke formula. What are you smoking?
@@StefanoFierros i lived both in argentina, colombia and venezuela; like you said, argentina doesn't use cane sugar, but like mexico (excluding the comment you added) it does use it, and i could immediately feel the difference and i must say, it just tastes way better with cane sugar instead. funnily enough though, regardless of packaging (in which you can find plastic, can and glass) it all is cane sugar, from what i've been able to tell (anecdotal of course, so take with a grain of... sugar?)
I always thought the worst thing about it is that they decided to name it "New Coke" and "Coke 2.0". Like no product is named that way except maybe Nintendo games. Names are everything when it comes to beverages so they could've easily just called it Coke Max when rereleasing it.
Fun fact: the soda/pop/coke regions from 11:59 leak into Mexico. In Monterrey (near Texas) they refer to soft drinks as "coca", and in Baja, Sonora and Chihuahua (near California and Arizona) they call soft drinks "soda". Elsewhere in Mexico, the word is "refresco".
Imagine getting up one day and making a sign that reads "our children will never know refreshment" and standing outside and protesting because a soda slightly altered its formula lol.
@@t65bx25 today is more. Little in human history can and will top when a few years back a bunch of people tried to declare independece from their country, failled miserably, descended into a Lawless society rulled by criminal Warlords, started starving, needed to not only betray all their values but also ask the country they declared independence from to give them food, had some killings, implemented Race based segregation and finally colapsed. All under 9 days time.
This was 100% done to change to high fructose corn syrup without anyone going bonkers about the taste change and ingredient change. Going “back” to the “classic” was a genius maneuver in master manipulation. It’s kinda scary too
I saw that coming. I figured that a big part of the reason for new coke was cheaper cost of production. I think initially they didn't want to change original coke so took a chance with new coke knowing they could always go back.
Travis Gallagher 2 days ago This was 100% done to change to high fructose corn syrup without anyone going bonkers about the taste change and ingredient change. Going “back” to the “classic” was a genius maneuver in master manipulation. It’s kinda scary too 102 games n de bunker games n de bunker 3 days ago This guy could make the history of the phone book interesting 6K Red Circle Red Circle 1 day ago This is essentially the soft drink equivalent to the 2019 Movie Sonic design. 10 Your Friendly Cynic Your Friendly Cynic 2 days ago I think this video is a great example of how attached we become to recognizable imagery, even if there is hardly any difference And that doesn't make people dumb either, we all do it. When a celebrity we've grown up on dies, despite not knowing them personally, there is this weird feel of nostalgia and loss, because the person you're thinking about is more associating with those memories, rather than missing them on a personal level Weird example, but it was kind of like Black Ops 4 zombies and removing Juggernog, you still had the same health, but it just didn't feel the same 38
Yeah. If they had simply switched from sugar to HFCS the new formula would've been treated just like how New Coke was treated. But now instead the chance was being treated as "a return to normal". Genius marketing.
This entire stunt is a great example on how much nostalgia can really change us and really have an affect on something we experience even if there's no difference
thats because they sold us a lie, they told us it was a drink of tradition. but then they would change it, breaking tradition. the true traditionalists were outraged by the lies of coke(aine). there was no turning back, coca cola is no longer a trustworthy drink
There was a legitimate difference and I don't know how people miss that even that people that hated new coke missed it. Modern day coke is pretty much the same as new coke. They changed the sugar to the drink from cane to corn syrup. So there was an a actually difference between new coke and coke "classic" compared to actual old coke.
@@Saxton_Hoovy I mean that only proves my point even more. You can slap a memorable and nostalgic label on anything and people won't notice a difference. Main reason why new coke didn't make audiences very happy is because of how it was marketed and it's labeling of calling itself "new"
Fantastic research. This really brings back memories of the asinine “cola wars” I live through in the 80s. However, it took the video a LONG time (nearly the end) to reveal what the formula “switch” was all about. Coca-Cola switched from real sugar to cheap HFCS, and has NEVER switched back. So, in all subsequent taste tests, there effectively hasn’t been any original Coca-Cola in the US since the mid 1980’s. The fact that consumers apparently don’t read the ingredients is exactly what Coke was hoping for, and they won.
At least PART of the reason is that Coke could not come up with a "diet version" that tasted tolerable using the original formula, so they HAD to change the formula to create "Diet Coke". Diet Coke is STILL based on the "New Coke" formula, and always was - and THAT is critical to Coke's survival today.
The problem with that theory is that Coca Cola had already switched completely to HFCS in the US market a year before New Coke was released. They started adding HFCS to Coke in 1980 and had phased out sugar completely by 1984; New Coke released in 1985.
I don't know about asinine, I was there, it was silly, and somewhat adventurous. I ended up experimenting more and discovering many new things I like to drink as a result. That's when they came up with Jolt!
Irony is the true original **technically** has resurfaced in recent years, to the point even far flung towns have it. I've been able to spot traditional glass make bottles in stores, check the ingredient label what do I read? Sugar, not HFCS.
The real problem was that it was called "New" implying that the old recipe was obsolete. Had they slowly phased out the old recipe with the new one but still kept he same exact boxing and labels, I doubt anyone would've noticed. There may have been a few people here or there, but since executives made an entire announcement, everyone cried about it. As near the end of the video said, taste tests showed barely anyone could tell the difference.
People would have noticed the change over time. That can do far more damage to a brand than a quick change that gets rejected. When a slow change takes place it completely changes the outlook of that brand among people in a way that becomes part of a new behavior.
The whole point was however to make a massive announcement. That was the entire reason for the change to try to bring new customers in from the other cola brands.
To this day, I've never thought the problem was that the South felt betrayed, or that the roll-out was mishandled. I think the real problem was that New Coke tasted shitty. They designed a soft drink that would do great on blind taste tests, where you drink one or two sips. By the time you drank a whole can, you hated it. It was flavor-by-committee, and it was no better than could be expected.
^^^^^^ One theory on why Coke is more popular than Pepsi despite the supposed Pepsi Challenge is that people prefer sweeter drinks for one or two sips, but when drinking an entire can of it - i.e. the way a person *actually* consumes a soft drink - the higher level of sweetness causes palette fatigue, so in reality Coke ends up being better than Pepsi, especially when paired with food.
@@Cipher71 TBH as a die hard Pepsi fan, I love it far, far more than Coke, (especially Diet Pepsi varieties, which destroy the diet coke varieties): I can state that this is most evident with Crystal Pepsi. If it's ever available for an event again, try it. There is no drink that tastes amazing 'at first' and then falls off harder than Crystal pepsi. the first few sips are amazing, but it has this weird effect that if you drink a whole bottle, the last quarter tastes somehow both bitter and unpleasant.
@@Cipher71 what's weird is Pepsi to me is less sweet and rich and more light and acidic. It's not how it actually is but the flavoring itself aside from the acid and sugar just flows worse.
Pepsi is definitely less sweet than Coke. Also Coke is absolutely disgusting if it's not ice cold. Any warmer and you basically feel it dissolving your teeth.
@@WereScrib want to add for folks who have never really tried anything but coke zero: you're doing yourself a disservice by not trying black can pepsi (max/zero, depending on locale), which has a taste close to original pepsi while not having the truly god-awful after taste + mouth film coating combo of coke zero. it's like diet dr pepper: the taste is so close that the problem of familiarity-curve with artificial sweeteners is much less burdensome (i enjoy a cold glass coke on occasion and swapping back to pepsi max doesn't cause issue) pepsi max/zero absolutely stomps 0cal coke offerings.
I have a grandmother that drinks Coke like water; on the other hand the last time I tried a coke (almost 5ish years ago, and it was one of the mini cans) I almost threw up after drinking 2/3rds of it. It really makes me ponder how much our bodies adapt to consume what we put in em.
JESUS KNOCKS ON YOUR HEART AND LONGS FOR YOU TO ANSWER! HE DOESN'T WANT TO SEE ANYONE PERISH INTO HELL. GOD LOVES YOU SO HE GIVES YOU FREE WILL AND A CHOICE TO ACCEPT HIM OR REJECT HIM. TO LOVE HIM OR TO LOVE SIN/THIS WORLD. CALL UPON JESUS & ASK HIM TO FORGIVE YOUR SINS! SURRENDER YOUR WILL & YOUR LIFE TO HIM & HE WILL GIVE YOU ETERNAL LIFE IN HEAVEN! PICTURE YOUR BEST DAY ON EARTH TIMES A BILLION FOR ETERNITY, THAT'S HEAVEN! NOW PICTURE YOUR WORST DAY ON EARTH TIMES A BILLION FOR ETERNITY, THAT'S HELL! HE WILL GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT SO IF YOU REJECT HIM YOU WILL BE SEPARATED FROM HIM & HIS BLESSINGS (LOVE, PEACE, JOY, HOPE, REST, ETC). IN HELL YOU WILL BE ALONE WITHOUT GOD OR PEOPLE... YOU WILL BE HOPELESS, IN DESPAIR & AGONY FOREVER! GOD'S STANDARD FOR HEAVEN IS PERFECTION AND ONLY JESUS (THE SON OF GOD/GOD IN THE FLESH) LIVED THAT PERFECT LIFE! HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE & TOOK THE WRATH OF THE FATHER ON THE CROSS FOR YOUR SINS! GOD IS JUST SO HE MUST PUNISH SIN & HE IS HOLY SO NO SIN CAN ENTER HIS KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. IF YOU ARE IN CHRIST ON JUDGEMENT DAY GOD WILL SEE YOU AS HIS PERFECT SON (SINLESS SINCE YOUR SINS ARE COVERED BY JESUS' OFFERING). YOU CAN ALSO CHOOSE TO REJECT JESUS' GIFT/SACRIFICE & PAY FOR YOUR OWN SIN WITH DEATH (HELL) BUT THAT SEEMS PRETTY FOOLISH! GOD SEES & HEARS EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SAID & DONE. YOU WONT WIN AN ARGUMENT WITH HIM & YOU CANT DEFEND ANY OF YOUR SINS TO HIM. YOU'RE NOT A GOOD PERSON, I'M NOT A GOOD PERSON... ONLY GOD IS GOOD! WE'RE ALL GUILTY WITHOUT ACCEPTING JESUS' SACRIFICE FOR OUR SINS! MUHAMMAD DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, BUDDHA DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, NO PASTOR/NO PRIEST/NO SAINT/NO ANCESTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, MARY DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, NO IDOLS OR FALSE gods DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO MUSICIAN OR CELEBRITY DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO INFLUENCER OR TH-cam STAR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO SCIENTIST OR POLITICIAN DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO ATHLETE OR ACTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS! STOP WORSHIPING THESE PEOPLE! JESUS CHRIST ALONE DIED FOR YOUR SINS & WAS RESURRECTED FROM THE GRAVE! HE IS ALIVE & COMING BACK VERY SOON WITH JUDGEMENT (THESE ARE END TIMES)! PREPARE YOURSELVES, TURN FROM SIN & RUN TO JESUS! HE KNOWS YOUR PAIN & TROUBLES, HE WANTS TO HEAL & RESTORE YOU! TALK TO HIM LIKE A BEST FRIEND! ASK HIM TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO YOU & HELP YOU TO BELIEVE IF YOU DOUBT! DON'T WAIT TO CRY OUT! NO ONE IS PROMISED TOMORROW! HE LONGS FOR YOU TO INVITE HIM IN, HE LOVES YOU MORE THAN ANY PERSON EVER COULD, HE CREATED YOU! Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."-John 14:6 "But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."-Matthew 10:33 “For the wages of sin is death (hell), but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”-Romans 6:23
What we learned from New Coke is that people, especially American consumers, value autonomy. In America, people go absolutely insane if they feel like their ability to choose is taken away from them. You especially see it in both sides of politics (people wanting access to guns and abortion). It’s not the fact that people even want any of these things in particular, they just hate the idea of losing control. Gun owners don’t have bumper stickers about how awesome guns are, it’s always about defending their ability to own firearms. “If you want it, you’re gonna have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.” Pro-choice advocates don’t see abortion as this awesome thing, they just want to protect a woman’s right to choose. Choice and autonomy matter more than anything else. No one drives 160mph, but if Ford started manufacturing cars that maxed out at 90mph to avoid high speed collisions, people would lose their minds and a black market for cars would form instantaneously. Ultimately New Coke was genius because it stripped America of its choice. People felt powerless, unable to choose a product they’d become so accustomed to. Bringing back classic Coke was the only move that would’ve ever worked, it gave America the power to choose again. And now with an idea of what they’d supposedly lost, consumers counted their blessings and picked Coke over anything else. Because they didn’t want to live in a world without the ability to choose.
It’s kinda interesting too that the main arguments about those stances on both sides of the political spectrum are that ending someone else’s lives are not a person’s choice to make. It asks the question of how much freedom is too much freedom.
as someone who hasn't drank a lot of carbonated drinks in my childhood, i don't enjoy any soda, for several reason, so i think your point about nostalgia makes sense. on a side note if anyone in the comments is *really* wondering, coke tastes like citruses: limes, lemons and oranges kaffir lime leaves or bitter orange, caramel and several spices, mainly cinnamon, nutmeg and coriander seeds, originally it probably also tasted alcoholic before its removal and there is probably a hint of the coca plant taste without the actual drug inducing part, the reason i'm guessing so many people have trouble describing the taste is because there are so many different ingredients, and for many of them these are tastes we never really have tasted individually or paid attention to, so we can't quite associate them to anything.
Wow what a pretentious way to say "lots of flavours make it diffcicult to indetify them" wow, no shit sherlock, youre quick google search is not impressive
Capitalists deriding new coke as a communist plot and communists deriding new coke as capitalist decadence is perhaps the greatest example of radical centrism I've ever seen.
Well the difference is that Coca Cola are capitalists so calling it capitalist is at least well founded. And considering they were more successful afterwards makes the whole claim not really far fetched.
"Bill Cosby parted ways with the company, feeling that endorsing new coke had hurt his credibility" Legendary joke here that seemingly went over everyone's heads.
Why do assume everyone else didn’t get the joke? Seriously? You are the only person who has watched the news in the last 6 years? Yeah…you’re special and smart and clever and everyone else is stupid🤣🤣🤣🤣
Here in Mexico "coca" as we call it is huge at even dangerous levels, but I don't recall my parents or any older relatives mentioning "nueva coca" or something similar. And here in the north states near the US border, they also call all sodas coke. Even Fanta is called by them "coca de naranja" (orange coke)
I haven't heard of people calling non-cola-flavoured sodas "coca de naranja" or so If you don't mind me asking, where are you from? At least in Nuevo Leon and Chihuahua, we call coke "coca", and other flavours "soda de naranja/uva/manzana". Go southern of Mexico and it's not even "soda" but rather "refresco".
Man, EmpLemon, I would've never guessed you'd be this suited to documentary style content. You hit the right balance of being informative and actually having a personality
I was 5 when New Coke came out and I remember when my mother who was a major Coke drinker first tried it she said "This tastes like Pepsi!". When she heard that there was a vending machine that still had old Coke in it she grabbed a little tin that had she kept spare change in and went right to that machine and got every can of old Coke out of it that she could.
I’m going to make this point because I haven’t seen anyone make it yet. The original Coca Cola recipe used real cane sugar as a sweetener. Around the 70’s 80’s some products started implementing high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener to try and save on production costs because it was a cheaper alternative to sugar. When Coca Cola made the switch to New Coke in 84, one of the changes was they used high fructose corn syrup for the first time instead of sugar, which could have been part of the reason it wasn’t as popular as the original recipe. When New Coke made the switch back to Coca Cola classic, they didn’t switch back to sugar and continued to use high fructose corn syrup instead. So my conspiracy theory is that Coca Cola wanted to reduce production costs by switching from sugar to high fructose corn syrup, but it would have been noticeable if they just changed that ingredient over night without telling anyone, so new Coke was made, and always destined to fail, in order for Coca Cola to make that switch without everyone all of a sudden noticing. This is only in the US by the way. You can still get Coca Cola made with real sugar in Mexico, and most other countries in the world, and everyone I have asked says it’s better than the Coca Cola we have here in America.
Johnny Harris did a video on the myth of the Mexican coke 😁 tbh I think the difference in flavor comes from the glass bottle cause it's such a slight difference but it is noticeable. That's the real conspiracy, why did we switch from glass to plastic
@@charleserickson3499 meh, coke from Europe may not be made with cane sugar, but it is made with actual sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup, and it definitely tastes different. It comes in plastic bottles.
As a recovered coke addict (2 cartons a week), I honestly have no idea how I drank that sludge nowadays. Soda in a plastic container is usually too contaminated to properly taste test, but glass Pepsi beats Coke any day. After a couple of years of completely swearing off soda and soft drinks, recovering from the addictive chemicals and restoring flavor senses to norm, Coke just tastes like a bad can of nuts. I can't even explain it, it's just not good, like, at all. Pepsi is a'ight flavor wise, but more than one a week would f you up still innit. Also, Coke Zero is liquid sandpaper and drinkers should be legally separated from the general public. Fight me.
Sorry I rather not be genocided by some TH-cam self righteous fool. Enjoy things, Christ Also you ain’t that bad. My mother is at 4 12 packs of Dr Pepper a week. I wonder how she handles all that sugar…
I haven't had that sludge since early 1997 because my therapist had me quit caffeine so I could get my anxiety/panic disorder under control. It took about six months, but I stopped ANY soda whatsoever. I slept better, felt more alert, had less urinary tract problems, and just didn't feel run down like when I drank sodas. Funny how the soda companies have you believe that it's the opposite. I never drank coffee because I HATE coffee, so I didn't have to worry about that part of quitting caffeine. Ive been off of sodas for 25 years now and it has definitely helped my health. Caffeine strips calcium out of your bones, too. I'm 54 so that is something I have to worry about. Sodas are just bad news all the way around. I only drink fruit juice, smoothies, Gatorade or Powerade, and decaffeinated tea.
I had a bout with sweet beverages early in my twenties - not specifically Coke, but kind of the gamut of sweetened stuff. At first you have it because you're a kid and you want sweet things. Then you start falling for the branding so you just want it by default. Then your consumption ramps up because sugar habituation takes hold and your blood sugar goes on a rollercoaster, so you just crave it all the time. But I realized that I felt sick by the time I was drinking straight out of the liter bottles, so I took a hard turn into trying to clean up my diet for a while, taking any random advice I could find. Some of it's stuck with me. I'd still like to get rid of caffeine, but it's something that I end up cycling.
While I have no doubt people would accept it as an alternative rather then a replacement, it likely would’ve played into advertising, which for those who saw the 16-bit wars know, tends to bend the truth to make people believe ideas that don’t exist outside the mind.
After watching this, all I can think is how sad it is that consumerism and marketing have rotted the human psyche over time. I must say though I do love your work though Emp!
I had a college professor who was the VP of marketing at Coke during the time New Coke came out. He said it was both the best and worst publicity that could happen at a time like that.
I wonder how fast the hatred for New Coke would have spread if it happened today. Back then everything was spread by word of mouth, but now we have social media. We’ve already seen time and time again how easily people get into an uproar online, so imagine how catastrophic it would be if New Coke came out today instead of the 80’s.
I think way less people now would care, considering how heath conscious America has become since then, lots of people have stopped drinking soda altogether or significantly cut consumption of it like myself
@@mr.anderson2241 " A lot" have but no one cares how many, just how much is bought. Also it would still be the death since the old formula had sugar and the new has the now much hated corn syrup
They didn’t pour the new coke down the sewer, they put it down the storm drains, which pour into the ocean. They polluted the pacific to show how much they hated this drink
I have a fun little annecdote showing how engrained coca-cola is into many societies; When I was young, one of my first words was "little coke" in a different language. This was because it was a luxury item to consume and my parents bought me a single tiny bottle as a kid, so I would know what it tasted like. Now imagine taking that kind of thing away from society, and making millions detox cold-turkey off it. That's the mistake the Coca-Cola company made.
![[Live สด] การออกรางวัลสลากกินแบ่งรัฐบาล งวดวันที่ 16 พฤศจิกายน 2567](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wPd7VFfWHIA/mqdefault.jpg)
As a former Coke executive once put it when asked about the theory that they failed New Coke on purpose so that Coca Cola Classic could succeed “We’re not that dumb and we’re not that smart.”
I could totally see that being uttered by a Simpsons Character. Maybe Mayor Quimby. Maybe the bald guy with the Moustache. Probably the bald guy with the moustache.
That's just what a smart person would say. It was 100% a publicity stunt.
I heard it's because they released Coke Classic with high fructose corn syrup instead of real sugar so people wouldn't notice the switch from the original
Edit: He just mentioned it in the video lol I didn't get that far
They already had a winning formula and some stupid conspiracy attempt for marketing could just as easily backfire on them.
@@poika22 no, they’re genuinely not that smart. in retrospect it seems like a solid idea, but the logistics of creating, marketing and distributing an entirely new product costs billions all for the potential bump in sales it could bring to the existing formula. it would be way too risky for anyone to sign off on even if they had that idea, but i doubt they’d even considered it until new coke had already launched and failed.
Her Slurm will taste foul. Which is why we'll market it as New Slurm. Then, when everyone hates it, we'll bring back Slurm Classic, and make billions!
I can still hear this line
Lmao Futurama was always ahead of it's time. Literally and figuratively
Today I finally understood that line.
@@PoohhNani that's not ahead of its time, that joke was parodying the new coke fiasco
@sisuphos They also did it in the Bongo comics, in an issue where Sideshow Bob has apparently had plastic surgery, and Bart and Lisa are trying to figure out which of three newcomers to Springfield is actually him, one of them is a homeless man who turns out to be the creator of New Coke.
"The release of new coke was the only time he ever agreed with Castro" as someone who has grandparents who escaped Cuba, that is the most savage roast I have ever heard from a Cuban relative.
Wow cuba
Imagine telling your son “I agree with the murderous dictator who forced us to flee the country.”
Based Dad
Love your channel bro
Dude love your content
Solar Sands and EmpLemon are the same person. Gotta be. Right????
The fact that guy lived by new coke and drank it until he died shows he actually stood by it, or he was petty af which is also comdendable
I can't tell whether you meant "condemnable" or "commendable" and that honestly adds to this comment
@@1ntenc0 lmao reading it back it's so much funnier, say it out loud "comdendable"
@@1ntenc0
*YES.*
@@1ntenc0 that bothers me so much
@@1ntenc0 I'd be impressed in either one of the cases.
In case he really stood by it, shows he has (or rather had, during his life) a vision.
In the other case, if he was petty, then that's a simple statement about sheer willpower.
Both are commendable in my opinion
The fact that people spoke about new coke as if a family member had died just goes to prove what kind of grasp some companies have on us. Literally it was like they stopped manufacturing water.
Disney is the new Coke in this regard.
It's a bit disturbing. I enjoy products from certain companies, McDonald's, Apple, etc. But if say McDonald's changed the secret sauce on Big Mac's... I'm not gonna go bother protesting it. That would be ridiculous.
@@Web720 and nintendo is the new disney
@@rainbowresorts its both.
Worse. Nobody expects gam gam to live forever.
From what I've heard, New Coke was better tasting when you just had a few sips, but was much less enjoyable if you had multiple cans or a big bottle. Coke's biggest consumers were (and are) the people who practically drink it instead of water. Imagine if they somehow changed the taste of all the water you drank, and you couldn't stomach it anymore, you'd probably start protesting.
That raises another good point; did the little taste testing ad campaign Pepsi did DIRECTLY just... fuck Cola over? With a single ad, they fucked up Coca-Cola's entire marketing LOL
Fun fact: The energy and processing etc used to make one liter of Coca-Cola costs 3 liters of water.
typical americans.
Utterly disturbing.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I can only tell the taste of Pepsi because I am/was one of those water drinkers. Just the slight off sweetness is enough for me to tell. I couldn't do that as a kid.
The crazy thing is that the marketing is so ingrained in our culture that it has literally become color association. Early in the video when you removed the coke logo and made it grey my mind instantly went to Diet Coke because that’s how they do their branding.
Ikr, it’s so interesting
Yea, I can't even see blue without thinking of Ikea.
@will make memes shut up
Oh god branding
Holy shit, PATTERN recognition!?
Imagine if Coke never actually changed the recipe, they just named it “New” Coke as a social experiment to see what would happen
The trouble is that the Old Coke had cane sugar as the sweetener and now it uses Corn Syrup. The taste is very bad and very inferior to coke made with cane sugar.
@@spacecadet35 as a Brazilian which only has cane sugar Coca Cola, I'd love to taste the corn syrup one just to bash on any American saying how much ours is superior
@@coldguto Corn Syrup Coke isn’t bad. But yeah, Cane Sugar is undoubtedly better. Wish it was more accessible in the US
E
@@spacecadet35 coke had already started phasing in HFCS into their drinks before the new coke fiasco. By the time new coke debuted, old coke was already completely sweetened by corn syrup. People didn’t notice it then, and they probably don’t notice it much now.
Reminds me of when they stopped making twinkies in 2012 for a while. I remember one woman on the news crying not just at the thought of her never eating a twinkie again, but of her kids never getting the experience either. That was when I realized how strong the bonds of branding can truly be, and none of us are safe from it.
Or she was just mentally ill and you're a redditor (not human)
twinkies arnt even that good though. God, people are just so dumb.
Twinkies tastes like chemicals and sweetener I don’t understand the emotional attachment
I saw a news story about a whole neighborhood of people that had gathered around the property where a Taco Bell had burned to the ground. These neighborhood people were crying uncontrollably, singing songs of tribute to the burned Taco Bell, getting on their knees and praying for the restaurant to be rebuilt very quickly because "we just CAN'T do without Taco Bell for that long. We'll have to move." The songs of tribute they were singing to the burned Taco Bell were written by those in attendance so it was all so bad it was making my ears bleed. But these people were being so serious and emotional and acting like someone had just murdered some people or something. It just made me sick to my very soul. I was like, "As a society, THIS is where we are now?" We might as well just go ahead and nuke ourselves at this point and start with the burned Taco Bell neighborhood. Then my neighborhood so I don't have to wait long. 🙄
@@gabbo7101 Twinkies are an abomination of nature.
My grandpa worked for coke for decades. As a salesman he was able to keep some bottles of the old coke, new coke and classic coke. He keeps them up on a wall. Pretty cool
Did he have 16 oz glass BOTTLES? ... sold in packs of 8 ... equaling 1 gallon total.
drink them
Neat.
Can yah reply to B sm’s comment?
That's awesome if true I've collected coca-cola stuff for years. Glasses radios lighters ECT.
This guy could make the history of the phone book interesting
Dang, I completely forgot those existed
I wanna see a phone book video now
I want this. This would be a sick video.
Did you know at one time there where books with everybodies name, phones and sometimes addresses and nobody care about the big doxxing book
He might actually do it just to meme
"our children will never know refreshment"
I could not possibly imagine loving a soda so much that you make a sign and protest about it
I don't know if they changed Sprite I might have to make a sign😂. That's the truly refreshing one 😂😂
Europoor detected.
Plenty of countries with higher gdps than the US
In Europe that is
People are stupid. Especially in the south
Fun fact about Coke: In the Soviet Union, Coca-Cola was considered a symbol of American imperialism. When Dwight D. Eisenhower befriended Soviet general Georgy Zhukov during World War 2, he introduced Zhukov to Coca-Cola and he loved it. In order to avoid being branded as a traitor, Zhukov requested a colorless Coke so he could disguise it as vodka. It was pretty much Crystal Pepsi but fifty years early.
Coca-Cola was later distributed in the Soviet Union for senior Communist Party officials only as "Red Star Cola".
Zhukov was a fucking gangster. Watch Death of Stalin (or a review of it) for an idea of the magnitude of the man's balls.
@@leatheryfoot6354 The Death of Stalin is an amazing film and I recommend it to everyone. It's very dark, but very funny.
another fun fact: that colorless coke was later rebranded (with a touch of extra acidity and lemon flavor) as clear coke
Crystal Pepsi, which I kind of liked back then as well.
Oh, to live in a time where advertising a failed soda was considered "hurting his credibility."
haha yeah i laughed at that part
he definitely did something that hurt his credibility ALOT more
Its just funny to think that a messed up marketing campaign not only generated huge revenue for coke at the end but also saved them from a PR nightmare that would have happened if bill cosby didnt stop doing buisness with them....maybe subway shouldve changed the taste of their sandwiches to achieve the same effect
@@wetoddedd what a legend
"Failed" only in the sense that it was cancelled by people throwing literal tantrums. The more things change...
I've had New Coke, if anyone wants to know what it EXACTLY tastes like, get a can of Pepsi and a can of Coke and mix it 80% Pepsi, 20% Coke and you have New Coke.
Hi Larry nice seeing you here, also I totally agree with you, honestly soda is soda lol xD
I wonder if the same people who can't tell the difference between coke and pepsi, are the same folks that value odd things, like -cockroaches from the ocean- lobster.
I'd say close but not exactly... add a tiny bit sugar or corn syrup, maybe. I was there during that era and I tired Coke 2 plenty of times but I NEVER finished a can of it because it was too sweet (but not overly sweet). It was one of those thing where it tasted good at first but the taste would wear on me..... kinda like the Burger King Whopper.
It seemed like Safeway always had 16oz tall boy cans of Coke 2 on sale until 1987.
Lol not a bad recipe. But you forgot the last step - leave it out, uncovered, for 8 hours before drinking.
Why would I ruin a Pepsi with Coke?
The idea of Bill Cosby being worried about new Coke ruining his credibility had me in tears laughing.
Bill Cosby is victim of sour apples.
@@Markos581973I hope you are joking.
@@Markos581973you waited an entire year to say that?
@@howisthis8849 he probably had just found this video and wanted to respond to the comment
One needs to consider that some things about Bill Cosby might be made up. Then we have to consider projects/operations like Mockingbird.
"I've got a feeling that for most people, Coke isn't supposed to taste good. All it has to do is taste how they remember."
I recently came to a similar epiphany when it came to my favorite fast food, In-N-Out Burger. When people who didn't grew up on the west coast try it, they're often underwhelmed. Their burgers taste good, sure, but for people who swear by In-N-Out, I think it has more to do with the fact that a Double Double purchased today tastes identical to the Double Doubles they ate as children, whether that be 10 years ago or 50 years ago.
In n out is the best burger franchise ever.
I feel the same way about my neighborhood pizza place. No matter how many new pizza places open and become more modern .i still put the local one in my top 10
Yeah that’s how McDonalds built there brand. You’ll get the same Big Mac in London as you will in bumfuq, Idaho
All they have to do is think it tastes identical. Coke switched to HFCS after preventing everyone from tasting the real original coke, then claimed that was the original coke.
As a SoCal native, how dare you speak ill of the glorious In-N-Out
My father worked for coke as a driver during the whole fiasco.
He thought that the 'New coke' was a marketing ploy to make Coke back on the minds on every American, no matter the reaction.
Basically, they just wanted a major change no matter what that change was, because it got everyone thinking about them.
Then, they very, very quickly had already sent Coke Classic cans to distributers to roll out, which was weird because making those cans and changing production facilities' formulas should have taken a lot longer.
Guess that's why some coke-spiracies came out.
Bush did New Coke
normal people are smarter than executives me thinks
To quote an ex coke executive “we’re not that dumb, and we’re not that smart.” Maybe they just rushed the rebranding because they needed to meet financial goals. I can’t imagine a difference logo and formula would take that long for factories to adjust.
@@faithlifeworshipcenter460 I mean that sounds super compelling, but they took of the classic and are back to Coca Cola, and it has a different recipe.
Also, not being able to keep the same name while changing the recipe sounds kinda unbelievable. Like, coke had changed it recipe a few times and I know for a fact other companies change recipes but keep the same name. If I am wrong here than egg on my face but it all just sounds like a stretch.
no publicity is bad publicity
When you mentioned the CEO was a Cuban refugee, I was like "Wonder why he bothered to mention that"
The irony the Fidel Castro set off the dominos that killed his favourite drink was such a hilarious connection to make.
because its fundamental information about a person
thats how you introduce people
Gusano
I find it funny New Coke was accused of being the result of Communism and Capitalism from two different parties.
@@yoshimasterleader New Coke: The radical centrist's drink
Unique - be honest - do you watch empLemon bc after all the piracy you're worried about scurvy?
When I was a kid we always went to this one ethnic gas station because they imported coke bottles from Mexico- the reason why we did this was because these particular bottles of coke still used cane sugar instead of corn syrup. I can’t tell you how much better this version of coke is. It’s just as sweet without the terrible aftertaste- it’s like a capitalist ambrosia.
mexicoke is still sold at some shops in the states and it is much better i agree
Mexican Pepsi is also great, but unlike Coke you can get Real Sugar in a standard 12 pack for the blue.
I buy cases of cane sugar Coke from my local Costco. One thing I've noticed with that stuff is that it doesn't leave a film on my teeth like corn syrup soda does.
"It's not different, they just use a different ingredient." Lmao what?
@@triggered977
I'm literally holding a glass bottle of mexican coke in my hand right now, and the ingredient label says cane sugar. You are incorrect.
"Ingredients: carbonated water, cane sugar, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, caffeine."
And I can taste the difference, it's night and day.
You know, as a kid, I once saw a bottle of Coke II at a video rental store and didn't know what the deal was. I had always been fascinated by the idea of a SEQUEL to a soda. Because it's just so dumb.
babe wake up coke 2 just dropped
babe wake up coke 2 just dropped
Dumb indeed my brother, wise you are 🙏🏻
Coke Goes To Hell: The Final Friday
@@Itlivesinthewall Coke: The Dream Child
The fact that Bill Cosby left Coca Cola because the company _"hurt his credibility"_ is priceless.
Now the question is...the question is...was he raping before his credibility was hurt by New Coke, or after? Cause if after, I think we have a smokin' gun! /s
(we don't)
Coca cola wakes girls up
@@Ottophil cocaine does that
In the 80s yes. It's not like this happened within the past decade lol
@@KP-hm1dn i just think it really shows how Cosby was upholding a kind and soft demeanor for a long time.
To think that people really used to think this channel was dying out a few years ago. Right around when the downward spiral started I had almost completely lost interest in YTPs and a lot of other content I'd been watching at the time like let's plays and such. I took a year off of TH-cam for the most part and when I came back I saw how different the channel was and that it turned into what it is now. This is the only channel that I "grew up" with. It stayed in my interest for years longer than any other. When my old account of seven years was terminated, the first channel I decided to subscribe to was this one because it's almost synonymous with my TH-cam experience as a whole. My old channel has been here since the 10k mark. It's a neat phenomenon to grow up alongside a TH-cam channel, and this is the only one I've ever heard of doing it.
It's like this guy changed with us, I used to love YTPs and still watch them, but I just love video essays even more
I started watching around 2016, right around the time he started making more "rant" type videos which I really liked.
@@tomiyu2297 YTP are cringe
@@JimmyJames10-k7v Nah not at all, growing up with them was amazing zoomer
I loved EmpLemon YTP and im happy for him to adapt and evolve and continually grow his channel while others would fade away.
The reason New Coke failed is similar to why Oldsmobile took a hit in the '80s. Their advertising campaign was meant to appeal to the younger generation with the tagline "Not Your Father's Oldsmobile" which only served to push away the target demographic who were actually interested in the cars their parents owned, as well as alienating the already loyal consumers who thought the advertising campaign meant that something about the cars had been changed. New Coke tried to advertise how different it was from classic Coca-Cola, but Pepsi wasn't successful just because it was different from Coke. The only soda that profited off of Coke being Coke was Coke.
Reminds me of when Scion tried appealing to young people but got mostly old people to buy them since they are just easier to enter than old sedans with higher ground clearance.
...also, boxy cars are the last thing I would think young people would have wanted, I have no idea what was Toyota thinking...
Coke-ception
New coke was literally a successful mistake. The fact that so many people wanted the old coke was a giant advertising drop.
@keep rolling deez nuts are here
Kind of reminds me about the Sonic's movie old design
@@Knuckles_la_Enchilada its basically the same story in a way lol
I know Emp said in the video that New Coke was the outlier against the phrase ‘any publicity is good publicity,’ but in the end he was wrong. It was a hugely successful mistake that made people appreciate what they had (shitty sugar water with a different label on it ❤️)
I bet new coke was a disguise to make people forget what old coke taste like so they can remove the cocaine from it then bring it back but everyone would have forget the cocaine taste. Massive conspiracy theory i just made.
The failure of New Coke had nothing to do with the formula. They could have rolled out the new formula with a small announcement and no new branding and we would still be drinking it today. Changing the font on the cans at all was probably the largest marketing misstep ever.
absolutely what I was thinking....
New Coke was an intentional failure designed to disguise the fact they changed the formula. As evidenced by the fact that "Coca Cola Classic" was not the pre-New Coke formula.
Nope, it tasted like crap. I’ve had a vintage can
@@wolfetteplays8894 Could you imagine after so many years it would taste a tad bit different?
@@wolfetteplays8894 Oh hey everyone it's someone that can taste the difference between coke and pepsi wowie
People in the 80's: "This is awful, now our kids and their kids will never know the taste of the REAL Coke"
Their kids and grandkids: "This is awful, now we'll never know the taste of improved Coke"
literally
cry about it
Tell me about it
@@zzz_zzz_ZZZ_zzz_ZZZ_ZZZ_Z_z-ZZ I don't care, I prefer Pepsi. It's just funny to observe.
I'll cry about Crystal Pepsi though, but at least it was cancelled by Pepsi Co., not by the masses.
Now I’m more curious what is taste like
The introduction to High-Fructose Corn Syrup is what new Coke was all about. In the end, they got what they wanted as the corn syrup stayed.
I feel like it was setup so people would be so happy to have regular coke back they wouldn’t notice the corn syrup or care as much if they did.
Fda wins again
@@bradr3541 If so, it worked, but it's a pretty risky strategy honestly. I just can't imagine an entire boardroom of experienced businessmen would go, "Yes, let's risk our entire reputation on this plan." Maybe, but I doubt it personally.
@@DiamondDust132 I honestly can’t think of any other realistic reason.
I was alive when this happened. I never heard a single person say New Coke tastes better, ever. To be that big a company with a successful formula and try to literally throw the recipe away makes zero sense.
Ok I came up with 2 possibilities.
Maybe the ingredients had gotten more expensive and they were trying to cut costs
Or maybe they pay some kind of huge payments to someone to use the original formula and we’re trying to end that by using a new formula.
I don’t think either of those two are likely. By that point the recipe would be fully owned by coke.
@@DiamondDust132 What about the Yahoo executives that refused to pay 1 million dollars to buy google and then refused to pay 3 billion or so?
“I don’t smoke. I don’t chase other women. My only vice has been Coke. Now you have taken that pleasure from me.”
God bless you angry 80s southerner!
Based as usual
80s? We're still like that
This guy gets it.
Someone who didn't smoke in the 80s? Wtf
Sigma Grindest, Zero Smoking, Zero Wamen, 100 Coke
I was an avid Coke drinker and worked at my parents’ grocery store during the switch. Having tasted Coke all my life and preferring it to many different drinks that I had access to, the taste of new Coke was absolutely different and much sweeter. We knew nothing of all the publicity stunts, we just knew people hated the taste.
We kept cases of the old Coke, thinking we could sell them years later but then they changed back so quickly that we didn’t sell them. We all thought the “Classic” was different from the original so we tested the old Cokes against the Classic and there was a definite difference. The Coke of today is not what we drank up to that summer.
You are correct. ✅
That's like when they put coke in a different color bottle and people said they preferred the original one.
If you can find coke made in Mexico that comes in the glass bottles still, they use cane sugar to this day. It's far better than regular coke.
@@deaj8450 They do not. Mexico switched a while ago. Coke sells glass bottles in some supermarkets that are made with cane sugar that say they're mexican but they aren't, they're just coke with cane sugar. You can go to Mexico and see that they use corn syrup.
@@n646n those are the bottles I mean. Didn't know they weren't really Mexican, but that's what I've always heard them called and as you say what is printed on them. I'm certainly not suggesting anyone go to Mexico or ship it or something to buy coke
This is really going to date me. Those taste tests lasted into the late 90’s. I remember only having only Coca Cola in my house growing up. My Dad hated the flavor of Pepsi. I ran into one of those taste tests in a mall in a Sam Goody. I was able to pick out the Coca Cola. The Pepsi spokesperson was not necessarily happy with me. I’m still to this day not exactly sure why.
It's marketing, you were supposed to pick the pepsi on accident in front of the other customers, and by doing so, you sponsored pepsi without pay
I 100% can tell the difference between the drinks. I cannot put my finger quite on the difference, but there is for sure! If I had been old enough for the taste test, I would have been honest too. 🙂
@@NemoCat20 pepsi is spicy. coke is just brown
@@chrismanaloe3507 RC cola is better.
To me, Pepsi is more flat with a sweeter flavor opposed to coke. I don't like too much sweetness and more carbonation is better
In my PR classes in college we weren’t allowed to do projects on New Coke because it was such a widespread disaster they figured there’s nothing more of value that can be said😂 glad someone made a video tho it is a cool topic for people who haven’t heard of it
when was this? depending on the time frame this could be from amusing to hilarious. like, im just imagining the semester directly following this starting and the professor standing up, very first words to the class, being 'yes, we all heard about new coke, we all know what an absolute fuckup of a disaster it was, if you so much as ask if you can do this or that project on new coke you're booted from this course and you are fundamentally flawed human being. hello, i'm dr james, i'll be your marketing 301 professor for this semester'
Honestly, I think the taste difference mostly boils down to cane sugar vs HFCS. There's a reason many people buy "Mexican Coke" despite the price difference. As a comparison point, I tried A&W root beer with cane sugar, and it blows their HFCS root beer out of the water.
Except they switched in 1984, a year before new coke
Truth. I my local Mexican market pretty much pays its bills just buy selling Mexican Coke.
Sugar Cane very clearly superior.
@@bastian_5975 Are u saying theyre wrong? the difference is huge
90% People probably can't tell the difference despite what you may believe. Infaxr Mexican coke now has a 50/50 of being cane sugar or HFCS, the preference is illusionary. Though some claim it does effect the "mouth feel" of it, that may be an illusion as well.
I've even ran experiments on myself and my family to see if any of us could correctly guess which one was which. In many tests both were American coke and both were Mexican coke, to see if anyone could tell if they were tasting the same soda twice. Nope, none of us could.
Its probably just the allure of the glass bottle or that it's slightly less carbonated that makes it preferred for some, but as of right now, I'm pretty confident in saying 99% of people will be unable to taste the difference.
The difference between corn syrup and cane sugar is overblown, but I'm sure plenty of people can taste a difference. Also, a lot of people assume that since it has a longer and more "scientific" name, that it must be some harmful chemical. As far as I know, nutritionally it makes no difference. They're both bad for you in significant quantities.
I think the main reason why corn syrup is used so much is because the US government provides big subsidies to corn farms, which makes corn syrup very cheap.
It's funny how so many companies nowadays refuse to listen to a story like this. They change the formula, then blame the customer for not liking it, instead of just releasing it along side the old thing
if it was up to me we'd still have both!
because it takes from the OG product’s sales
@@OhSoKatelyn1 Which doesnt matter if you think about it
if you have 20% market share with 1 product
or 20% market share with 5 products doesnt matter
At the end of the day you have 20% of the market and thus the money it brings.
And a company like Coca Cola cannot claim how much more expensive it is to sell 2 diffrent Colas as to why they remove the old one.
If you remove well liked stuff from your service you always will have complainers (if they have a reason or not doesnt matter// Remeber Windows XP and how outraged people were when the Microsoft support ended in 2014, 13 YEARS after release and either 2 or 3 newer OS (at least Vista and 7 were out at that point) have been released)
If they wouldnt have SUCH a big company behind them, that drink wouldnt exist anymore. The risk is WAY to high.
Also, since they fundamentally make the same drink both drinks costs the exact same, so no money lost.
Also by diversifying your product range you actually get more attention than before (look at Cola now, they never have looked back)
Thats for example why the super exclusive iPhone is now sold in 3 diffrent sizes at release instead of waiting half a year for an "S" version (well they still sell an S version after a year but still). Apple wants the people that like big phones and the want the people that like small phones.
And coke just want to sell a drink. Give people options, step up your marketing and there you go.
If you just release it separately you still have the potential to grow your market share (look at Coke Light or the newer Coke Zero)
I drink Pepsi so it doesn’t matter
Strong enough to make drastic changes, Too weak to ease consumers in!
These videos are so incredibly well researched and put together. I teach atomic structure to 15-17 year olds and I've shown several classes the video on the cold war when we've been doing radiation - they really responded to it because it was made by someone who understood what their generation found appealing and didn't talk down to them. Keep doing what you're doing and take as long as you need between videos because these are genuinely some of the best things I've found on TH-cam.
This is one of the sweetest comments I've seen. :)
It's amazing if educators are using content like this.
No doubt. I love seeing his video essays, partly because they're on such random topics that I didn't think could warrant an essay.
I'm always intrigued, and they're always fun and educational to watch even though, and maybe especially because, I have no interest to learn of these things by myself.
If only more educators were like you
I love the fact that this ultimately made people love coke more and sales actually increased. What an incredible thing.
Coke using Max Headroom as their spokesperson back then is the equivalent of them hiring a big Vtuber today and that's wild to think about
@@DigeeTheGenie The three arrows of soft drinks
Against Coke, Pepsi, and uh idk Dr. Pepper?
>Max Headroom was a proto-Vtuber
Topkek
Ironmouse promoting Sprite on ABC would be quite the head turner.
@@seronymus i can now out-meme people saying the annoying orange and the gorillaz were the first vtubers. I feel powerful.
Reminder that Dominos had a collaboration with Hatsune Miku.
These companies tend to forget after a while that the entire point of having a brand is consistency. Adding on top of is an entirely different ball game to completely replacing your flagship product.
I wonder if they were going for a "coca-cola was for boomers" thing in response to Pepsi's "younger generation" campaign? But yeah - companies do a mind-boggling amount of needlessly screwing with what works imo.
This could possibly be the reason why American luxury brands - Cadilac, Lincoln, and Chrysler - seem to grasp no baring of for newer generations, especially now. These brands threw away the old-school, couch-cushion, land yachts in order to appease the "sporty" and "stylish" designs the Europeans were riding on. Now, those brands are having a hard time even justifying keeping living on because they don't seem to have anything that made them.
Yes, bad management and all that happened, but the thought's still there.
Not always. That's actually been McDonald's go to strategy since the start. Ray Croc wanted to create a restaurant chain who's whole appeal was that it would be consistent no matter where you found it, since the consumer would be assured that at least they'd know what they'd be getting where ever they were. The same philosophy works with chain hotels as well.
Consistency gets you nowhere, innovation keeps you alive
@@CheeseMiser You need both, genius.
40 some odd years later, the story behind New Coke is still politically, economically and traditionally relevant, just through altered means.
What are these means
@@cujows1844 Competitive consumerism and population polarization for the sake of business.
@@cujows1844 Information warfare
The vaporwave soundtrack on these corporate documentaries is the icing on the cake. Love your channel man.
Most of it is instrumental versions of classic songs and video game music from persona 5 and smash bros
This is a really interesting video about consumerism. Even though I wasn’t alive to experience new coke, I’ve noticed the difference in taste between regular coke and the “Mexican coke” at chipotles and other places, the ones that still have cane sugar. I seriously prefer the cane sugar coke, even if it’s more expensive, but I know that they won’t switch back, and your video kinda proves that, even if they did switch to corn syrup. It’s a shame :(
It's too bad they don't sell a version with cane sugar in the US. Pepsi does it with Mountain Dew, so it's not unheard of.
Coke with cane sugar is really good. When I drank canned coke, it was a bit underwhelming.
My dad just goes to a Mexican store and gets a glass cola, he never gets canned
Living here in Texas allows me to buy the bottled coke and take them back to Mexico to get them refilled.
@@fffrrraannkk Gotta make sure we’re drinking our corn syrup
Nostalgia is the most effective marketing tactic the world has ever known. Linking people to times that are ostensibly more simple by comparison will win out in the end nearly all the time. As we stray farther into the future, there will always be part of the brain that yearns for the past. Discounting that fact is one of the biggest contributing factors to the fall of New Coke.
Don't let this distract you from the fact that I get bullied because my classmates think my videos are the worst. Please don't agree, dear josh
✌👉 The Connections (2021) [short documentary] 💖
2020 will be exempt from this
Nostalgia just ain’t what it used to be
True. I prefer Pepsi because that's what my step dad preferred and I remember stealing Pepsi's out of the fridge as a kid to have a nice treat
It’s like Oreo. Oreo can literally sell the exact same cookies in the exact same package for the rest of time and make a billion dollars. Oreo makes alternate flavors all the time, but they never replaced the original.
Coke thought re inventing the wheel was a good idea, should’ve just spent more on ads.
New coke worked and possibly allowed them to shift to the much cheaper high fructose corn syrup without people noticing.
It's like that College Humor skit for the Oreo CEO. :D
Oreo could probably get away with making Double-Stuf the normal Oreo. It's a straight upgrade.
I was about 12 years old when this happened, and my dad drove trucks for the local coke bottler at the time. We were fierce coke partisans in the soda wars, and felt utterly betrayed by new coke. My dad stashed away several cases of old coke and we rode out the summer of discontent with a healthy supply of the real thing. The cokes we drank that summer tasted 10x better than any soda I've consumed before or since.
The story of New Coke remains influential as a cautionary tale against tampering with a well-established and successful brand
We were taught that in my college marketing courses with New Coke as a key case study
Haha that reminds me of in my graphic design classes where we used minute maid for the same purpose, tweak the imagery of ur brand and people stop wanting ur product
Honestly, most of the complaining idiots should have been interned in an asylum.
✌👉 The Connections (2021) [short documentary] 💖
Thank you for your insights, Mr. President.
New Coke is actually a tale about how gullible and reactionary consumers are. People act like it almost ruined Coke but in reality it basically made them way more money in the long run
Sometimes I feel like things moving too fast and people making rash decisions only happen because of the modern internet, but seeing a guy start a whole organization and make merch to oppose a soda that was only originally around for under a year grants me some sobering perspective
Thank god it’s not just us.
The internet does help magnify human behaviors, yes
It’s a different kind of privilege
Well now you know. Trust me, things moving too fast and people making rash decisions were occurring for as long as humanity existed- tens of thousands of years before the internet was invented
never forget it!
As a veteran of the Cola Wars `84 - `88, I approve this video.
I hope none of you ever have to experience the horrors I have.
one question tho, have you sticked to your guns and stayed with coke, despite the peer pressure it gave you when you drank the new formula? or did you switched to pepsi?
Jolt Cola!..."Twice the caffeine, ALL the sugar!"
@@peterbelanger4094 💯👍 I loved that stuff!
OG gamer drink
I was there for a tour, yeah I was in the shit, I had a New Coke t shirt, so I was New Coke in the streets but I was a Coca Cola Classic between the sheets as it were.
I was in the fructose regiment myself. We got in many a sticky situation.
In the summer of 85, I was 12 turning 13... and I was at a summer school program at Purdue University. We were staying in one of the dorms and there were a couple of Coke machines on the main floor. We quickly depleted the old formula cans, which got replaced with New Coke, which was nowhere near as good. It was flatter and too sweet.
A few of us explored the entire dorm, including the basement... and the little known, little used Coke machine down there... that was still full of the Real Thing! We held onto the secret the entire two weeks of the program!
The most surprising thing to me was when you mentioned that Coke Classic wasn't even the same formula, since they had started using corn syrup, yet no one raised a huge fuss over that change. This means you were comparing the taste of New Coke and Coke Classic, but no one will never have the chance again to compare the taste of New Coke and Old Coke (the version from before New Coke).
You can actually, it’s called Mexican Coke
Most people outside the US drink coke that's made with cane sugar (Old Coke).
It would be funny if they brought it back and called it “Coke-Cane”.
Technically even Old Coke isn’t really the original recipe since the coca leaves now have to be stripped of cocaine. Who knows how that affected the flavor.
But Old Coke is essentially what's being sold in any country banning GMO foods, and some others I assume.
Here we use beet instead of cane sugar, but sucrose really is just sucrose.
This is essentially the soft drink equivalent to the 2019 Movie Sonic design.
Good point. 💯
but we got the bad ending timeline
@@diwajerebation4077 what do you mean
Original sonic design from original games everyone loved (coca cola)
2019 movie reveals bad design (new coca cola)
Paramount backtracks, spends a buncha money and goes to a more classic design and releases the movie with the bad design all but forgotten (coca cola classic)
nah that design was genuinely horrific. It's like if the new coke formula made it taste like dirt.
@@diwajerebation4077 wdym? they fixed the design.
I don't know exactly why, but it's just weird knowing I'll never actually know what original New Coke tastes like...
It would be funny if they tried to bring it back
I like to imagine one of the new flavors is the original New Coke formula.
i’m not sure if he brings it up in the video or not but sometime around 2019 for the release of stranger things season 3 coke did a limited rerelease of new coke using the original formula, which i was quite interested in so i bought a case. it came with two cans of new coke and two stranger things theme coke glass bottles. if you’re wondering what it tastes like i think the closest thing that i could compare the “new coke taste” to would be modern diet coke, its just slightly sweeter coke. it left the same sort of aftertaste that diet does.
TL;DR
new coke basically tastes like diet coke.
The original "original" had actual cocaine in it so idk of we will ever
They should add it to the freestyle machines
I used this video as one of the sources for my Business Ethics final project, which I got an A on. Thanks, Emp for the quality content.
Nice job 👍
I've heard somewhere that while Pepsi was the preferred drink in taste tests, people actually preferred drinking coke over longer periods of time than just a few sips.
The conclusion was that people prefer sweeter flavors in more moderation. And this was the exact issue that plagued new Coke since it was sweeter than both old Coke and Pepsi
this
That comes up a lot and even now, people take a sip and go "well that's not bad" but drink a few cans and its too sweet.
Same with photos or tv screens. We tend to prefer brighter and more saturated images...until we don't
@@807D14M0ND5 OLED is different. You get used to it
@@Vysair That's has no bearing on what I said but yeah I love my LG C1 ✌🏻
23:50 One of the most interesting parts about Coke swapping from cane sugar to "high-fructose corn syrup" is the difference of canned coke vs the "Mexican Coke" glass bottles. Essentially, Coke made the egregious swap from cane sugar to "high-fructose corn syrup", but the so-called "Mexican Coke" is still made with cane sugar to this day. A lot of people think its just some hipster thing because of the bottles aesthetic but its funny to see the difference in formula and preference still.
Australia has cane sugar coke in the cans. Cans are definitely a better drinking experience, you can get them very cold.
@@jacksonconstable8331 plastic < can < glass
@@Flameb0 respectfully no
@@jacksonconstable8331 Idk why but glass does make it taste better
i never knew that i was universally called mexican coke. I live in texas and i thought it was kinda just a southern USA thing
Branding is always the reason why you pay more than your average product
@purple X shut up
Yeah I feel popular sports teams are a great example of overcharging mundane products. Likke a single chelsea mug can be sold for like 12 pounds while you could just get a 4 generic functional mug set for like 8 quid on the same site. That's the power of expert branding folks!
I believe in pure evaluation of the goods but I know that takes too much energy so people prefer going to reliable brands. Yet branding doesn’t make something good right? Confusing.
Branding does more than that. It acts as a promise of consistency, security in the quality of the product. You get a coke, you know what you are buying. Go to McDonalds and you'll know the quality will be on par with pretty much every other McDonalds. This promise and the ease of making it known is why they can charge a premium, average quality or not.
The Branding where you put a brand lable on something that isn't actually that product is just a way to create a cult. It's replacing religious iconography with product placements, and worse those who fall into it only exacerbate it. Die hard Fandoms are the ultimate form of these cults. They don't just like the product or comany, they worship it.
✌👉 The Connections (2021) [short documentary] 💖
This is just the perfect example of the phrase:
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
This might be a small thing but I love how you pronounce foreign names without saying “I think I’m pronouncing it wrong but what ever.”
Yeah, imagine learning how to pronounce the name you're going to say in your scripted video. Real tired of the whole "Probably butchered that name lol" thing when you can just look it up
To be fair i absolutely hate to hear "Im pronouncing it wrong"
because yeah, most of the time they do pronounce it wrong, but thats not the problem.
I would never scold someone because his german is shite, especially foreigners AND especially specially foreigners that never learned the laguage it in the first place.
But on the Internet you HAVE to be perfect or act like you would be sorry
because Jeremy cant deal with the fact that spanish isnt spoken by everyone.
@@el_tristo Imagine being so upset that people do not speak your language.
Also its rather difficult to "research" pronounciation. And even when you hear it, you have to LEARN it properly.
If you disagree i would like to hear you say "Eichhörnchen" (Squirrel) without practicing it for hours.
You are the problem people need to fcking APOLOGIZE for NOT speaking one of the thousands of languages of humankind.
Imagine being that narrow minded
@@gandalf_thegrey I really love that germans never scolded me over my terrible language production skills when I was still actively practicing my language on poor tourists whenever I saw them, most old folks were really sweet and spoke slowly to me if I requested it. Frenchmen on the other side...
Americans constantly give English people shit for how they pronounce words in their own language. “Omg why do you say choobe instead of tooobe” 🤤 they can’t even say ‘pasta’ correctly
Old fogie here. I was around for all of this. Back then Coke Classic wasn't as sweet as it is now. The cane sugar they used to use was a different sort of sweetness (you can get cane sugar sweetened coke, though it's not QUITE Coke Classic). New Coke was much sweeter, and much more like today's Coke. High fructose is just a much more potent sweetness. When Classic came back, it definitely was NOT the same as the original formula, but it was decidedly less sweetened. Over the years I've noticed they stepped up some of that sweetness. So, in all likelihood, we're all drinking New Coke now.
There's a lot of assumptions and biases that influence how we see coke, new coke, and today's coke.
I doubt it's as simple as today's coke being new coke under a different label though
What about the "Mexican" version of Coke sold in glass bottles? Is that anything like what New Coke was?
@@azazellon Mexican Coke and American Coke are two very different tastes. As a Mexican who drinks Coke pretty much every day, and travels to the USA often enough to taste American Coke occasionally, I can assure you that I can very easily tell when I'm drinking the USA product or the Mexican one. American Coke is definitely sweeter, but in a more chemical-like way. It leaves me a bit of an aftertaste, although it's still good. These last couple of years I've mostly switched to Diet Coke or Coke Zero (known as Coca-Cola Light and Coca-Cola Sin Azúcar where I live), and they do taste much more similar to the American product.
As a side fact, American Coke is much higher in calories than Mexican Coke; an American 20oz (591ml) bottle will have about 80cal more than a Mexican 600ml bottle. Cane sugar really makes a difference.
@@nocunoct I've only recently found out that Mexican Coke exists, and I highly prefer it over American Coke. Great to know it wasn't just my imagination when I thought they tasted different!
To this day I love cane sugar based coke. I know my local gas station has glass bottles of that still.
Crazy how hundreds of thousands will protest and rally because a company made a drink that studies showed was more enjoyable than their old one, but nobody says anything of the atrocities that Nestle commit lmao
Coca Cola themselves hired paramilitary to assassinate labor activists and union leaders in colombia
One incredibly simple and incredibly human factor: People react to what directly affects them.
They don't care cause it affects poor brown people thousands of miles away. No matter how much americans claim to fight racism, most of us are still like slaves to them
boo hoo hoo
What did Nestle do ?
I'd argue Coke is more recognizable than the stars.
This is because I live with severe light pollution and have never seen the stars.
That’s pretty sad
go out to a more rural area for a day or two, see them
Back when Bill Cosby could part ways with a brand to "save his credibility" 😂
✌👉 The Connections (2021) [short documentary] 💖
I'm 100000% convinced New Coke was a way to switch to High Fructose Corn Syrup. Give people a completely new tasting beverage, then switch back to the "old" beverage but change the sugar. Mexican bottling facilities still use the original sugar, and I can tell you it tastes very different. Coke switched to fructose because it's much cheaper with all the corn subsidies the US govt puts out.
Which one do you prefer?
Mexican Coke tastes the way I remember Coke tasting as a kid.
Mexican coke uses high fructose corn syrup, they're just allowed to call it "cane sugar" (which HFCS is aswell)
this deserves at least 2m subs.
We call them MexiCokes and we buy them whenever we can. Plus, those little bottles are cute.
Well my theory is that the current Coca Cola is actually New Coke. They've been increasing the sugar content slowly since 1995. And the actually Formulation difference is they made the original Coca Cola sweeter. if you want to approximate what 1980's Coke tasted like you get a 100% sugar cane bottle of coke or you can 3 parts coke to 2 parts club soda mix a can to get a feel of the difference.
If memory serves right, Coca-Cola imported from Mexico still uses Kane Sugar. Though I can't remember for sure...
@@lordlouie3550 it's true. Mexican Coke is the official name for real cane sugar coke, or Coca Cola Mexicana
@@lordlouie3550 There's so-called "Mexican" coke which does use cane sugar. But it is produced for the US market only. Usual Coke in Mexico doesn't use cane sugar either.
But I don't think that's what OP's post was about. He stated that Coke has become sweeter in general.
@@lordlouie3550 AFAIK, it does, if you burn it in the stove, it caramelizes and sticks horribly, I’ve heard that American Coca Cola just gets thicker
I heard that Iraq and Iran still sell cane sugar coke too.
It'll never cease to fascinate me how people will absolutely lose their minds over things that really don't matter at all.
New Coke did have a different taste to it. Emp simply failed to cover the difference in taste or the change in formula in his 30 minute video on the subject.
To quote the 2000s: "Epic Fail".
@NarlepoaxIII. It may not matter to you and it may not matter to me or thousands of others but it certainly matters to some and it mattered a whole lot. It's fascinating for sure.
holy crap, New Coke has an INSANE amount of sugar, even by soft drink standards! I knew it was sweeter, but I never realized just how much.
And this reminds me of a possible explanation for the results of the Pepsi Challenge: people liked Pepsi better because it was sweeter and, crucially, the serving size in the experiment was pretty small. A sweeter beverage is better if you're only drinking a small shot, but drinking an entire can or a 2-liter bottle is an entirely different thing, and most people in that case would go for something a bit less sweet, a bit more refreshing. I can't imagine a drink that's 10% sugar by weight to be that refreshing.
But Coke has 10.6g sugar per 100ml. So a bit more than 10 % by weight.
This man has never heard of Sweet Tea clearly.
Malcom Gladwell?
@@GrugGangGrugGang sweet tea is good but i couldnt drink more than a glass of it in one sitting tbh
As someone who lived through this, including actually taking the Pepsi challenge in the parking lot of an A&P, I would say of course new coke doesn't taste different to you from Coca-Cola with corn syrup. You would have to drink the closest thing to what we drank at the time: Coke with real sugar. You can find this as "Mexican Coke" imported from Mexico where they still bottle it. It's significantly less sickly-sweet and as an OG Coca-Cola fan the only good Coke. Also, thank you for mentioning that Coca-Cola Classic was not actually original Coca-Cola, most people miss that little trick by them. Imagine if they hadn't switched the brand to New Coke- the introduction of corn-syrup coke would have been reviled instead. For me the whole video was a nostalgia trip and quite accurate. Incidentally back in the challenge I picked Pepsi because it was noticeably sweeter and, hey, I was a kid - we were just stoked to be getting free sips of soda and at the time I remember thinking sweeter must be better (which goes back to not really knowing the taste: Coke is sweet, sweet is soda, sweeter must be better, pick the sweeter, that was Pepsi).
@@otterno.1128 bro, coke in Mexico was still made with only cane sugar until a few years ago (think 3-4 years max), since then it's been a "sweetener mix" and the change was made when they changed the label to "Reducido en Azúcar" (reduced in sugar) to account for new regulation concerning food labeling.
Crystal Coke is still made with cane sugar only and the taste is REALLY distinctive from the plastic one.
Also there's a lot of parts in the world where coke is made with beet sugar and it tastes absolutely different (I can speak for argentina, uruguay and chile) whereas in Brazil the coke is made with only cane sugar; they basically use what's cheaper in the production area and while you may be correct in that in the north of the country they may well still be getting coke produced with cane sugar (and haven't tasted it) on the south cane sugar is way cheaper and that's whta they use on the production plant outside my town.
Yes exactly. It's a travesty Coke won't just sell me a real sugar Cane soda. Call it a throw back like Pepsi did and charge me a but more if necessary.
I hate the corn lobby 😒
and.... all this is just fascinating. who knew that so many smart people care?? 😉👍
@@otterno.1128 "it only tastes better because of the glass bottle". Dude what? The ingredients say cane sugar right on the label. Its the original Coke formula. What are you smoking?
@@StefanoFierros i lived both in argentina, colombia and venezuela; like you said, argentina doesn't use cane sugar, but like mexico (excluding the comment you added) it does use it, and i could immediately feel the difference and i must say, it just tastes way better with cane sugar instead. funnily enough though, regardless of packaging (in which you can find plastic, can and glass) it all is cane sugar, from what i've been able to tell (anecdotal of course, so take with a grain of... sugar?)
I always thought the worst thing about it is that they decided to name it "New Coke" and "Coke 2.0". Like no product is named that way except maybe Nintendo games.
Names are everything when it comes to beverages so they could've easily just called it Coke Max when rereleasing it.
16:53 the issue with the mass dumpings is that you still bought the product.
Fun fact: the soda/pop/coke regions from 11:59 leak into Mexico. In Monterrey (near Texas) they refer to soft drinks as "coca", and in Baja, Sonora and Chihuahua (near California and Arizona) they call soft drinks "soda". Elsewhere in Mexico, the word is "refresco".
They refer to it as coca in Chihuahua and Sonora as well.
@@devilmaycryagency really? I remember my colleagues from Juárez and Chihuahua city calling it "soda".
@@devilmaycryagency then again, in the map you can see enclaves of "soda" in pop/coke regions, maybe Juárez is one?
Imagine getting up one day and making a sign that reads "our children will never know refreshment" and standing outside and protesting because a soda slightly altered its formula lol.
Not sure if today’s shenanigans are less or more bizarre.
@@t65bx25 today is more. Little in human history can and will top when a few years back a bunch of people tried to declare independece from their country, failled miserably, descended into a Lawless society rulled by criminal Warlords, started starving, needed to not only betray all their values but also ask the country they declared independence from to give them food, had some killings, implemented Race based segregation and finally colapsed. All under 9 days time.
Americans are special creatures.
@@infanos3720 You're referring to Portland, or the south? I genuinely can't tell
@@ileutur6863 its not that old.
I once jokingly asked a stocker for Coke if New Coke was ever gonna return, and he said if it did, it probably would be called "Space Coke".
Amongus
Doesn’t their new flavor, starlight, say “space-flavored” on it
Wait they gave that new "space flavoured" Coke now.
@@civilwarguy4740 yeah it tastes like burnt ass
@@sorensoul it tastes like graham crackers! I love it actually. Not a fan of regular coke.
This was 100% done to change to high fructose corn syrup without anyone going bonkers about the taste change and ingredient change. Going “back” to the “classic” was a genius maneuver in master manipulation. It’s kinda scary too
I saw that coming. I figured that a big part of the reason for new coke was cheaper cost of production. I think initially they didn't want to change original coke so took a chance with new coke knowing they could always go back.
Yes
Almost anyone who talks about this doesn't even mention this
Just speculation
Travis Gallagher
2 days ago
This was 100% done to change to high fructose corn syrup without anyone going bonkers about the taste change and ingredient change. Going “back” to the “classic” was a genius maneuver in master manipulation. It’s kinda scary too
102
games n de bunker
games n de bunker
3 days ago
This guy could make the history of the phone book interesting
6K
Red Circle
Red Circle
1 day ago
This is essentially the soft drink equivalent to the 2019 Movie Sonic design.
10
Your Friendly Cynic
Your Friendly Cynic
2 days ago
I think this video is a great example of how attached we become to recognizable imagery, even if there is hardly any difference
And that doesn't make people dumb either, we all do it. When a celebrity we've grown up on dies, despite not knowing them personally, there is this weird feel of nostalgia and loss, because the person you're thinking about is more associating with those memories, rather than missing them on a personal level
Weird example, but it was kind of like Black Ops 4 zombies and removing Juggernog, you still had the same health, but it just didn't feel the same
38
Yeah. If they had simply switched from sugar to HFCS the new formula would've been treated just like how New Coke was treated. But now instead the chance was being treated as "a return to normal". Genius marketing.
This entire stunt is a great example on how much nostalgia can really change us and really have an affect on something we experience even if there's no difference
thats because they sold us a lie, they told us it was a drink of tradition. but then they would change it, breaking tradition. the true traditionalists were outraged by the lies of coke(aine). there was no turning back, coca cola is no longer a trustworthy drink
There was a legitimate difference and I don't know how people miss that even that people that hated new coke missed it. Modern day coke is pretty much the same as new coke. They changed the sugar to the drink from cane to corn syrup. So there was an a actually difference between new coke and coke "classic" compared to actual old coke.
@@Saxton_Hoovy I mean that only proves my point even more. You can slap a memorable and nostalgic label on anything and people won't notice a difference. Main reason why new coke didn't make audiences very happy is because of how it was marketed and it's labeling of calling itself "new"
Except there was a significant difference between the old vs new coke. EmpLemon simply failed to explore it at all.
based WordGirl fan
Fantastic research. This really brings back memories of the asinine “cola wars” I live through in the 80s.
However, it took the video a LONG time (nearly the end) to reveal what the formula “switch” was all about. Coca-Cola switched from real sugar to cheap HFCS, and has NEVER switched back. So, in all subsequent taste tests, there effectively hasn’t been any original Coca-Cola in the US since the mid 1980’s. The fact that consumers apparently don’t read the ingredients is exactly what Coke was hoping for, and they won.
At least PART of the reason is that Coke could not come up with a "diet version" that tasted tolerable using the original formula, so they HAD to change the formula to create "Diet Coke".
Diet Coke is STILL based on the "New Coke" formula, and always was - and THAT is critical to Coke's survival today.
The problem with that theory is that Coca Cola had already switched completely to HFCS in the US market a year before New Coke was released. They started adding HFCS to Coke in 1980 and had phased out sugar completely by 1984; New Coke released in 1985.
I don't know about asinine, I was there, it was silly, and somewhat adventurous. I ended up experimenting more and discovering many new things I like to drink as a result.
That's when they came up with Jolt!
Irony is the true original **technically** has resurfaced in recent years, to the point even far flung towns have it. I've been able to spot traditional glass make bottles in stores, check the ingredient label what do I read? Sugar, not HFCS.
@@FracturedDMRwhat's funny is that coke is still made in the EU with sugar as far as I can tell, HFCS is banned here.
Man, you make me nostalgic over times and events I've never even experienced. That's unbelievable.
The real problem was that it was called "New" implying that the old recipe was obsolete. Had they slowly phased out the old recipe with the new one but still kept he same exact boxing and labels, I doubt anyone would've noticed. There may have been a few people here or there, but since executives made an entire announcement, everyone cried about it. As near the end of the video said, taste tests showed barely anyone could tell the difference.
it's 100% the different font that made people not like it
People would have noticed the change over time. That can do far more damage to a brand than a quick change that gets rejected.
When a slow change takes place it completely changes the outlook of that brand among people in a way that becomes part of a new behavior.
@@bighands69 no one cares, and this already happens to every product, when the
People would’ve noticed. There’s the Schlitz effect, people might’ve abandoned the soft drink altogether.
The whole point was however to make a massive announcement. That was the entire reason for the change to try to bring new customers in from the other cola brands.
To this day, I've never thought the problem was that the South felt betrayed, or that the roll-out was mishandled. I think the real problem was that New Coke tasted shitty. They designed a soft drink that would do great on blind taste tests, where you drink one or two sips. By the time you drank a whole can, you hated it. It was flavor-by-committee, and it was no better than could be expected.
^^^^^^
One theory on why Coke is more popular than Pepsi despite the supposed Pepsi Challenge is that people prefer sweeter drinks for one or two sips, but when drinking an entire can of it - i.e. the way a person *actually* consumes a soft drink - the higher level of sweetness causes palette fatigue, so in reality Coke ends up being better than Pepsi, especially when paired with food.
@@Cipher71 TBH as a die hard Pepsi fan, I love it far, far more than Coke, (especially Diet Pepsi varieties, which destroy the diet coke varieties): I can state that this is most evident with Crystal Pepsi. If it's ever available for an event again, try it.
There is no drink that tastes amazing 'at first' and then falls off harder than Crystal pepsi. the first few sips are amazing, but it has this weird effect that if you drink a whole bottle, the last quarter tastes somehow both bitter and unpleasant.
@@Cipher71 what's weird is Pepsi to me is less sweet and rich and more light and acidic. It's not how it actually is but the flavoring itself aside from the acid and sugar just flows worse.
Pepsi is definitely less sweet than Coke. Also Coke is absolutely disgusting if it's not ice cold. Any warmer and you basically feel it dissolving your teeth.
@@WereScrib want to add for folks who have never really tried anything but coke zero: you're doing yourself a disservice by not trying black can pepsi (max/zero, depending on locale), which has a taste close to original pepsi while not having the truly god-awful after taste + mouth film coating combo of coke zero. it's like diet dr pepper: the taste is so close that the problem of familiarity-curve with artificial sweeteners is much less burdensome (i enjoy a cold glass coke on occasion and swapping back to pepsi max doesn't cause issue)
pepsi max/zero absolutely stomps 0cal coke offerings.
I have a grandmother that drinks Coke like water; on the other hand the last time I tried a coke (almost 5ish years ago, and it was one of the mini cans) I almost threw up after drinking 2/3rds of it. It really makes me ponder how much our bodies adapt to consume what we put in em.
I think your reaction is slightly fringe in the other direction however you're based for following Mental Outlaw however aliens are demons btw
Lol weak!!!!
my mom can't tolerate coke anymore haha, it's only me who likes it now, she too thought it was waaay too sweet
or maybe you just dont like cola dude
JESUS KNOCKS ON YOUR HEART AND LONGS FOR YOU TO ANSWER! HE DOESN'T WANT TO SEE ANYONE PERISH INTO HELL. GOD LOVES YOU SO HE GIVES YOU FREE WILL AND A CHOICE TO ACCEPT HIM OR REJECT HIM. TO LOVE HIM OR TO LOVE SIN/THIS WORLD. CALL UPON JESUS & ASK HIM TO FORGIVE YOUR SINS! SURRENDER YOUR WILL & YOUR LIFE TO HIM & HE WILL GIVE YOU ETERNAL LIFE IN HEAVEN! PICTURE YOUR BEST DAY ON EARTH TIMES A BILLION FOR ETERNITY, THAT'S HEAVEN! NOW PICTURE YOUR WORST DAY ON EARTH TIMES A BILLION FOR ETERNITY, THAT'S HELL! HE WILL GIVE YOU WHAT YOU WANT SO IF YOU REJECT HIM YOU WILL BE SEPARATED FROM HIM & HIS BLESSINGS (LOVE, PEACE, JOY, HOPE, REST, ETC). IN HELL YOU WILL BE ALONE WITHOUT GOD OR PEOPLE... YOU WILL BE HOPELESS, IN DESPAIR & AGONY FOREVER!
GOD'S STANDARD FOR HEAVEN IS PERFECTION AND ONLY JESUS (THE SON OF GOD/GOD IN THE FLESH) LIVED THAT PERFECT LIFE! HE LAID DOWN HIS LIFE & TOOK THE WRATH OF THE FATHER ON THE CROSS FOR YOUR SINS! GOD IS JUST SO HE MUST PUNISH SIN & HE IS HOLY SO NO SIN CAN ENTER HIS KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. IF YOU ARE IN CHRIST ON JUDGEMENT DAY GOD WILL SEE YOU AS HIS PERFECT SON (SINLESS SINCE YOUR SINS ARE COVERED BY JESUS' OFFERING). YOU CAN ALSO CHOOSE TO REJECT JESUS' GIFT/SACRIFICE & PAY FOR YOUR OWN SIN WITH DEATH (HELL) BUT THAT SEEMS PRETTY FOOLISH! GOD SEES & HEARS EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SAID & DONE. YOU WONT WIN AN ARGUMENT WITH HIM & YOU CANT DEFEND ANY OF YOUR SINS TO HIM. YOU'RE NOT A GOOD PERSON, I'M NOT A GOOD PERSON... ONLY GOD IS GOOD! WE'RE ALL GUILTY WITHOUT ACCEPTING JESUS' SACRIFICE FOR OUR SINS!
MUHAMMAD DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, BUDDHA DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, NO PASTOR/NO PRIEST/NO SAINT/NO ANCESTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, MARY DIDN'T DIE FOR YOUR SINS, NO IDOLS OR FALSE gods DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO MUSICIAN OR CELEBRITY DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO INFLUENCER OR TH-cam STAR DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO SCIENTIST OR POLITICIAN DIED FOR YOUR SINS, NO ATHLETE OR ACTOR DIED FOR YOUR SINS! STOP WORSHIPING THESE PEOPLE!
JESUS CHRIST ALONE DIED FOR YOUR SINS & WAS RESURRECTED FROM THE GRAVE! HE IS ALIVE & COMING BACK VERY SOON WITH JUDGEMENT (THESE ARE END TIMES)! PREPARE YOURSELVES, TURN FROM SIN & RUN TO JESUS! HE KNOWS YOUR PAIN & TROUBLES, HE WANTS TO HEAL & RESTORE YOU! TALK TO HIM LIKE A BEST FRIEND! ASK HIM TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO YOU & HELP YOU TO BELIEVE IF YOU DOUBT! DON'T WAIT TO CRY OUT! NO ONE IS PROMISED TOMORROW! HE LONGS FOR YOU TO INVITE HIM IN, HE LOVES YOU MORE THAN ANY PERSON EVER COULD, HE CREATED YOU!
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."-John 14:6
"But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven."-Matthew 10:33
“For the wages of sin is death (hell), but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”-Romans 6:23
The way people reacted over a soda formula is just insane to me. It's... soda. Anyway, very interesting documentary!
21:44 his statement aged like New Coke
What we learned from New Coke is that people, especially American consumers, value autonomy. In America, people go absolutely insane if they feel like their ability to choose is taken away from them. You especially see it in both sides of politics (people wanting access to guns and abortion). It’s not the fact that people even want any of these things in particular, they just hate the idea of losing control.
Gun owners don’t have bumper stickers about how awesome guns are, it’s always about defending their ability to own firearms. “If you want it, you’re gonna have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.” Pro-choice advocates don’t see abortion as this awesome thing, they just want to protect a woman’s right to choose. Choice and autonomy matter more than anything else.
No one drives 160mph, but if Ford started manufacturing cars that maxed out at 90mph to avoid high speed collisions, people would lose their minds and a black market for cars would form instantaneously.
Ultimately New Coke was genius because it stripped America of its choice. People felt powerless, unable to choose a product they’d become so accustomed to. Bringing back classic Coke was the only move that would’ve ever worked, it gave America the power to choose again. And now with an idea of what they’d supposedly lost, consumers counted their blessings and picked Coke over anything else. Because they didn’t want to live in a world without the ability to choose.
No wonder Europe didn’t give a shit about the change, they already had no choice anyway 😂
yo right on
I love this country so much 😂😂
Well said
astute observation
It’s kinda interesting too that the main arguments about those stances on both sides of the political spectrum are that ending someone else’s lives are not a person’s choice to make.
It asks the question of how much freedom is too much freedom.
as someone who hasn't drank a lot of carbonated drinks in my childhood, i don't enjoy any soda, for several reason, so i think your point about nostalgia makes sense.
on a side note if anyone in the comments is *really* wondering, coke tastes like citruses: limes, lemons and oranges kaffir lime leaves or bitter orange, caramel and several spices, mainly cinnamon, nutmeg and coriander seeds, originally it probably also tasted alcoholic before its removal and there is probably a hint of the coca plant taste without the actual drug inducing part, the reason i'm guessing so many people have trouble describing the taste is because there are so many different ingredients, and for many of them these are tastes we never really have tasted individually or paid attention to, so we can't quite associate them to anything.
Wow what a pretentious way to say "lots of flavours make it diffcicult to indetify them" wow, no shit sherlock, youre quick google search is not impressive
It's cinnamon sprite. And they do still use processed coca leaves without the cocaine.
Capitalists deriding new coke as a communist plot and communists deriding new coke as capitalist decadence is perhaps the greatest example of radical centrism I've ever seen.
Well the difference is that Coca Cola are capitalists so calling it capitalist is at least well founded. And considering they were more successful afterwards makes the whole claim not really far fetched.
"Bill Cosby parted ways with the company, feeling that endorsing new coke had hurt his credibility"
Legendary joke here that seemingly went over everyone's heads.
Probably because people are a bit... sleepy
It didn't go over my head... I even posted my own comment about it the second he said it in the video and I had finished laughing...
Why do assume everyone else didn’t get the joke? Seriously? You are the only person who has watched the news in the last 6 years? Yeah…you’re special and smart and clever and everyone else is stupid🤣🤣🤣🤣
just because nobody commented about it doesnt mean nobody got it brother
I mean, it didn't HELP...
New coke wasn’t the only thing that would go on to hurt Bill Cosbys credibility.
*Leonard Part 6,* made by Columbia while still owned by Coke, did that, too.
Yeah, some years later he would go on to star in Ghost Dad.
If New Coke is so great, why haven't they made New Coke 2?
Here in Mexico "coca" as we call it is huge at even dangerous levels, but I don't recall my parents or any older relatives mentioning "nueva coca" or something similar.
And here in the north states near the US border, they also call all sodas coke. Even Fanta is called by them "coca de naranja" (orange coke)
Interesting
I haven't heard of people calling non-cola-flavoured sodas "coca de naranja" or so
If you don't mind me asking, where are you from? At least in Nuevo Leon and Chihuahua, we call coke "coca", and other flavours "soda de naranja/uva/manzana".
Go southern of Mexico and it's not even "soda" but rather "refresco".
@@adanfime Mexico City, but I'm talking about my experience in Sonora and Durango.
@@adanfime as an American Mexican, my experience might differ from yours, but my parents and family have always called it coca de naranja
Does mexico Coke use Different sugar or Fructose syroup? There are mixed Signals
I like how the TF2 guitar picks up intensity when the proposition of Southern Americans being ok with change is made.
Man, EmpLemon, I would've never guessed you'd be this suited to documentary style content.
You hit the right balance of being informative and actually having a personality
I was 5 when New Coke came out and I remember when my mother who was a major Coke drinker first tried it she said "This tastes like Pepsi!". When she heard that there was a vending machine that still had old Coke in it she grabbed a little tin that had she kept spare change in and went right to that machine and got every can of old Coke out of it that she could.
New Coke's story was literally "REJECT MODERNITY, EMBRACE TRADITION"
I’m going to make this point because I haven’t seen anyone make it yet. The original Coca Cola recipe used real cane sugar as a sweetener. Around the 70’s 80’s some products started implementing high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener to try and save on production costs because it was a cheaper alternative to sugar. When Coca Cola made the switch to New Coke in 84, one of the changes was they used high fructose corn syrup for the first time instead of sugar, which could have been part of the reason it wasn’t as popular as the original recipe. When New Coke made the switch back to Coca Cola classic, they didn’t switch back to sugar and continued to use high fructose corn syrup instead. So my conspiracy theory is that Coca Cola wanted to reduce production costs by switching from sugar to high fructose corn syrup, but it would have been noticeable if they just changed that ingredient over night without telling anyone, so new Coke was made, and always destined to fail, in order for Coca Cola to make that switch without everyone all of a sudden noticing. This is only in the US by the way. You can still get Coca Cola made with real sugar in Mexico, and most other countries in the world, and everyone I have asked says it’s better than the Coca Cola we have here in America.
I think the fact that the CEO wasn't fired, but instead, his tenure was considered a success, lends credence to your idea.
Johnny Harris did a video on the myth of the Mexican coke 😁 tbh I think the difference in flavor comes from the glass bottle cause it's such a slight difference but it is noticeable. That's the real conspiracy, why did we switch from glass to plastic
@@charleserickson3499 amen to that!
@@charleserickson3499 meh, coke from Europe may not be made with cane sugar, but it is made with actual sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup, and it definitely tastes different. It comes in plastic bottles.
@Jayce phthalates will get ya worse than the sugar 😉
As a recovered coke addict (2 cartons a week), I honestly have no idea how I drank that sludge nowadays.
Soda in a plastic container is usually too contaminated to properly taste test, but glass Pepsi beats Coke any day.
After a couple of years of completely swearing off soda and soft drinks, recovering from the addictive chemicals and restoring flavor senses to norm, Coke just tastes like a bad can of nuts. I can't even explain it, it's just not good, like, at all. Pepsi is a'ight flavor wise, but more than one a week would f you up still innit.
Also, Coke Zero is liquid sandpaper and drinkers should be legally separated from the general public. Fight me.
Sorry I rather not be genocided by some TH-cam self righteous fool. Enjoy things,
Christ
Also you ain’t that bad. My mother is at 4 12 packs of Dr Pepper a week. I wonder how she handles all that sugar…
I haven't had that sludge since early 1997 because my therapist had me quit caffeine so I could get my anxiety/panic disorder under control. It took about six months, but I stopped ANY soda whatsoever. I slept better, felt more alert, had less urinary tract problems, and just didn't feel run down like when I drank sodas. Funny how the soda companies have you believe that it's the opposite. I never drank coffee because I HATE coffee, so I didn't have to worry about that part of quitting caffeine.
Ive been off of sodas for 25 years now and it has definitely helped my health. Caffeine strips calcium out of your bones, too. I'm 54 so that is something I have to worry about. Sodas are just bad news all the way around. I only drink fruit juice, smoothies, Gatorade or Powerade, and decaffeinated tea.
@@CivilEngineerWroxton not even water?
I had a bout with sweet beverages early in my twenties - not specifically Coke, but kind of the gamut of sweetened stuff. At first you have it because you're a kid and you want sweet things. Then you start falling for the branding so you just want it by default. Then your consumption ramps up because sugar habituation takes hold and your blood sugar goes on a rollercoaster, so you just crave it all the time. But I realized that I felt sick by the time I was drinking straight out of the liter bottles, so I took a hard turn into trying to clean up my diet for a while, taking any random advice I could find. Some of it's stuck with me.
I'd still like to get rid of caffeine, but it's something that I end up cycling.
Idk U lost all credibility when you said Pepsi over Coke
I think the real problem was that they tried to fully replace the old formula instead of just having it as a separate option from the start
While I have no doubt people would accept it as an alternative rather then a replacement, it likely would’ve played into advertising, which for those who saw the 16-bit wars know, tends to bend the truth to make people believe ideas that don’t exist outside the mind.
@@galfinsp7216 ah yes, the but wars.
After watching this, all I can think is how sad it is that consumerism and marketing have rotted the human psyche over time.
I must say though I do love your work though Emp!
Emp never disappoints with an upload. 1 million subs well deserved and well earned
I had a college professor who was the VP of marketing at Coke during the time New Coke came out. He said it was both the best and worst publicity that could happen at a time like that.
I wonder how fast the hatred for New Coke would have spread if it happened today. Back then everything was spread by word of mouth, but now we have social media. We’ve already seen time and time again how easily people get into an uproar online, so imagine how catastrophic it would be if New Coke came out today instead of the 80’s.
Today word of the change would leak out and be derailed before the new product even hit the shelves.
I think way less people now would care, considering how heath conscious America has become since then, lots of people have stopped drinking soda altogether or significantly cut consumption of it like myself
if this happened today paid shills would pressure 99% of the population into liking it, welcome to the modern world
@@mr.anderson2241 " A lot" have but no one cares how many, just how much is bought. Also it would still be the death since the old formula had sugar and the new has the now much hated corn syrup
Social media would 100% turn this into a political issue.
I was a teen during the cola wars, and my sister and I noticed a difference in taste when they brought back "Classic".
16:28 he could never win an argument with his name being Gay
They didn’t pour the new coke down the sewer, they put it down the storm drains, which pour into the ocean. They polluted the pacific to show how much they hated this drink
I have a fun little annecdote showing how engrained coca-cola is into many societies; When I was young, one of my first words was "little coke" in a different language. This was because it was a luxury item to consume and my parents bought me a single tiny bottle as a kid, so I would know what it tasted like.
Now imagine taking that kind of thing away from society, and making millions detox cold-turkey off it. That's the mistake the Coca-Cola company made.