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Food & Drink · died 2002

New Coke

1985 — 2002
murdered Reported · 2002

“Sweeter, smarter on paper, and never once loved back”

New Coke arrived in April 1985 as the Coca-Cola Company's bold answer to slipping market share and Pepsi's sweeter, taste-test-winning formula. It was meant to be the future of the drink Americans had grown up with. Instead, it became something else entirely: the most famous plea for the original ever staged.

The public reaction was swift and merciless, and within three months Coca-Cola brought back the original as Coca-Cola Classic — sales notably boosted by the whole affair. The company has always insisted the reversal wasn't a strategy, though conspiracy theories say otherwise. The reformulation, renamed Coke II in 1990, quietly survived until its discontinuation in July 2002, leaving behind a lasting lesson in brand i

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