We finally got our hands on a bottle of the stuff, a week or so back, and each had a small glassful.
To me, it tasted vaguely like some kind of spice - cinnamon, or clove, or something of that ilk. A friend said she thought it tasted like red velvet cake. I didn’t get that (then again, to me, RV cake doesn’t taste like anything, and has always been a WTF? kind of thing for me). I was wondering if it was supposed to be a bit like Dr. Pepper or Mr. Pibb, never having tried either.
It didn’t remind me of campfires or starlight or anything of the sort. We won’t repeat the experience.
I saw it in the store & just thought it was a wrapper - regular (or diet) Coke in a limited edition can/bottle…until I saw this thread.
Got a bottle almost two weeks ago. Cotton Candy, Cola, &…something else. Had a cool color when I held the bottle up, too (before knowing that it was colored differently); it’s not a dark as regular cola, it’s both lighter & had a red tint to it.
I’d buy it again. Of course, the other (different flavored) 20oz. bottle I got as part of the twofer offer is still sitting in the fridge; unopened.
I absolutely hated it. But I hate flavored Coke. I did not enjoy Atlanta’s World Of Coke taste testing. I did love Crystal Pepsi but that’s about it for exotic colas for me.
My teen loved it. Would definitely drink it again.
I just had some Starlight Coke Zero Sugar. I had been waiting for the Zero Sugar variety and finally found it. It was expensive for the little cans, but I was curious and bought some.
Yeah, it’s OK. Nothing special or worth having again.
I just got a case of Coca-Cola Dreamworld, another experimental flavor of Coke that they are making. Again, mine is the Coke Zero variety.
My take: Coca-Cola Dreamworld is much better than Starlight. My son and I thought it tasted kind of like Coke mixed with Faygo Cotton Candy* soda. Sounds terrible, but it is actually really good. I like it quite a bit. Would definitely buy an occasional 2-liter of it for parties.
*If you don’t have Faygo near you, it’s a shame. Their Cotton Candy flavor is amazing.
Thought STarlight tasted like s’mores and campfires. Dreamworld is too fruity for me, and the limited marshmellow one in the all white can was just nasty.
Nah. Seems like everyone does this – have an established brand, then periodically introduce “limited time” flavors. The snack industry does this all the time. Keeps interest in the brand fresh and people chatting about it-- I’m one of those suckers for every time a “limited edition” flavor comes out, curiosity gets the best of me. Some have been quite good. Starlight Coke was garbage, though.
And originally they said space, or the universe, was turquoise in color. Whut?? Then they changed it to boring beige. So it should be beige and smell like burned steak?
Yeah, I think the chances of them having a “Cherry Coke” level hit are thin, but these should get some good sales in the short term and if one is popular, they can bring it back.
Code Red Mountain Dew started out in limited markets(Michigan was one) and I thought it’d never make it as a permanent flavor. It did, but most other test runs are just tests.
Well, while my inner Juggalo gives this a whoop whoop, I didn’t find Dream Coke to be a new favorite. I think these new flavors are ones that Coca-Cola knows people would reject on principle if they were titled honestly (such as Starlight being marshmallow or cotton candy flavor which sounds disgusting when mixed with Coke) but if they give it a concept name people will try it just to know what space or dreams taste like. In the case of Dream Coke, I get a red licorice taste from it and it took me two days to get through one small bottle of it so I’d say they whiffed it on this one. I liked Starlight though.
Companies worry about cannibalizing their own sales. It does the Coca-Cola Company no good if the people drinking Cherry Coke are just people who switched over from drinking regular Coke. They’ve got no new customers and the cost of producing two products instead of one has decreased their profits.
So a product like Coke Zero isn’t designed to attract people who are drinking Diet Coke (even though they’re the likeliest people to buy the new product). Coke Zero is targeted at people who are drinking Diet Pepsi, which is a harder sell. Or convincing people who haven’t been drinking diet soda at all that they should start drinking Coke Zero.
Chris Hadfield’s “space smells like burnt steak” is reminiscent of the Apollo astronauts’ claim that fresh moon dust – stuff that was just freshly tracked into the lunar module – smelled like burnt gunpowder. It may be for a related reason. Oddly, that smell was never noticed in lunar materials brought back to earth.
As for Coke, my oft-repeated advice to the Coca-Cola Company is: “You have a great flagship product. Stop fucking around!”. The one good variant they managed to produce is Coke Zero, and even then they just cannot leave well enough alone. They recently “improved” it, and almost everyone who has opined on it says it tastes worse.
But they took that one step further. I discovered that drinking the new Coke Zero directly from a bottle for some reason tastes pretty good, perhaps because the extra fizz helps to disguise the “new improved” taste. I approved of the new packaging concept where regular Coke, Coke Zero, and Diet Coke were available in 8-packs of recyclable plastic bottles that had a slightly smaller volume than regular cans (a perfect amount for me). The Coca-Cola Company must have got wind of my approval, because they abruptly discontinued Coke Zero in that format – though both regular Coke and Diet Coke are still produced in those packages.
My conclusion is that either (a) the Coca-Cola Company hates me, or (b) their taste focus groups are comprised of aliens from Alpha Centauri.
