Was “New Coke” really a flop, or was it one of the most clever marketing ploys ever? Consider the following piece that I found at some Max Headroom site:
"The New Coke campaign of the early 80’s was considered one of the biggest marketing failures ever. Well, perhaps not. It may have been one of the most brilliant and immoral marketing strategies in history. Just look on any can of Coke. In the 1980’s when Bill Cosby declared that Coke would change it’s formula, was it just a huge scam to save Coke money? Maybe the Coca-Cola corporation never really cared if consumers bought into the New Coke fad or not. Some say what they wanted was to release a substitute Coke product with a noticeably different taste. That they kept the New Coke on the market until all of the old Coke was sold and people couldn’t buy it anymore.
Eventually, Coca-Cola claimed (quite rightly) that people missed old Coke and demanded it’s return. As a consequence, Coke vowed to re-release the original Coke as Coke Classic. They never did. What they did do was bring back the original recipe, but with (significantly cheaper) corn syrup instead of sugar. Everyone would have noticed if they had just made the switch directly. Coke would have been forced to return to the original, more expensive, product. But since Classic Coke tasted passably similar to old Coke, people just assumed it was the same, since no one had had any in so long.
So now you can only get original Coke in the US on Passover (look for Kosher for Passover Coke from about mid March, it will either say KP, or just look for Hebrew letters). Since corn is not kosher for Passover, they release the true original formula with sugar.
In Europe and Mexico, Coke is still made with real sugar."
Perhaps just a Max Headroom fan trying to rationalize? Or maybe Max truly was at the vanguard of American consumerism?
I may be wrong, but I seem to recall Old Coke and other soft drinks being made with corn syrup long before then.
There’s a town near here which sells Dr. Pepper made with real sugar. I know people who will drive an hour and a half to get some. I can barely tell the difference.
According to Snopes, New Coke was not a clever marketing ploy, and Coke had already begun the switch to corn syrup long before New Coke was introduced.
The Snopes page didn’t have my favorite rumor about New Coke:
After the partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, there was great concern over the radioactive water produced by the event. But after New Coke hit the stores, you never heard anything about radioactive water from Three Mile Island anymore. Now we know what New Coke was flavored with!!
(And why did a famous Washington restaurant first introduce “Chicken Kiev” after those people fried in the Chernobyl disaster? Hmmm? :eek: )
Blame Archer Daniels Midland and their intense lobbying to increase the taxes on imported sugar. As a result, sugar, which is quite a bit cheaper on the world market than it is in the US, costs more than the corn syrup ADM produces. Food companies, of course, go with whatever’s cheapest. Were it not for ADM, we’d all be savoring the sharp, clean taste of soft drinks made with real sugar rather than coagulated corn phlegm.
But look on the bright side! “Coagulated corn phelgm,” according to http://www.orst.edu/food-resource/sugar/hfcs.html, breaks down as follows:[ul][li]14% fructose[/li][li]43% dextrose[/li][li]31% disaccharides[/li][li]12% other[/ul]… whereas “real sugar” breaks down like this:[ul]100% disaccharides[/ul][/li]Just think of all the extra monosaccharides you’re getting by drinking corn-syrup-sweetened Coke! Not to mention all that “other” you’re getting! Mmmmm…
I noticed in Mexico and Italy how much better the Coke was.
There is an intense sugar lobby in the United States which virtually bars the import of any foreign sugar.
When they were drafting NAFTA there were intense last minute negotiations that upheld the foreign sugar ban while virtually every other product had to face competition.
The ban depresses the economies of Mexico and the West Indies. A lift of the sugar ban would greatly benefit the hemisphere. West Indies economy’s are now tied to tourism which is treatened by the crime and blight that exist because no other segment of the economy can flourish.
It is ironic that we are willing to spend millions to put troops in Haiti and try to get democracy to flourish there and at the same time we refuse their main export, hurting the consumer at home and forcing American companies like Coca-Cola to prostrate to ADM.
Of course corn farmers have had their voice in Washington as well, producing a glut of Federally subsidized corn syrup which ends up in way to many products.
It wouldn’t be so bad if “High Fructose” Corn Syrup really did derive most of its sweetening power from fructose, like its name implies. As you can tell from that little list I posted a couple messages back, the plurailty of sugars in “High-Fructose” Corn Syrup (affectionately nicknamed “coagulated corn phlegm”) are dextrose, with disaccharides [sucrose] coming in a close second. High-Fructose Corn Syrup is only considered “high fructose” in relation to normal corn syrup, which I guess is practically fructose-free or something.
Fructose doesn’t go straight into the blood the way glucose [dextrose] does. Glucose, when absorbed, becomes “blood sugar” almost immediately, but fructose has to make a pit stop at the liver to get turned into glucose and so raises your blood sugar level much more slowly. Each disaccharide sucrose molecule quickly breaks down into a fructose molecule and a glucose molecule, the latter of which is, of course, instant blood sugar.
Some people have gone so far as to say that switching the primary sugar in the American diet from sucrose to fructose would drastically reduce the number of Type II Diabetes cases, but the evidence for that is still spotty.
High fructose corn sweetener is dozens of times sweeter than regular cane sugar. Without sugar to provide texture and mouthfeel, liquids are thickened with ester of wood rosin and brominated vegetable oils. It is one of many reasons that modern soft drinks taste like chilled dishwater.
Try any of the new Boyland sodas or the superb Aussie Bundaberg lemon lime bitters. The Italian Pellegrino sparklers are quite good too.
According to legend, the reason that Coca Cola introduced the New Coke recipe was to eliminate the most expensive ingredient, the Madagascar vanilla bean pods. They switched to an inferior grade in a phyrric attempt to save a few pennies.
Wait a minute … I thought all the flavoring ingredients in Coca-Cola were supposed to be a closely-guarded secret. Zenster, how do you know that Coca-Cola in fact has Madagascar vanilla bean pods in it?