I too, am curious. I bought a 20 oz bottle of the Vanilla Coke Zero but read the label first to make sure it didn’t have that crappy Splenda crappy crap crap and saw that it was just Nutrasweet, same as Diet Coke. Are they switching over the “Diet” moniker to the crappy Splenda crappy crap crap or is the Zero just a different formula? Tasted fine to me.
Coke Zero is a different formula than Diet Coke.
However, Cherry Coke Zero is the same formula as the old Diet Cherry Coke.
So Vanilla Coke Zero may be the same as what used to be Diet Vanilla Coke.
-FrL-
Look, I don’t care how many stupid flavors coke makes, just make the easily distinguishable from the label. I can’t tell you how many times I reach for a normal coke and get black cherry or vanilla or cinnamon or whatever the hell they come up with next. I simply can’t deal with it.
Make that Cruzan Vanilla Rum for a real treat. 
The only way to make vanilla coke is to add vanilla syrup. That chemical afterburn taste is not the same thing. God help us all if Coke tries to replicate the great taste of chocolate Coke.
Do you have color vision? 
Ooh. Nicely done. I know what I’m shopping for at the liquor store this afternoon!
Sure I do! The problem is that it’s rare enough that you don’t normally have to keep your guard up. Normally I’ll just grab a Red one, and 99 percent of the time I’m okay, but then every now and again i’ll be somewhere where it’s easy to confuse it. Pepsi is probably worse, because the pepsi Max is also blue, and Pepsi Max is pretty popular too.
The Coke Zero products are based off the original Coke formula. Diet Coke products are based off the New Coke formula. (Y’know, the one that tanked in the 1980s.)
The one major difference I saw in reading the ingredient labels is that Coke Zero has a higher proportion of phosphoric acid. It’s used to acidify foods and beverages such as colas. It provides a tangy taste and is available cheaply and in large quantities. The low cost and bulk availability is unlike more expensive natural seasonings that give comparable flavors, such as ginger for tangyness, or citric acid for sourness.
The main difference is that Zero and Diet have a key ingredient difference. Zero has the addition of another sweetener called acesulfame-potassium. Compare the labels next time you get the chance, and you’ll see that only Coke Zero has this sweetener. My guess is that this is why there’s less of the “aspartame taste” in the Zero formula - because the ace-K displaces some of the aspartame.
It’s also well-known that a mixture of sweeteners can have interesting effects in taste. A mixture is often sweeter than a single sweetener.
Okay, so this is gonna sound weird, but the original Vanilla Coke to me tasted like a dog toy my grandma’s poodle used to have. No, I didn’t taste the dog toy, but it had a very distinctive smell. When I was younger, Nana had a poodle named “Herman” and one of his toys was a big, hard rubber ball with a bell inside. I can still recall the smell of that thing, rubber and an artificially sweet smell. It was only after my first taste of Vanilla Coke that I realized the dog toy was supposed to be vanilla scented.
Hence, Vanilla Coke to me smelled like Herman’s toy ball. A dog ball. I still connect the smell of Vanilla Coke with Herman’s toy.
But I’ll still give Vanilla Coke Zero a try. Maybe it will be better.
Coke Zero reacts oddly with Twizzlers. This is A Bad Thing.
I’m with ArizonaTeach. I like Vanilla Coke, but I prefer Black Cherry Vanilla Coke.
I’m still holding out hope for Vanilla Dr. Pepper. The Berries & Cream stuff is OK, but the Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper is crap.