what is the deal with these new twisted colas? seems highly unlikely that both Coke and Pepsi independently settled on the same idea.
any evidence that foul play was afoot, such as industrial espionage? or did the american populace suddenly clamor for citrusy colas through some marketing focus groups?
lastly, which was announced first? i remember hearing about coke with lemon before pepsi twist. however, we only have pepsi twist here in philly (we have diet coke with lemon, but c’mon).
any ideas?
jb
p.s.- pepsi twist is alright. no great shakes. made me think of drinking battery acid, but palatable battery acid. 2 burps out of 5.
“suddenly clamor”??? – naah, “Pepsi Light” in the 80’s had a distinctly lemon flavor; I loved that stuff. And Consumer Reports has long said that Pepsi tends toward a citrus taste while Coke goes for caramel.
Who’s on First? I dunno. I first saw the lemon Diet Coke in a store, and a few days later I saw a commercial for the Lemon Pepsi.
Personally, I think both have way too much lemon. I like lemon in my coke, but they overdid it.
Was pepsi light that stuff in the blue can? If so i recall a lemon on the can. I’ve tried diet coke w/ lemon and didn’t like it, diet pepsi twist was ok (but I like diet coke better then diet pepsi)
Pepsi Light definitely had lemon in it. It was first sold in the late 1970s or early 1980s. My father’s store sold a lot of Pepsi and we had to push that. It never moved well and it tasted funny to me, neither like Pepsi nor lemon.
I don’t recall Coke trying to match the product at that time. Coke was probably gearing up for the fabled “New Coke” promotion. Coke was less likely to mess with its product line at the time. I don’t even know if Diet Coke was around when Pepsi Light was. There was Coke and there was Tab and you were going to choose between those.
Pepsi offered a whole bunch of choices at the time, including the ill-fated Apple-flavored soda, Aspen.
The new lemon-flavored Pepsi and Coke seem to taste a lot better than their earlier incarnations. Or else I’ve just become less discriminating.
My guess would be that either Coke or Pepsi, whoever was first, did test marketing of their lemon cola in limited areas. That gave the other guy time to make their own. I live in NY in the Hudson Valley and Diet Coke w/lemon came out first. I too was surprised when I saw Diet Pepsi twist not 3 weeks later.
I like Diet Pepsi much more than Diet Coke, so I think Diet Pepsi twist is better. But they both have a very artificial lemon aftertase. They kinda taste like Lemon furniture polish.
Pepsi Twist was available here summer of 2000. It went away last winter and came back again this summer. Only now this fall they are advertising it as “new”. Go figure.
Pepsi Light was diet. They advertised they took out 1/2 the calories and put in lemon. It was a gimick in that it wasn’t the ONE CALORIE cola it was 1/2 as many. It tasted pretty good. But it had calories. They later tinkered with it to remove MORE calories and while the original didn’t sell well the new model tanked.
It was like Crystal Pepsi. The original was just Pepsi that was clear. It tasted just like Pepsi. Then they tinkered with it and added citrus. And now most people have forgotten about the original.
I agree there is too much lemon in both Coke and Pepsi products. It is swimming in it.
haven’t tried the pepsi, but i like the diet coke.
this isn’t the first time they’ve both had the essentially the same product come out at the same time. anybody remeber the clear cola a few years back? yuck!
I gotta hand it to Hail Ants, Cliffy, super_head and jb_farley. Only dedicated SDMB-ers would go so far as to drink Lemon furniture polish and Lemon Scented Pine Sol, so that the rest of the teeming millions would know what the new Coke and Pepsi products taste like. Or did they normally drink furniture polish anyway, and thus happen to know what it tastes like? Since I like the new lemon Diet Coke, if I run out I now know I can just drink some furniture polish; here’s several testimonials as to how good it tastes!
Ok, ok, this is simply an example of how closely linked the sense of taste and smell are. I’ve never actually consumed Lemon furniture polish, but I do know what it smells like. In my head, the taste of Diet Coke with Lemon evokes that same sensory perception, even though the stimulus is coming across my tounge instead of through my nose. But it’d be incorrect to say that the Coke tasts like I expect Lemon Pledge would taste, because it’s a much stronger association than that. As far as my brain is concerned, it’s the same sensation.
I often go to a restaurant where I always have the same waiter. He has been putting lemons in my Cokes for years. I guess he was onto something. I just thought he was on crack and got my Coke mixed up with tea. Go figure. :rolleyes:
I was surprised to see Coke marketing Diet Coke with Lemon as I’d been putting a wedge of fresh lime in mine whenever I could for about a year prior. I like it, as it tastes “fresher”; less artificial, but still with that nice bite that Diet Coke drinkers like. The pre-lemoned version doesn’t have this quality. because of this markedly artificial pseudo-lemon flavor, I have to concur that it does remind me of either “lemon” furniture polish or “lemon” pine-sol.
Regarding the who did it first thing… can anyone verify or disprove if soda shops offered to flavor your Coke with lemon along with cherry and vanilla back in the old days?
