Miscellaneous, etc.

I’m just young enough that I can only barely remember the New Coke. I think that’s probably a good thing.

Of course, I’m aware of the Legend of The New Coke, the epic story of how Coca-Cola decided that the best way to rejeuvenate its product line was to completely scrap its old recipe in favor of something that tasted very suspiciously like Pepsi, and supported its efforts with a massive media blitz that included such luminaries as Bill Cosby (who we all know was highly selective about which products he chose to endorse) telling the people of the world how much better the New Coke was than any other aspect of their lives. It had a new taste for a new generation, it was full of life and vigor and the flavor of progress, it was the drink of the future.

It also had a different can, I think, that actually said “Coke” on it instead of “Coca-Cola.” And then it flopped.

If you go to the right business schools, you could probably spend an entire semester learning about all the mistakes that were made in the engineering and marketing of the New Coke; I didn’t, though, so all I know is that very shortly after The New Coke was supposed to take over the world, a magical new beverage, explicitly labelled Coca-Cola Classic so that I shouldn’t associate it with any kind of failure, appeared to save us all. If you look very very hard in some of your scummier local grocers, the kinds of places that still sell flavors of Capri-Sun that were pulled off the market in the 80s for making ten year-olds go blind, you might still find one or two cans of the New Coke — otherwise, the Coca-Cola Corporation has done its very best to erase any trace of their biggest blunder, and are currently developing a toxin specially designed to delete any memory of the New Coke from the minds of stand-up comics, Wall Street analysts, and anyone over the age of thirty.

Unfortunately, recently there was an explosion at one of Coca-Cola’s secret research laboratories at the same time an executive tour was passing through, showering several key product management and marketing staff and resulting in what appears to be a complete and total corporate memory loss. While a number of other, wilder theories have been advanced (alleging mad hypotheses such as “market demand” and “positive test group feedback”), this is so far the most plausible explanation for two of Coca Cola’s most recent entries into the soft drink market: Diet Coke with Lemon, and Vanilla Coke.

At least, that’s how I figure it. Over the last twelve months or so, Coca-Cola has released two alternative flavors to their two most popular beverages, apparently in some kind of devious attempt to divide and conquer their market. While the more conspiratorially-minded might theorize that the entire New Coke debacle was designed to draw attention to the brand and then win people over to the original recipe (a scenario that, in their happiest dreams, some Coca-Cola executives might actually think they brought about on purpose), this year’s tactics seem to be even more clever — through Diet Coke with Lemon and Vanilla Coke, they can very specifically target those who are bored with the original flavors, punish them with something entirely new and excrable, and thereby win them back to the bread-and-butter brands.

Because, I have to tell you, I can’t think of a single other reason they would do this.

I will be honest, though. As of this sentence, I have yet to actually drink an entire can of either Vanilla Coke or Diet Coke with Lemon. I have tasted both, and I’ve done everything I can to bury the experiences as deep as possible in my library of denial, but I’ve never actually made it through an entire can. In the hopes that simply sipping the beverage, much like merely sipping vodka or mouthwash, fails to convey the entire experience of drinking it, I will today endeavor to completely consume both of these drinks. In doing so, I hope to understand exactly what Coca-Cola’s strategy is, and how they think they can possibly accomplish it through shit like this.

One quick note before we begin: Notice anything interesting about the two cans pictured above? I think it’s pretty interesting that whenever Coca-Cola puts out a new flavor, they immediately try to make it more hip by calling it Coke — and, more to the point, they’re immediately distancing it from the original flavor. There may be all kinds of Coke — Cherry, Lemon, Vanilla, Diet, New — but there’s only ever going to be one Coca-Cola.

That, or “Coke” is their cute little corporate shorthand for, “We are going to poison your fragile belly.”

The actual designs of the cans are pretty cool too. Vanilla Coke doesn’t deviate very far from the standard Coke can, until you get to the trippy yellow-brown designs off to one side, which basically tells you not to worry, this is still Coca-Cola, it’s just that it’s got extra stuff in it — flavorful brown stuff. Diet Coke with Lemon isn’t quite as creative, and basically just shops over the Diet Coke can, slaps some yellow highlights onto it (none of which you can see above, thanks to the fact that my camera’s flash is apparently so powerful that it could illuminate the moon), and drop an image of sliced lemon in under the words, “with Lemon!” You know, in case you mistook it for Diet Coke with Lime or Diet Coke Soaked in Gravy, Texas-Style.

Okay, by this point I’ve eaten enough salt ‘n’ vingar chips to dehydrate a Marine division, so it’s probably best if we get going before I pass out or choke on my swollen tongue.

First up, the presumably more delicate flavor of Diet Coke with Lemon:

In case you don’t believe that I’m drinking these fresh out of the freezer (since I figure the colder they are, the better), here I am opening this son of a bitch, just for you.

I’ve got this sort of horrified expression on my face because when you open it up, Diet Coke with Lemon sort of smells like a combination of those handi-wipes you get from Kentucky Fried Chicken and absolutely nothing. And by that I don’t mean that it smells only like the handi-wipes, but that you can actually smell the lack of smell behind it. Sounds insane, I know, but it’s sort of like when you can smell water in your bathtub even though the water doesn’t smell like anything.

You can’t say I don’t suffer for my audience. When it first hits your tongue, you’re almost sure what you’re drinking is some kind of sour mineral water, because there really isn’t that much of a Coke-y flavor going on. Some would argue that pretty much sums up the experience of Diet Coke in general, but I always thought Diet Coke just tasted like regular Coca-Cola after you’d let all of the ice melt into it. The first impression of this is like they remembered to add the brown, but forgot to add the sweet.

Oh, but then the aftertaste kicks in. You know how aspartame sort of gives you that little bit of acidic afterburn, which prompts you to take another sip, doubling the afterburn, making you drink more and so on, and so on, until you discover that you just chugged your Diet Coke like a fratboy on a dare?

Well, apparently the lemon flavoring in Diet Coke with Lemon is actually bonded to the aspartame, so immediately after you swallow the actual drink, you’re left with this hazy, lemony-acid flavor hanging in your mouth and eventually settling on your tongue. If you’re very lucky and you drank a couple of gulps at a time, you’ll get that same deliciousness backing up into your nose, so you can smell it and taste it at the same time!

And you know what it smelled and tasted like to me? Windex. You know how when you’re spraying window cleaner, and you studiously spend the entire time holding your breath so that none of that acrid crap will get into your sinuses and give you a headache for the rest of the day? And how finally your will breaks down, so that you breathe just when the spray is bouncing off the glass, just in time to get a big blast of it up your nose, and you taste it for the rest of the day?

Well, you can rest easy in the knowledge that you don’t have to be cleaning your windows to enjoy that citrus-tongue-slick feeling any more! Diet Coke with Lemon lets you enjoy it while you’re at work, socializing with friends, or even in the car!

In case you’re curious, this is what you’d look like if you try to get the taste of Diet Coke with Lemon out of your mouth by eating salt ‘n’ vinegar potato chips.

BONUS DIET TIP: Don’t try to get the taste of Diet Coke with Lemon out of your mouth by eating salt ‘n’ vinegar potato chips. Bleah.

Okay, so now we know that that diet soft drink conoisseurs have been given one more reason to avoid citrus drinks; let’s see what mainstream, non-health-conscious (health unconsicous?) consumers can expect from the innovations division of Coca-Cola, shall we? It’s time to crack open the amazing, new flavor of Vanilla Coke. I’ll let the pictures tell the story:

Disbelief was on my mind throughout the entire process of drinking my Vanilla Coke. First, it was disbelief at the fact that it smelled so much like root beer that I thought maybe I got a Barq’s trapped in a Coke can, which would have been quite a collector’s item, if I hadn’t opened it to write about on my website. But no, the first taste definitely proved that it was Coke, except it was some kind of twisted Coke that tasted bizarre as long as it was in my mouth, and then disappeared completely.

See how I’m looking confused there? That’s because I couldn’t believe that there was absolutely zero aftertaste, particularly in contrast to the Cola-Windex solution I had just finished drinking. Take a swig of Vanilla Coke and your senses are literally set aflame — there’s so much flavor you’re not quite sure what you’ve gotten yourself into, but there’s no time to back out, because you’ve got a mouth full of cola and vanilla and root beer, and the bubbles are starting to burn your mouth really badly, so you brace yourself for whatever aftertaste is coming and you swallow… and there’s nothing there.

There isn’t even the usual horrible Coca-Cola residue, or not nearly as much of it to take notice. Most people who polish off a can of Coke will be clearing their throats like a chain smoker for the next twenty minutes, but strangely Vanilla Coke doesn’t seem to have that effect. And even more oddly, if you let it sit for a couple of seconds — while you write a paragraph about how it tastes really shitty at first, for example — you forget exactly what it’s all about, so you go back for a little more, and send yourself on the roller-coaster ride of pain all over again.

Finally, though, you do reach a saturation point, and unfortunately for Vanilla Coke, that point comes about halfway through the can. From what I’ve heard, the idea behind Vanilla Coke is to duplicate the experience of a vanilla ice cream float in a can, and sadly it accomplishes that goal only too well — so well, in fact, that it bypasses the first few happy moments of starting an ice cream float, and dives right into the long, diabetic agony of finishing it. While all of your friends are happily enjoying their drinks, you’re stuck slogging your way through something that’s becoming warmer, flatter and sweeter with every passing second, rotting your guts, and driving you to coat your meal in vinegar just to change the taste that’s lingering in your throat.

Speaking of vinegar, that last photo is me cleansing my palette with salt ‘n’ vinegar chips again, just for the sake of balance. As a point of recordkeeping, while Diet Coke with Lemon made the chips taste like pretzels from space, Vanilla Coke made them taste like my mouth was bleeding. I will, in fact, take pretzels from space any day of the week.

The verdict?

My stomach hurts.

I’m not sure why it is that we pass from long periods of inactivity from soft drink makers — during which they relentlessly pump that their brands are all we really need from life, and if we just choose the right drink, we’ll all be happy — to brief periods of alleged innovation, where exactly the opposite seems to be true. Rather than simply finding the right course, we’re introduced to all kinds of new alternatives that we apparently demanded while we were on our quests for inner truth.

The sad thing is, each of these alternatives is universally awful. So what message am I to carry away from this?

When Coca-Cola first marketed the New Coke, it was with the qualification that cola drinkers were demanding something new and different. It was an interesting undercurrent that ran from the very beginning, and which carried the quiet message that, whatever New Coke was, we asked for it. When it failed, Coca-Cola quite naturally defended itself with all of the marketing studies they had done, in which focus groups or whoever said that they liked what New Coke was, and when it finally died, I’m certain that there were more than a few shrugging shoulders and confused faces down in Atlanta saying things like, “You know, this just goes to show you that people don’t know what they want.”

Over the last year or so, we’ve again been bombarded with new drinks: new colors of Mountain Dew, additional flavors of Coca-Cola, countless permutations of Pepsi, none of which have managed to catch on in a meaningful way. On the one hand, I can understand the impulse for me-too marketing; on the other, I get the feeling that every time one of these drinks goes the way of the dodo, consumers are blamed for being fickle mushheads.

Does it matter that my stomach is currently turning in on itself, a sickened combination of lemon ‘n’ vanilla ‘n’ cola ‘n’ root beer ‘n’ salt ‘n’ vinegar? Does it matter that both of these drinks were so bad that I felt the need to perform a nose test on them? Apparently not — they and drinks like them are still being developed, still being marketed, and still being sold to me as if they’re the answer to all of my problems.

So, my final verdict?

The basement sink for you, my hybrid little friends. If I want to feel bad about myself or the fact that I miss every trend that comes along, or feel as though I’ve had a large, muscular man beating on my stomach muscles for two and a half hours, I’ve got plenty of other ways to do it. And hey, I can’t think of a better way to take care of my downstairs ant problem.

Happy 4th of July to all of my American peeps. Drink beer or something — it’s got to be better than this.