Coke began replacing cane sugar with high fructose corn syrup in the early 80s, before introducing New Coke in 1985. Personally, I couldn't taste the difference between the two sweeteners. New Coke, however, tasted distinctly different from the original. It was noticeably sweeter (having more HFCS than original Coke) with an almost fruity flavor, and a much softer "bite." In short, it tasted more like Pepsi.
I do remember it being sweeter, but aside from that the flavor was not as good. I had primarily been a Coke fan but would also drink Pepsi and RC. To me, New Coke wasn't nearly as good as any of them and I stopped drinking it until Coke Classic was introduced. I have recently quit drinking Coke again due to their politics.
2 smoke rules: · if something isn't broken, DON'T FIX IT · Get 100 experts' together, you'll get 100 different opinions. I don't drink pop, but I do know what a stupid thing this was for Coca Cola to do.
When The New Coke Came Out I Was mad and upset when they did not Have the original Coke at that time I was very happy when Coke classic made a come back.
Was not a failure. They increased their market share and reduced their costs. Not to mention millions in free media. It was a success in every way that can be measured.
Sales were even high for New Coke because of curiosity. There’s no way this wasn’t planned. Today coke have sections of their website openly talking about what a failure new coke was. The message that sticks with people is that coke is too iconic to go away in any way
I think part of the problem is that most people don't like change. To them Coca-Cola isn't just a soft drink. It's an institution. At the time all this was happening I was only 5 years old. Even if I was an adult then I probably wouldn't care.
The change was replacing the cane sugar with high fructose corn syrup? Oh boy...little did we know that soon high fructose corn syrup was going to be the unfortunate sweetener of choice for most food products (including 'Coke Classic', etc) over the next 30 years or so...smh
I thought the conspiracy surrounding it was supposed to be "Coke was about to change the formula to replace cane sugar with high fructose corn syrup, but if they did it people would have this same riot...so they changed the taste so abruptly that Coke could sneak the HFCS change past customers when they brought the new Coke Classic back and no one would care."
Actually, this was brilliant. Because of rising costs, they wanted to switch from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup. If they just did that, they would have had a disaster. Instead, they introduced New Coke. Everyone said yucko. So, after about 3 months, when all of the original Coke was moved through all of the warehouses, stores, vending machines, etcetera, here comes Coke Classic!!!! Of course, Coke Classic does NOT taste like the original formula. Close, but not exact.
Wrong. Coke had been using corn syrup for about 5 years before New Coke. No bottlers objected to the change because corn syrup was so much cheaper. No matter how much you appear to be praising them as "brilliant", you are just pushing the old myth that new Coke was a marketing stunt. It wasn't.
After the publicized "Coke fiasco," Coca-Cola kept New Coke (later rechristening it as Coke II in the 1990s) as a secondary cola, much like how Diet Coke was a secondary diet cola to the original diet cola at the time, Tab...
they made a huge mistake in marketing tests. The asked random people which the liked best the old or new coke.....many were no doubt Pepsi drinkers already. What they should have done was to test market ONLY to coke drinkers to see what they thought of it.
