The End of Classic Pop

by Sara Bonisteel, Posted Feb 2nd 2009 @ 4:00PM

Coke Classic has left the building.

Nearly 25 years after Coca-Cola added "Classic" to its original formula in order to differentiate it from the short-lived New Coke, the company has admitted defeat.

Company officials confirmed Friday that they're phasing out the Classic tag from American cans and bottles this year to streamline global branding, finally putting to rest the New Coke fiasco of the mid-'80s.

"It felt like the right time," Scott Williamson, a spokesman for Coke, told Slashfood on Monday.

Coke fans surely remember the spring of 1985, when the company shelved Dr. John S. Pemberton's original 1886 Coca-Cola recipe for a formula that performed better in taste tests and tasted, as I recall, a great deal like its chief competitor Pepsi, which naturally caused a furor among the soft drink's legion of fans.

"In the real world, they had a deep emotional attachment to the original, and they begged and pleaded to get it back," the company says on its Web site.

"Critics called it the biggest marketing blunder ever. But the Company listened, and [77 days later] the original formula was returned to the market as Coca-Cola classic®."

Williamson said that "classic" will remain in small print on the side of the bottles in the phrase "Coke Classic Original Formula."

"When people think Coke, they think Classic," Williamson said. "So more than two decades after we introduced that word, its reason for being as a descriptor has essentially disappeared."

About time they realized Classic has been the standard all along.

Filed Under: Business, Trends, Food News, Drink Recipes
Tags: classic, coca-cola, sara bonisteel, SaraBonisteel, soda, soft drinks

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-02-2009 @5:10PM Bernie B said... They may as well. With the switch to High Fructose Corn Syrup they haven't been Classic for a long long time.
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2-02-2009 @7:22PM Sarah said... If you have a Costco or Sams Club go there....you can get 24 packs in glass bottles...imported from Mexico. Made with cane sugar. Yeah, you know...the "original" version ;-)
And it tastes just like it did when we were kids!
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2-03-2009 @10:40AM Atarijedi said... We have sugar in ours up here in Canada!
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2-22-2009 @3:44PM Bruce Monk said... I was a loyal Coke drinker for over forty years. Coke betrayed me with New Coke. Then they reversed their betrayal and brought back the original "Classic Coke". Now they have done it again. Replaced the sugar with high fructose and corn syrup. The result is the loss of that extra fizz that I loved and a "soft drink" that goes flat ten times as fast and as it goes flat it starts to taste like over ripe or rotting fruit. Istopped drinking Coke Two years ago on New Years Day.
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