Food & drink
Clear was the flavor of 1992–1994. These products launched with national campaigns, sold on curiosity, and lost repeat buyers within a year or two. Nostalgia keeps bringing them back for a few weeks at a time.
Post-mortems in Food & drink
Zima
1992 – 2008
Coors filtered the colour and the taste out of a beer, added citrus and spent tens of millions telling America it was zomething different. Most drinkers tried it once.
Crystal Pepsi
1992 – 1994
Pepsi took the color out of cola, put about $40 million of advertising behind it and projected $1 billion in sales. Within a year the product was being reworked. The name now comes back for a few weeks at a time.
New Coke
1985 – 2002
Nearly 200,000 taste tests said the new formula was better. Coca-Cola replaced the old one with it, took 1,500 calls a day, and reversed itself in 79 days. The new drink stayed on sale for years as Coke II.
OK Soda
1994 – 1995
Coca-Cola’s soda for people who distrusted advertising came in grey cans with a hotline and a manifesto. The hotline took more than a million calls. The drink sold about a million cases and never left its test markets.
Orbitz
1996 – 1999
Clearly Canadian’s 1996 drink with colored gel balls suspended in fruit-flavored water. It was a sensation with teenagers for a year; first-half sales fell from $9.4M in 1997 to $1.46M in 1998, and the company stopped making it.