Crystal Pepsi: The Clear Cola That Confused Consumers
Picture this: You’re in 1992, and suddenly Pepsi releases a completely transparent cola that looks like water but tastes like regular Pepsi. Crystal Pepsi was launched in 1992 with a huge marketing campaign and to great success, capturing a 1% soft drink market share worth US$474 million in its first year. The concept seemed brilliant at first – ride the wave of the early ’90s “clear” product trend and appeal to health-conscious consumers.
But here’s the twist that sounds like corporate espionage straight out of a thriller movie. According to Coca-Cola’s chief marketing officer, Sergio Zyman, Tab Clear was released at the same time, as an intentional “kamikaze” effort to create an unpopular beverage that was positioned as an analogue of Crystal Pepsi to “kill both in the process”. By late 1993, Crystal Pepsi was discontinued, and the final batches were delivered to retailers during the first few months of 1994.
Tab: The Diet Soda Pioneer That Started It All
TaB was produced for 58 years before it was discontinued by Coca-Cola in December 2020. Introduced in 1963, TaB was Coca-Cola’s first diet drink and was a massive hit. This pink-canned pioneer literally created the diet soda category that we know today. Think about it – without Tab, there might never have been Diet Coke, Coke Zero, or any of the sugar-free alternatives that crowd grocery store shelves today.
Popularity dwindled with the introduction of Diet Coke in the 1980s, but it continued to boast a small but devoted following. Eventually, Coca-Cola announced TaB was among the “underperforming products” it was retiring. The irony here is heartbreaking – the very company that created this groundbreaking product eventually killed it off in favor of newer diet formulations. It’s like watching a parent abandon their firstborn child.
Surge: The Mountain Dew Killer That Never Quite Killed
Prior to production, its original white paper name was “MDK,” or “Mountain Dew Killer”, as it was developed to converge with Mello Yello as a means of slowing Mountain Dew growth. The name says it all – Coca-Cola was gunning for Pepsi’s citrus crown with this blindingly green, high-energy soda. SURGE was first released in 1997 as Coca-Cola’s response to Pepsi’s Mountain Dew.
What made Surge special wasn’t just its neon color or extreme marketing campaigns featuring teenagers doing dangerous stunts. SURGE is a citrus-flavored, energy-drink-adjacent soda packed with maltodextrin; an additive many athletes use as a dietary supplement. Despite all the hype and cult following, Coca-Cola discontinued SURGE in 2003. The fan movement that followed was so intense it became legendary – Amazon was the first retailer to sell it, and it subsequently surged to the top of the site’s best-selling list and sold out within an hour when it briefly returned in 2014.
Vault: The Energy Drink Hybrid That Couldn’t Find Its Place
Vault was a citrus-flavored beverage from Coca-Cola. It was, essentially, Coca-Cola’s attempt at creating a product line to rival Pepsi’s Mtn Dew – a citrus soda with a caffeinated kick. Launched in 2005, Vault positioned itself as something revolutionary – a drink that “drinks like a soda, kicks like an energy drink.” It even shared Surge’s green coloring, though it contained way more caffeine (70 mg as compared to Surge’s 50 mg).
The marketing was aggressive, including a Super Bowl commercial, and the concept seemed solid. But here’s where things get interesting – Vault didn’t end up having the same cult following as Surge (or Mtn Dew, for that matter), and Coca-Cola discontinued it in 2011. The hybrid energy-drink-soda failed to take off as Coca-Cola had hoped, neither achieving the buzzworthy cult status of alternative sodas like Mtn Dew nor the blockbuster sales of Coke’s signature colas. It was caught in no-man’s land between soda and energy drink.
Pepsi Blue: The Berry-Flavored Mistake That Confused Everyone
In the early 2000s, PepsiCo made a daring splash with Pepsi Blue. It was a neon-blue, berry-flavored soda looking to outshine Coca-Cola Vanilla. Picture walking into a store and seeing what looks like antifreeze on the soda shelf – that’s essentially what Pepsi Blue looked like. The color alone was enough to make most people do a double-take and wonder if someone had accidentally mixed cleaning products with their soft drinks.
Despite celebrity endorsements and its integration into pop culture, its candy-like taste was not a big hit with consumers. By 2004, the Big Blue experiment was over and Pepsi discontinued the soda. Pepsi achieved the drink’s bright blue color by controversially using the Blue #1 ingredient, which had been banned by several companies. Sometimes being bold backfires spectacularly, and Pepsi Blue is exhibit A.
OK Soda: The Anti-Marketing Marketing Disaster
Nine years after New Coke flopped, it happened again, with a drink solely aimed at quenching the disaffected youth – OK Soda. The name was a nod to the most popular word in the world at the time (Coca-Cola was 2nd), and also to capture the ho-hum spirit behind the drink. This was Coca-Cola’s bizarre attempt to appeal to Generation X by being deliberately underwhelming.
The marketing was intentionally cynical and nihilistic, with slogans that basically admitted the product wasn’t that great. Its own ads described it as “carbonated tree sap,” a comparison that certainly doesn’t inspire confidence. Those who tried it have said it tasted like a mixture of several different sodas, including Sprite, Coke, and orange soda. Despite expectations that OK Soda would capture 4% of the beverage market, the drink narrowly achieved half of that goal, underperforming across all test markets. Only seven months after its launch, OK Soda was discontinued.
Coca-Cola Blāk: The Coffee Cola Nobody Asked For
Coca-Cola BlāK, launched in 2006, was a daring fusion of soda and coffee. Coca-Cola actually thought it could appeal to the coffee elite. And yeah, it didn’t work out, leading to its discontinuation by 2008. Imagine trying to explain this concept to someone: “Hey, what if we took our world-famous cola and added coffee to it?” The very idea sounds like something dreamed up during a particularly weird brainstorming session.
Given it contained twice the caffeine of a regular Coke, it was expected to be a big hit. The experimental and energizing drink was rumored to have an unusual taste, as well, with a creamy coffee consistency that frothed when poured. The product failed so spectacularly that it became a textbook example of what happens when you mess with a classic formula without understanding what consumers actually want.
Hubba Bubba Soda: When Bubble Gum Became Liquid
Introduced in 1987, Hubba Bubba Soda attempted to bottle the nostalgic bubblegum flavor in fizzy liquid form. The soda had a bright pink hue. So appetizing! The pink soda failed to sustain interest, and by the late 1980s, it was gone. Picture this: someone at a beverage company looked at pink bubble gum and thought, “You know what this needs? Carbonation!”
The taste was rumored to come from a bubblegum-flavored snow cone syrup invented by a fan named Steve Roeder – who secured the rights from Wrigley – rather than the actual Hubba Bubba recipe. When Roeder blended club soda with a bubblegum-flavored syrup, he may have captured the taste of the original bubblegum – but he failed to win over the hearts of its fans. Despite Hubba Bubba releasing a diet version of its soda alongside the original flavor, this beverage simply wasn’t long for this world. Sometimes novelty just isn’t enough to sustain a product.
Jolt Cola: The Original Energy Drink That Burned Too Bright
Launched in 1985, Jolt Cola boldly advertised “all the sugar and twice the caffeine,” positioning itself as a rebellious alternative to the diet drink craze. Although Jolt gained a cult following among students and tech workers for its energy-boosting punch, its popularity eventually waned. Despite attempts to revive it, the original formula faded from shelves by the late 2000s.
Marketed as having “all the sugar and twice the caffeine,” Jolt Cola saw some success for many years (unlike other entries on this list). However, after experiencing financial difficulties in 2008, the brand was forced to declare bankruptcy the following year. Jolt made a brief return in 2017 at select locations, but appears to have been completely discontinued as of 2020. In many ways, Jolt was ahead of its time – it was essentially an energy drink before energy drinks became mainstream.
Orbitz: The Floating Blob Drink That Defied Logic
Launched in 1997, Orbitz stood out with its strikingly translucent liquid and floating gelatinous balls, resembling a drinkable lava lamp and marketing itself as a “texturally enhanced” beverage. However, the unsettling texture divided consumers, and by 1998, Orbitz was discontinued. This has to be one of the most bizarre beverage concepts ever created – someone actually thought people would enjoy drinking something that looked like a science experiment gone wrong.
The floating balls were made of gellan gum, and they were supposed to make drinking more fun and interesting. Instead, they created a texture that most people found absolutely revolting. Imagine trying to drink something where you’re constantly getting little chewy bits in your mouth – it’s like drinking bubble tea, except the bubbles taste weird and have the wrong consistency. The visual was striking, sure, but striking in the way that makes you question whether it’s safe to consume.
Looking back at these discontinued sodas feels like flipping through a photo album of beverage industry mistakes and misguided experiments. Each one represents millions of dollars in research, development, and marketing – yet they all share the same fate of gathering dust in the graveyard of failed products. Some, like Tab and Crystal Pepsi, actually had their moments of success before falling victim to changing consumer preferences or corporate sabotage. Others, like OK Soda and Orbitz, seemed doomed from the start with concepts so bizarre they make you wonder what the marketing teams were thinking. What’s fascinating is how these failures tell the story of American consumer culture – our endless appetite for novelty, our resistance to change when it comes to beloved brands, and our collective ability to reject products that just don’t make sense. Did you ever imagine that so many weird sodas once existed?
