Top 10 Biggest Soda Flops of All Time

Nobody sets out to poison a portfolio, and yet somebody once suspended chunks in a beverage on purpose and called it innovation. The biggest soda flops of all time are not near-misses. They are marketing departments getting high on their own supply and shipping it nationwide. The drinks all died. The disgrace kept a longer shelf life than the syrup ever managed.

#10: Coca-Cola C2

Half the sugar, half the calories, and no reason to exist. Coca-Cola C2 arrived in 2004 for adults who wanted to ruin their bodies part-time, and its permanent reward is a spot among the biggest soda flops of all time. Retailers handed the shelf space to Coke Zero, the corporate equivalent of your seat being taken while you were in the bathroom.

#9: Pepsi A.M.

Warm carbonation on an empty stomach at 7 a.m. is not a beverage, it is a dare. Pepsi A.M. shipped in 1989 with 25 percent more caffeine than regular Pepsi, aimed at coffee drinkers who apparently wanted their morning to involve burping. Iowa said no. Dead by October 1990.

#8: Life Savers Soda

Life Savers Soda is the eternal proof that a name can commit murder. Blind taste tests in the 1980s went fine. Then shoppers saw the candy logo and decided they were about to drink liquid candy, which is delightful for four seconds and then sounds like dental work.

#7: Coca-Cola BlāK

Any product that puts an accent mark over a vowel it does not need is hiding something. Coca-Cola BlāK was cola plus coffee, launched in 2006 for adults who wanted to be jittery and sticky at the same time. Consumer Reports found the French version less sweet with more coffee flavor. Americans wanted neither version, and it was gone by 2008.

#6: Tab Clear

Coca-Cola built a product specifically to die. Tab Clear hit shelves in December 1992 as a poison pill aimed at Crystal Pepsi, and Sergio Zyman later admitted the launch was engineered to self-destruct, which means its epitaph is a signed confession. Both drinks were dead within two years. Sabotage works, but somebody still has to drink the evidence.

#5: Orbitz

Chunks on purpose. Orbitz launched in 1996 as a texturally enhanced alternative beverage, which is a long way of saying edible gel beads floating in Pineapple Banana Cherry Coconut. Shoppers drank the liquid and left the balls at the bottom like a crime scene. The machine that made it broke, mercifully.

#4: Pepsi Blue

Pepsi tested more than 100 flavors over nine months and landed on berry cola the color of windshield fluid. The launch leaned on Britney Spears, Papa Roach, and a product placement in Garfield: The Movie, a marketing plan assembled entirely from cries for help. It tasted like cotton candy that had given up. Discontinued in 2004, and mortifying forever.

#3: OK Soda

Coca-Cola looked at Generation X, decided the kids wanted sadness, and sold them gray cans of it. OK Soda came with artwork by Daniel Clowes and a hotline at 1-800-I-FEEL-OK so buyers could describe their mood to a soft drink. Seven months on shelves, decades in the hall of shame. It never beat three percent, which for a drink named OK is on brand.

#2: Crystal Pepsi

Forty million dollars bought a Super Bowl spot, a Van Halen song, and a cola that looked like tap water and tasted aggressively brown. Crystal Pepsi went national in December 1992 on the theory that clear means pure, which lasted until people drank it. David Novak called it his best idea and his worst execution. Now it is immortal, which is worse.

#1: New Coke

Grown adults hoarded cases in their garages like the country was falling. Coca-Cola changed the formula on April 23, 1985, after nearly 200,000 tasters approved it, then watched its hotline climb from 400 calls a day to 1,500 and absorb 31,600 in the two days after the old recipe returned. Every one of those calls was unsolicited, and none of them were OK.

Conclusion

The grim part is the resale market. Unopened cans of these disasters sell online right now to collectors bidding for the privilege of owning a corporation’s worst afternoon. Nothing gets buried. Every bad idea in a can just sits there appreciating in value until some grown man overpays for the right to put failure on a shelf and look at it.