If you liked New Coke in 1985, guess what: here comes New Coke Zero.

In the Dog Returning To Its Vomit Department:

Coca-Cola is killing Coke Zero and replacing it with a new drink

Of course, the whole reason for existence of Coke Zero in the first place is that it tastes much more like actual Coke than Diet Coke.

(Which, incidentally, tastes very much like "old" (1985 vintage) "New Coke.")

From everything I've read for years, Coke Zero has been very successful since its introduction. So of course, why not fuck with it!

What next, a reboot of TAB?

 

Coke Zero is what Diet Coke should have been from the get-go. I only wish they had a caffeine-free version.

 

They do; I think it's pretty widely available.

 

Sometimes I lose track of how many Cherry Coke Zeroes I'll drink in a day.

 

Coke Zero is my go-to soda. If the new one tastes better, I'm all for it.

 

Coca-Cola has had a very weird relationship with Coke Zero ever since it was introduced.

Frankly I think it's been much more successful than they expected. Yet within a few months of its debut in 2005 (IIRC) they completely changed the packaging color, going from a white can to a black one.

Then, after it was out a couple years, and from everything I've seen, was quite successful, they started fucking with it, with all the variant flavors, cherry, lime, vanilla, the caffeine free variation, etc etc,

At the same time, it seemed Coca-Cola was very resistant to the idea of pulling the plug on Diet Coke and making CZ the brand's default diet cola.

I've talked to several people in the fast food management industry and they say Coke has been sternly resistant to the idea of making CZ available as a fountain drink while discontinuing Diet Coke.

In fact, several have told me they have asked Coke sales reps straight out, "can we dump Diet Coke and make Coke Zero our standard diet cola," and the answer is always "no."

For some reason Coke seems really hell bent to keep Diet Coke up and running as its "flagship" diet cola.

Even today, CZ is only available at limited numbers of McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger Kings, and I think they're required to keep Diet Coke on the menu.

I think ultimately Coca-Cola may be pissed because the total market for all Coke Zero products may be finite: when they introduced all the variant brands, instead of expanding the overall market, they siphoned off sales from the older brands.

 

Everyone I know who used to drink Diet Coke does Cole Zero now. Not for the the first time, Coca-Cola Co. management is making a bad, bad bet.

 

I need to look for that caffeine-free version, although I typically buy only the 2-liter bottles, and I've never seen the CF version in that format.

My sister-in-law likes Diet Coke over Zero. There must be some kind of Diet Coke cult.

 

They introduced Diet Coke in 1982. At the time, I said, "man, this shit really doesn't taste very good, but it does taste better than TAB."
Which wasn't hard, since TAB tasted (and still does, I presume) like photochemical fix solution.
So I did drink Diet Coke off and on for a couple years, switching off with good old original HFCS Coca Cola, because I wanted to cut my daily sugar intake down to single digits.

Then came the Coke/New Coke fiasco of 1985. Remember, the reasoning behind the switchover to New Coke was that they wanted to make the flagship drink taste more like Diet Coke.

So in order to accomplish this, at least in terms of immediate production, they decided their best bet was to terminate production of the most popular single consumer product in the world.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure if CF Coke Zero is available in the 2-liter bottles. It's more of the weirdly disjointed marketing strategy I talk about above.

 

Tab was the only "Coke" (as we called all sodas here in Georgia) in the house when I was a kid. My mom and her two sisters all loved it for some reason.

To me all diet sodas taste metallic or like chemicals.

 

After the Coke/New Coke fiasco was "solved" with the "reintroduction" of Coca-Cola Classic-- with the firm reminder that New Coke was still to be regarded as the "official" version" of Coca-Cola (until they quietly allowed New Coke to slide off the shelves a couple years later), I decided to do some comparison shopping for diet colas, and guess what I concluded: the diet cola that actually did taste the most like good old original vintage Coca-Cola was, wait for it ... Diet Pepsi.

So I drank that (and it's caffeine free variation) for 15, hell, close to 20,
years, until Coca-Cola finally got its shit together in 2005, after 40 years of trying, and introduced a diet cola that actually did taste reasonably close to original Coke: Coke Zero.

And now they're gonna fuck with it again.