OK Soda tasted, as I recall, like orange soda mixed with root beer in the stomach of a hobo, then vomited into the can. The advertising campaign was brilliant though: I called 1-800-I-FEEL-OK every day for months as a teenager.
I recall it tasting like Pepsi, ie. much sweeter and also, shitty.
I love Coke Zero though, goddamn. For a diet soft drink, it tastes swell.
So did I. That stuff was good.
Who’s that? Your dad?
I’m sure you mean Archer Daniels Midland. Like the time this girl tried telling me that Fox News was owned by the corrupt, right-wing Clear Channel.
Clear channel doesn’t own actually own Fox, but they are hilariously sleazy, and allied with the right.
Midlan, though?
Wow, this is almost word-for-word what I was going to post. Damn you!
You can buy real sugar coke products at a lot of import stores. We have a grocery that stocks mexican sodas, including mexican cane sugar coke.
Coke produced in other countries with the original formula is usually labelled as “Coca-cola” instead of “Coca-cola Classic”.
Regarding the conspiracy theory:
Coke forced bottlers to stop making old Coca-Cola and switch to making New Coke for 3 months, which just happens to be the shelf life of Coca-Cola.
Coke then “reintroduced” the more cheaply produced Coca-cola Classic with the HFCS switch immediately thereafter. At the time, there basically was no real Coca-cola left in the country to compare it to since it was all either drunk or expired.
All the stores I’ve found that sell Mexican Coke stock what is pretty much expired Mexican Coke. It has the weird taste that I’ve come to associate with pop that’s past its prime.
A few weeks ago I was in Mexico and had some real Coke. Delicious.
That’s a crazy good idea!
I’ve also noticed that some Mexican restaurants are selling the Mexican Coke looking bottles but if you look on the bottle itself it has both sugar cane AND high fructose corn syrup. :O Is this some cheaper version for importing into the US?
Ok Cola was an odd favorite of mine as well. I was sad to see it just vanish off the shelves. Loved the marketing campaign.
Who else loves Coke’s Italian aperitif Beverly? I know I do!
Yikes. I still wish I’d been able to grab one of the Daniel Clowes or Charles Burns cans, but never found the time to drive down to Seattle during its market test.
OK Cola was like coke and orange soda mixed and a little flat.
I loved it for those few short months.
Wikipedia says you can still get New Coke (“Coke II”) in Micronesia and Samoa, so that’s always an option. They also had a recipe for imitation OK Cola (1/4 orange soft drink, 3/4 semi-flat Coca-Cola, “a splash” of Dr. Pepper or Sprite), but it was removed from the current version of the article because it’s not an in-universe biography of a character from an obscure 1980s Japanese cartoon.
They have sugar Coke here (no surprise, you can buy sugar cane right off the streets) but I can’t say I’ve developed a strong preference. It kinda tastes fruitier, but I don’t know if that’s down to the sugar or something else.
The solution to that is just drink less soda. Or get more exercise to compensate. Or something.
This also relates to the coffee thread:
Two weeks ago I had some pretty bad “stomach issues” (I’m curling my middle and index fingers like rabbit ears), which demanded that I lay off caffeine, oils, and pretty much anything with flavor for just over a week. After giving up my daily coffee and soda, it took five days for the withdrawal headaches to subside. That was a real eye-opener. Since recovering, I’m limiting my intake to one caffeinated drink a day. I’m sleeping better and, hopefully, going to be seeing my gastroent a lot less. And that’s my courageous story.
Re: HFCS vs. sucrose, I developed a taste for Diet Coke some years ago, and that was that. Regularly sweetened soda just tastes too sweet for me to drink regularly, and makes my teeth feel weird to boot. I also appreciate its unsticky properties when I knock a can over.
Yes, Diet sodas are awesome! The vending machines, both at school and work, appearantly have batting cage engines in them, and shoot the bottles/cans out at 75mph, and shake it all to hell. When I open up that bottle of Coke Zero, it’s not sticky, versus Mountain Dew or what not.
When I’m diagnosted with cancer in a few years thanks to all the aspartame, I’m sure I’ll love it just has much/
Yeah, it gets digested to methanol in the body, which turns into formaldehyde through the magic of alcohol dehydrogenase. This has a tendency to preserve important parts of your body, starting with your optic nerve. (citation: Professor Robert Horner and Professor Joel Schildbach) According to this, the scarier chemical is formic acid: not sure how much I believe them. Of course, it depends on your physiology: you’d be better off following that soda with a swig of an low-concentration alcoholic beverage, if you’re that worried about it. :-p
Great! Our own Professor Fink here says that drinking Diet Coke will improve my vision! ;-p