...and speaking of the Coke heading to this discussion...here's an interesting thought, which I thought up while working a year or two ago and has been bothering me ever since.
Back in the mid 1980s...there were two sodas: Coca-cola and Pepsi. Pepsi was kicking Coca-cola's behind in share of market, so Coca-cola reinvented itself, changed the formula of it's soda flavor, and called it New Coke.
People hated it, it was very disgusting. So Coca-cola quickly started producing its old recipe again, calling it Coca-cola classic, to differentiate it from the new Coke which coca-cola kept on the market, hoping it would catch on eventually. Fast forward to today. The new Coke hasn't been made for years now, so why do they still call the original coca-cola coca-cola classic...there's no need to differentiate it anymore

Probably because some mousey marketeer out-there somewhere thinks we're all too mentally-challenged to figure out what they've done! ;-) (Never underestimated the supposed self-congratulatory "mental-superiority" of those in the marketing field!)

One of my pet peeves is this whole "$4.95" deal. It's five bucks, guys. Five bucks. I'm not going to get sucker into that goofy "well, huh, that's only gonna cost me about $4. That's a lot cheaper that $5!" Know what I mean Verne?

In response to the Coca Cola/Clasic discussion: I heard a couple years ago that Coca Cola was considering getting rid of the Classic designation since there is only one kind being made now, but haven't heard anything since. Hopefully they will becauase it make no sense anymore.

I realize this is kind of off topic, but I hope that Coke doesn't drop the Classic designation. Classic Coke has a distinctly different (and much better) flavor than Diet Coke and Caffiene Free Diet Coke (which is basically just colored carbonated water.) It makes sense to call it something different. And since they're using the original recipe, why not call it Classic?

I've noticed a similar problem the the Coke thing. Two years ago, the Bank of Canada replaced our two dollar bill(yes, we still use 2s) with a new two dollar coin. The media dubbed this new coin the "Twoonie" since our one dollar coin is called a loonie. The problem is that there is a polar bear on it. Now, every person I know uses this term except for me, because I feel it's a stupid name. When it was a bill we called them 2s. Why don't we still call them 2s instead of a term the media invented.

By the by, $2 bills are still in circulation in the U.S. as well, and are legal tender. It's just not too common. Unfortunately, as a result, some confusion can occur when you try to use a two-dollar bill to buy something; some folks don't realize it is actually legit. Ah well.

And it may as well stay Classic Coke. No one, I'm sure, wants to spend all the ad money needed to convince folks that they haven't changed Coke again, and that they've just changed the name on the can. I think they're playing it safe. You know that if they changed the name on the can, _someone_ would taste the difference and complain.

ah, the joys of "pop" psychology...
(I'm sorry, I couldn't resist :-))

Not to mention pop culture...

Or, for that matter, the Web and POP-mail servers.....

...or pop music and pop corn...

Along the lines of what Phil mentioned...
I saw an ad in a paper today advertising a sale on computers. The ad said "350Mhz Pentium II Computer for under $1600!", the price of the computer, as shown in the ad, was 1595!

Did anyone else notice that after Pepsi changed from the white label to the "blue-label" that the taste changed completely, and is totally undrinkable? I used to to drink both, but now can only drink Coke. The odd thing is that the Pepsi bottle says "Same Great Taste" on it, and they are LYING!! I could taste it right away.

Re: Classic Coke

From what I understand, they can't call it just plain Coke for legal reasons, because that is now the name of the new recipe, and the old recipe is now Classic Coke. Just like the rest of us, Coke can't just change their name anytime they want, without alot of legalities.

Besides, as Deuve Cann remarked, if they drop the "Classic", someone will certainly decide that they've messed with the recipe again, and will be able to tell the difference!

Mention has been made it should be called Classic Coke because it uses the original recipe. Didn't that have cocaine in it, later replaced by caffeine when the dangers were discovered, making the current Classic Coke not the original recipe?

There is still some Cocaine in Coke. In an entire years supply (25 Million Gallons) There may be as much as 1/600th of a grain of actual cocaine. Not enough to give a fly a buzz. This has been another, useless fact.

Another useless fact: New Coke wasn't "disgusting." In fact, in blind taste tests, people preferred the New formula. It's just that when New Coke was produced it didn't TASTE like Coke, and people wanted their Coke to taste like Coke.

It's kind of like trying to sell brown coke in South America. They expect it to be neon green.

I suspect this is why Crystal Pepsi met its demise -- which still burns my toast. I liked the stuff a lot -- it didn't feel like acid was eating my enamel away unlike all brown forms of Coke. I stick to tea these days...

Joel, out of curiosity, how in the world would one measure 1/600 of a grain of cocaine? And then how do you put that much into a year's supply? I rather doubt that Coke makes their entire year's supply of Coke all at once, so even chopping a grain of cocaine into 600 pieces and dumping one of those pieces into a year's supply seems impossible.

I just find this very, very hard to believe. Whether that much cocaine would give a fly a buzz or not, it seems unlikely that Coke would allow this to occur these days, what with cocaine being an illegal substance and all. Imagine the media disaster -- "Coke STILL USES COCAINE in its product!" I don't really think "Hey, it's only da-da-da much, not enough to..." would be a very good defense. I think it's probably safe to say that there really isn't cocaine in Coke anymore...for logic's sake (again, how do you get that little cocaine into a year's supply? That would boil down to less than an atom of cocaine per Coke, and I doubt they'd bother to split the atom just for the sake of keeping the original flavor around).

Another useless fact: New Coke (or Coke II, later) was "reverse-engineered" from Diet Coke by replacing the Nutrasweet with sugar and then mucking about a bit more.

I always thought New Coke just tasted watered down, not necessarily sweeter. I still remember the original taste, too, and when they came out with Classic it tasted like black licorice and not the original at all. Am I the only to think this? Coke changed the formula after 99 years. Couldn't they have waited at least one more year or so? It would've just been better if they kept the flavor and never messed with success.

As for Pepsi, I don't notice any change in taste too much. Is it sweeter or less so than it used to be? I'm not sure. Has anyone tasted Pepsi One? I like it but the ads with Cuba Gooding, Jr. make it out to be better tasting than it really is. It has apartamine, not sugar, so it only has one calorie, hence the name. It's not too bad, but not as sweet tasting as Pepsi. BTW, Pepsi was originally used for dyspepsia, hence its name, if memory serves correctly.

Here's a little theory I've had for a while concerning the New Coke situation. OK, in the early 80's Coke was losing the cola wars to Pepsi, so they change their formula, knowing that people will hate it. They sit back for a few months and then bring bring in Classic Coke (which I never thought tasted like "Old Coke" either, but that's another story), and everybody buys it because they now know what they were missing. As a result, Coke beats out Pepsi and becomes the Cola War champion. Just a theory.

So Coke was in a bit of a slump back then. Big whoop. They're still the soda champs and it'll be an awful long time before they're unseated and defeated, but of course it could happen. And we'll have warp capabilities sometime in the 2060's.

Rick B--Many folks have advanced the theory that the "New Coke" fiasco was just a clever ploy, although the Coke people claim they just seriously misjudged the public's loyalty to the brand. We may never know the answer for certain.

OoooooWeeeeeOooooo!

"The best laid plans of mice and men...."

In the novel 'Red Dwarf - Infinty Welcomes careful drivers', Coca-cola send a ship on a mission to trigger and accelerate super-novas in several thousands stars, timing it so that when the light from these super-novas reached earth, it would spell in large letters across the sky...

'Coca-cola: The classic taste'

Or something like that.
We never had 'New Coke' in the UK. We did get a drink called 'TAB clear' in the early 90s, which was suppossed to be clear, sugar-free and healthier for you, and was like Coke, but not Coke. I liked it, but apparently no-one else did, as it dissappeared after a month.
Still, lots of people now drink Doctor Pepper here as an alternative Caffine-based soft-drink.

You know, I don't care what people call ep 1, of the phantom menace, or whatever. Th eone thing I do hate is when I say 'Star Wars', and they say 'NONONONONONONONO!, It's called Star Wars: Episode 1, A New Hope' Talk correctly' By which time I've either hit them or left the room.

Dr. Pepper: Yes! Nectar of the Gods!

Pedantic referrals to "Star Wars" as "Star Wars, Episode Four...etc." : Ugh. The original theatrical release, if I recall correctly, didn't say "Episode..." anything, so you may remind these folk of that as you're sending them off in search of a life.

I, too, prefer to refer to Star Wars as Star Wars, not all these other names they've come up with. If other people want to say some long name, that's fine, but they should remember that the first movie was Star Wars; all the rest are Star Wars: Whatever.
I go thru this with Classic Trek, also (altho I don't mind Classic so much as The Original Series). Star Trek is Star Trek; the rest are all colon-ated. I had a friend at school who would annoy me because I would talk about Star Trek, and he would assume I meant ST:TNG. If I meant ST:TNG, I would say ST:TNG!

Still, at least you can say Empire, Jedi, B5, Ds9. Saying The Next Generation is still a bit of a mouthful.

So, whats Ep 1 gonna be shortened to? Are people gonna say 'hey, you see Menace last night?'

I think you just got it: "Hey, you see Ep 1 last night?" In a world where we have Y2K, this makes perfect sense to meŠ

Dr. PepperŠ*shudders*

Am I the only person who doesn't remembr the New Coke stuff? In fact, I think I was born on the day after they announced the whole New Coke thing!

Doesn't anyone remember Tab (and its funky logo and bottles)?

Liam, you can say "NexGen" or "NextGen"

I remember Tab...Bob Goldthwaite used to drink it prodigiously during his stage shows....he's hold up a can and say "this has the same ingredients as a battery!" <---my opinion of the taste.
I Loooved Nehi Blue Cream, Nehi peach, and welch's grape soda. yum yum! bring the da-glo brews back!

Why Classic Coke? Look, after taking a bath on New Coke, Coke sales went *up*--because people realized that Coke was an American staple. So why mess up a perfectly good name, when the new name is a reminder of how Coke is a "Classic" of American culture.

Ugh. Thinking like a marekter makes my head hurt.

About the putting cocaine in Coke, I think they just put a extract from the plant that cocaine is produced from, not the actual drug.

As far as the names go, I refer to Star Trek as "Star Trek" or "The Original Series"
The Next Generation is "TNG" and Deep Space Nine is "DS9"
Star Wars, as in the first movie to come out, is "Star Wars"
Empire and Jedi are the full titles usually
The Phantom Menace is probably going to be just that.
I don't know why I am this way. It's just how I was brought up knowing them as. I yam what I yam.

In fact, I believe that coke leaves are imported where coke extracts the cocaine from them and uses them in the recipe. The aforementioned 1/600 of a grain is maybe a residual.

It's amazing what one stumbles onto when one has nothing better to do...

I remember the whole "New Coke" thing, and an ad from Pepsi saying "If Coke is the 'Real Thing,' then why'd they change the formula?"

I also remember being at a college campus one evening, just after New Coke took over, but before Classic Coke "returned." A ruckus started at an outdoor common area in the student housing section; people from all around were gravitating toward the vending machines. "What's going on? Was there an accident?" my companions and I asked. The reply from a person rushing by was unexpected: "There's real Coke in the vending machines here!"
Chaos didn't ensue, which is good considering the sizable crowd that was growing. In any event, the vending machine was emptied within minutes.