The Wisdom on an 8-Year-Old

Like many things that I remember, you have to be of a certain age to also remember them. Take Coca-Cola. Does anyone remember when there was a "New Coke." Certainly not the people in the film 'Yesterday' where the main character goes into a store and asks for a Coke. They stare at him blankly, and say they only have Pepsi. The execs in Atlanta are wondering how that got into the script.

Ditching the formula for 7-x took courage. I've always heard that Coke's formula is hidden in a safe in Atlanta. But in 1985 Coke launched a campaign to promote New Coke. They were discontinuing the "old" Coke. It may not have been the "shot heard around the world," but you'd have thought they were doing away with the $1 bill.

The new taste was supposedly less sweet. Between Coke and Pepsi, Coke was always the sweeter of the two. As for my childhood preference I really didn't favor either one. I drank enough Mission cream soda that it's a wonder my teeth followed me into adulthood.

The only Coke and Pepsi I liked were the empty bottles we could find at the athletic field. There was a 2¢ deposit on the empties, and a 5¢ deposit on the "family" size bottles. We rarely found any 5¢ empties.

Coke was always unique to the other sodas of the era in the '50s. 7-Up and Pepsi could be purchased in 7 oz. bottles; Coke in 6½ oz. bottles. They had to hold back that ½ oz. Marketing.

Coca-Cola syrup, the gallon bottles that soda fountains mixed with carbonation, also had therapeutic properties. In 1958 when I had my appendix out and spent what was then the recovery period of 7 days in the hospital,

I distinctly remember it was 1958, because the Top 40 song of the summer on AM radio was 'The Witch Doctor,' sung by David Seville and his creation of Alvin and the Chipmunks. The song did have lyrics, but the hook was the sounds of the song: Ooo-eee-Ooo-ah-ah-ting-tang-walla-walla-bing-bang, repeated four timers as the chorus.

I was nauseous from the effects of  the ether administered as the anesthetic (The surgeon's bill was $75.) I distinctly remember a nurse giving me a cup of Coke from the gallon jug. Pure Coca-Cola syrup. It was good. I remember feeling better.

I was reminded of the summer of 1985 when I read the obituary for Philip H. Geier Jr., 84, Empire Builder Who Made an Advertising Giant Even Bigger.

The uproar over New Coke was raging. It turns out Mr. Geier was the head of an advertising agency that was responsible for convincing the Atlanta execs that a "New Coke" would give them the edge in the "Cola-Wars" (Billy Joel's, 'We Didn't Start the Fire.')

New Coke was DOA. In three months Coke abandoned the product and restored what was the "old" Coke to the shelves.  The campaign was an unmitigated disaster, and probably entered into a case study at Harvard Business school.

And if you think the uproar was an exaggeration, consider the 8-year-old boy Scott who lived next door and wondered out loud at the July 4th cookout, "how could they do that?"

I remember the post-mortem analysis was they felt the mistake they made was that by introducing New Coke they cut off access to the "old" Coke. Only "New" was available. They didn't count on the uproar they would generate when people were told they could no longer get their old standby.

They just didn't ask Scott.

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