I have always found the idea of cycles in commerce to be intriguing. For example, one of the more popular examples of this phenomenon is the often noted 20 year cycle in fashion. This same principle happens all over including in our grocery stores.
I stumbled into a 1989 New York Times article describing a Pepsi campaign to test market a high-caffeine version of it’s cola targeted as a morning drink:
The Pepsi-Cola Company next month will begin test-marketing Pepsi A.M., a cola drink with about 28 percent more caffeine an ounce than regular Pepsi
This idea apparently bridges generations because just this year Pepsi released another high-caffeine iteration of the soda call Pepsi Max.
For number’s people like me
- Pepsi A.M. (1989) contained 4.1 mg/oz of caffeine
- Pepsi Max (2007) the 5.75 mg/oz of caffeine
More importantly it seems that Pepsi Max now has 84% more caffeine than regular Pepsi. Compare this to the 28% increase in 1989 and it’s no wonder we don’t sleep at night.
Reading the list of Pepsi’s I came across this…
Pepsi Perfect: a vitamin-enriched cola sold in 2015 in the 1989 film Back to the Future Part II.
… which sounds an awful lot like Diet Coke Plus. Though I don’t know if Diet Coke with vitamins is a healthy drink like some people seem to think, I would say it is an old drink in a new can, thus completing the cycle. That’s what I call a two for one.
Slight aside: I would have linked to an official Diet Coke Plus URL above but they only have a flash index that will likely exclude the drink once it inevitably fails so I can’t. -1 style point.
