True to my word, here is the second 2013 Jones Soda for Halloween. It's a scrumptious looking Candy Corn flavor. Admittedly, this was the best tasting of the bunch, and it was also the most exotic, which is what Jones Soda is known for. Your "treat" appears below.
2013 Candy Corn Jones Halloween Soda
Crucial Soda Fact Number Two
The most iconic soda commercial is the so-called "Hilltop" released in 1971 for Coca-Cola. It's a collection of teenagers from around the world singing "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" on top of a hill in Italy. It's significant for two reasons. First, it was the precursor to the folksy "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing." Yes, that day camp campfire song was originally all about Coca-Cola.
Secondly, it marked the beginning of Coca-Cola marketing itself as the go-to brand for harmony, nostalgia, world peace, diversity high-fives, and all those other warm fuzzy things. The message was simple; everyone in the world enjoys a Coke, so there is always something we have in common. All these years later Coca-Cola is still getting mileage from that pristine ideal.
Road Trip! April is here, there is one month to go, and I am eager to get started on plans for a big, wide, luscious summer 2014. And what says summer better than a road trip with a nice cool can of Coca-Cola gliding along the highway with you in a cup holder?
Coca-Cola Summer Can 5 of 6 2013
If you are interested in taking a road trip this summer and would like to check out some soda landmarks, here are three I suggest below.
The Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas, the city where Dr. Pepper was invented by Charles Alderton around 1885.
There. That's a nice little summer triangle of traveling to get your summer started! And oh, yeah. You can toss your bikes on the roof of you car too just like in the can so you can get a little exercise after drinking all that soda.
So this is some big news in the soda world...Apple just passed Coca-Cola as the world's most recognized brand. I don't know exactly how they compute that stuff, but I am more interested in what that says about the world, and I guess it means that people are more interested in technology than good old fashioned sugar drinks.
But I think it will fade. While technology may be ubiquitous, the companies that bring it tend to cycle around. I predict Coca-Cola will rise again, even if it is far enough in the future where I will never bother to check to see if I'm right.
I found a new can shortly after it was released. Apparently, Coke Zero is doing great. So great that they decided to release a Caffeine Free Version. It came out this very month and I picked up a 12 pack at my local store. I think the black and gold can is rather stylish.
2013 Caffeine Free Coke Zero
The target audience is apparently also people like me: young adult males (just look at the official site.) Diet Coke is too womanly, so the Coke Zero line is targeted towards men. Interestingly, it was already available in France and Japan, but not here. To correct this oversight of leaving North America out, a petition was made to bring it here. It only had 5 signatures, but I guess that was enough!
I posted an earlier classic Coca-Cola commercial...the so-called "Hilltop" advertisement where youth from around the world sing the catchy song "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke." I thought I would share another big gun Coca Cola commercial. This one aired during the 1979 football season and made an appearance in the 1980 Super Bowl. Here, defensive tackle of the Pittsburgh Steelers "Mean" Joe Greene" hobbles to the locker room while being approached by a young fan. Joe is at first dismissive of the boy until the boy offers him his Coke. Joe accepts, chugs the bottle with an incredible tolerance for the product's carbonation, and with new found peace, kindly tosses the boy his battered jersey. A heart warmer every time.
Did you ever wonder what was before Diet Coke? No one really wonders about things. Diet Coke just always seems to have been there. Well, as all good folks know, Diet Coke was released in 1982. Before that year, however, Coca-Cola was already selling a Diet soda horrendously called TaB since 1963. The legend goes a computer generated thousands of possible CVC names and Coca-Cola picked TaB, perhaps because it could help folks keep "tabs" on their weight. Diet Coke quickly nudged TaB aside, but it is supposedly still sold in some markets. If I can find one, I'd love a can of it.
I came across this Coca-Cola commercial that was supposedly in Australia The music was done by Jack White of The White Stripes, a now defunct musical duo I enjoy. I was scrolling through the comments and they separated into two camps. First, there were those folks who understandably called Jack White a sell-out. I mean, here is a musician who rambles in the album notes of Elephant about the mass produced "cereal box" world that we live in but does a commercial for the world's biggest, and arguably most successfully marketed of corporations. I get that critique On the other hand, there were also those folks were told everyone to cut Jack White a break. I mean, as one poster so memorably put it, "if the guy has a Coca-Cola fetish, then so what? He gets to do a commercial for a product he loves." That phrase, "Coca-Cola fetish" glared out at me. I never thought of it that way, but as I've blogged before, Coca-Cola is all about marketing their sugar water so grandly that we have that type of emotional relationship with it: a Coca-Cola fetish. Anyway, I give no Jack no gripe about his commercial The guy is all about the colors red, white, and black anyway and Coca-Cola has two out of three of them. Advertise and drink away, Jack White. I love your music and enjoy a Coca-Cola. Just save me a can or two from Australia when you are done for my collection.
The other day when I was at a meeting at work donating blood, learning useful things, and otherwise enjoying the company amid laughter and proverbial paper footballs, I also had a pressing issue on my mind still waiting to be resolved. Hopefully, it will be resolved soon. But in the meantime, after the meeting, to clear my mind, I wandered over to the library and browsed the stacks a bit.
Joyce Carol Oates, the author with no Coke
I picked up a Joyce Carol Oates novella and started reading. It helped some. While reading, I wondered if there would be any soda references, perhaps a Coca-Cola being dropped somewhere. I've seen it done before in a little Updike and Carson McCullers. But no dice...there is no Coke in Joyce Carol Oates, at least this one. But there were references to Philomela, Ovid's poor character in Metamorphoses. And references to other various signs of 1970s collegiate decadence, but alas, nothing to tie into the blog.
Now, you might be sensibly wondering what literature has to do with a little soda can collection. Obviously, nothing. BUT...if you have ever read your Moby Dick, which all good folks should do, you notice that Melville does something unique. Everything in the novel is described through the lens of whaling. A little like how everything in Ulysses by Joyce is seen through the lens of the Odyssey. So why not see other things, such a literature, through the lens of something equally useless and mundane such as soda cans? Really, why not? Oh you laugh? Bring it.
I collect soda cans, but in truth, I actually prefer drinking soda from a glass soda bottle. You can buy Coca-Cola in glass bottles in the US. It is significantly more expensive because stores (correctly) are not anticipating that you will return the glass bottle. However, the soda is also sweetened with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, which does give an added incentive to purchase it, just for a change. It's called Mexican Coke and believers buy it and drink it religiously.
Anyway, the Coca-Cola bottle actually has a little bit of history behind it. It was designed and trademarked by Coca-Cola in 1915 to distinguish Coca-Cola form the many imitators. It was released in 1916 and marketed as a perk to let folks know what exactly was the real thing even when rummaging around blindly in a bin of ice.
This is the front of my Caffeine Free Diet Coke can. Looks pretty normal, right?
Well turn it around and then BAM! You have a promotion on the back.
I like soda cans with promotions. This particular can has a promotion for the new Goliath roller coaster at Six Flags New England. I'm a decent soda fan, but an even bigger roller coaster fan. My idea of a perfect summer would be strolling around a amusement park with my wife, sipping soda from Caffeine Free Diet Coke Cans, and responsibly leaving my soda can at the loading station of my favorite roller coasters. Remember, real roller coaster fans don't drink and ride. Yup. I play it safe. Always.
I thought I'd present the very first commercial for Vanilla Coke from the year of its release in 2002. It has the actor Chazz Palminteri portraying some type of mafia boss rewarding a teenager for poking his head into a hole. The tag line for the commercial was "Reward Your Curiosity." If you'd also like to know, Palminteri is an Academy Award winning actor. (He won for the 1994 Woody Allen film Bullets over Broadway.) If you are going to sell a great product like Vanilla Coke, you might as well get an award winning actor to do so. Great actor, great Coke. Simple. Why can't Pepsi get it?
I'm a Coca-Cola fan. Now, I'm not a fanatic. I buy and drink Pepsi occasionally. For example, right now at the local grocery store, the Pepsi product 12 packs are a dollar less so I've been stocking up on those. However, if you ask which I prefer, I'd say Coke. Why? I can't really tell the difference taste wise, which I suspect is sad. I just like Coca-Cola because I like their marketing much better. Coca-Cola's goal is to literally "bottle happiness." I mean, sheesh, it's sugar, water, a little flavor, and carbonation Big deal. You like Coke, the marketing goes, because you associate it with happy memories. So when you drink Coca-Cola, you are getting a little refreshment and a endorphin rush with happy associations. I like that. It's brilliant manipulation and if I am going to be manipulated while I enjoy a drink, it might as well be a happy, peaceful, let's love the world, life, and give high-fives kinda feeling. That's why Pepsi fails me.
At least while I was young, Pepsi was all about being young and having attitude. Snowboarders, race cars, Britney Spears, you get it. Generation NeXt. What a bunch of hollow hype. Give me Santa, Grandma's house, and a bottle of Coke over that Pepsi marketing any day. So, I thought since this blog is about soda can collecting, but also about the grottos of interest surrounding soda, I'd post a commercial every now and again about, well, soda. So below is Coca-Cola's hilltop "I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke" commercial This is marketing brilliance. I mean, you probably think this is a knock-off of "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing." Guess what? It's the other way around...the Coke song was first. Gives you those feel good vibes don't it?
One of my favorite soda quotes is by Andy Warhol. In his 1975 book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, he writes about Coca-Cola.
"What's great about this country is that American started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it." -Andy Warhol
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