Coca-Cola C2
The Atkins diet's cola — half the carbs, half the calories, half the appeal. It got the Rolling Stones and Queen on the TV spots and NASCAR paint schemes at the 2004 Pepsi 400. But America wanted the real thing or nothing at all, and a year later Coke Zero made "half" obsolete.
June 2004 arrived at the peak of the Atkins craze, when carbs had become America's dietary villain. Coca-Cola answered with C2 — launched in Japan on June 7 and in the US by the end of the month — carrying half the carbohydrates, sugars and calories of regular Coke: the compromise candidate for people who wanted soda without the guilt. The push was loud: TV spots set to The Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and Queen's "I Want to Break Free," and eight NASCAR Cup Series drivers running C2 paint schemes at the 2004 Pepsi 400. Pepsi fired back the same summer with Pepsi Edge, another half-measure — both companies betting there was a middle ground in the cola aisle.
There wasn't. American sales never lived up to expectations; customers turned out to have little interest in a mid-calorie soda. Drinkers either wanted the real thing, no apologies, or something that promised zero — ideally without the word "diet" on the label to scare off young men. Pepsi Edge was discontinued in late 2005, one year in.
The endgame came in June 2005, when Coca-Cola launched Coca-Cola Zero — the company's largest product launch in 22 years, spurred in part by C2's lackluster sales. Zero promised the full taste with no calories at all, aimed squarely at the same young men C2 had courted. Against that, half the sugar for the same shrug made no sense. C2 was quietly discontinued in Japan in 2006, and by 2007 it had vanished from American shelves too — a perfect time capsule of the years when everyone you knew was counting carbs.
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