Crystal Pepsi
The clear cola that tasted like 90s optimism and regret mixed together. Crystal Pepsi was caffeine-free, marketed on a fever dream of purity, and backed by a Super Bowl ad that tried desperately to make it cool.
Crystal Pepsi was created by PepsiCo executive David C. Novak, who later called it "the best idea I ever had, and the worst executed." It was test-marketed starting April 13, 1992 in Dallas, Providence, Salt Lake City, and Colorado, with a national US rollout beginning December 1992.
The centerpiece was a $40 million campaign, including a Super Bowl XXVII ad on January 31, 1993, set to Van Halen's "Right Now." First-year sales were about $474 million — roughly 1% of the US soft-drink market. By normal standards that was impressive; by Pepsi's standards it was a disappointment. Coca-Cola launched Tab Clear in December 1992 as a deliberate "kamikaze" counter-move to muddy the clear-cola category. Production ceased in late 1993 with final deliveries into early 1994; a reformulated citrus version, "Crystal From Pepsi," followed and also flopped.
Nostalgia won in the end. A fan campaign with 37,000+ petition signatures brought an official re-release in 2016 — July 11 in Canada, August 8 in the US — and occasional returns since. What failed in the 90s became iconic precisely because it had the 90s written all over it.
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