Vanilla Coke
Billed as Coca-Cola's biggest launch since Diet Coke, it arrived in 2002 in a tan-and-gold can that tasted like cream soda had merged with cola. Roughly 29 percent of US households bought it that year. By 2005, it was gone. Then it came back.
Vanilla Coke launched in the US on May 15, 2002, and the Coca-Cola Company treated it like the event it was — only the fourth brand extension in the company's history, following Diet Coke (1982), Cherry Coke (1985), and Diet Coke with Lemon (2001), and billed as the biggest launch since Diet Coke itself. The market responded immediately: roughly 29 percent of US households purchased it in 2002, and it sold 90 million unit cases across North America in its first year. Diet Vanilla Coke followed in fall 2002, doubling down on the flavor's initial success.
But the novelty faded. Sales declined steadily. In November 2005, Coca-Cola announced it was pulling the flavor, and Vanilla Coke left US shelves by the end of that year. For a brief moment, the cream-soda taste and the tan-and-gold can became a memory — the kind of middle-school vending-machine rarity that nobody could quite find anymore.
Then, on May 25, 2007, Vanilla Coke returned, relaunched at the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta. Vanilla Coke Zero joined the relaunch, and this time, the flavor stayed on shelves. It has remained available since.
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