It’s National Have A Coke Day, where fans of this global soft drink giant celebrate its greatness.
But a few decades ago Coke was encouraging people not to drink something great, but to choose a drink that was OK.
That was even its name: OK Soda.
I can confirm that the 90s was a strange time for soda.
The old standbys like Coke and Pepsi were still big deals, but the soda companies were also trying some out-of-the-box ideas to attract the younger, more ironic demographic that was gravitating toward Mountain Dew.
This was around the time that Crystal Pepsi went up for sale, and just a few years after the release of Jolt Cola, with the slogan “All the sugar and twice the caffeine!”
Coke tried selling a soda with postmodern branding based on the “I’m OK, you’re OK” movement of the 1970s.
Instead of hyping their drink to the moon, they just said it was OK, and that everything was going to be OK.
They even set up a toll-free OK soda hotline and put strange messages on the cans like “What’s the point of OK? Well, what’s the point of anything?”
As for the soda, one tester described it as “suitably wacky.”
It was kind of a mix of standard cola with Dr. Pepper and maybe some citrus flavors.
Coke tested OK Soda in a number of markets and the reaction was… not that OK.
Who was going to get excited about a product that even the people making the product say is merely OK?
The answer: randos on the internet.
While the, um, limited public response to OK prompted Coke to discontinue the soft drink experiment pretty soon after it started, there have been online groups championing OK Soda ever since.
You can sometimes find OK cans and merchandise in online auctions, at a price that may be higher than what you’d call OK.
Starting today in Homer, Alaska, it’s the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival.
Watch the spring migration in action and learn the whats and whys of these bird species from experts.
Or if you’re an absolute beginner, there’s a seminar called “Is that a bird or a plane? Birding 101.”
The Strange Story Of “OK Soda” (Buzzfeed)
