Fashion comes and goes, cars come and go, even people come and go from our lives. So why should soda be any different? The short answer is, it’s not. Even though it seems like our choices at the convenience store are the same today as they were years ago, that’s not the case. Quite a few sodas that were popular in the past have been quietly phased out, never to return. In this post, the team at Rocky Mountain Soda Co. examines seven soda brands that are no longer with us.
Sometimes it’s big news when a soft drink brand is discontinued but most of the time when a manufacturer decides to dump a brand they do so with little fanfare, mostly because it’s not good business to publicly admit failure. With that in mind, here are seven soda pop brands that are no longer with us.
ONE: Crystal Pepsi
During the 90s a lot of big soda companies attempted to tweak their product lineups to gain market share. Sometimes it worked, but most of the time it didn’t. Crystal Pepsi is an example of a new brand that had a ton of marketing money behind it but fell flat on its face nonetheless. Released in 1992, it only lasted about 18 months before it was officially discontinued. While demand was strong at launch time thanks to all those marketing dollars, people quickly abandoned Crystal Pepsi once they got a taste of it. Not that it was bad, it just wasn’t special enough to make people leave their current go-to soda.
TWO: Life Savers Soda
Every American kid is familar with Life Saver's candy. What if there was a Life Savers soda? It would hit the shelves with automatic name recognition and also benefit from the significant amount of goodwill the brand built up since its launch way back in 1912. The idea seemed solid enough and they could take flavor ideas from the flavors of the popular candy. But while Life Savers pop fared well enough in taste tests it never caught on with consumers for reasons that, to this day, remain somewhat mysterious. About a year after launch it was quietly removed from store shelves.
THREE: New Coke
New Coke was the Coca-Cola company’s response to the increasing popularity of Pepsi. The powers that be at Coca-Cola reasoned that Pepsi was taking market share because it was sweeter than Coke and they could claim that market share back if they changed their recipe to be sweeter and more Pepsi-like. Boy were they wrong. Turns out people liked Coke just fine and didn’t want anyone messing with the recipe. New Coke bombed spectacularly and after just 79 days original Coke (now rebranded Coke Classic) was back on the shelves, more popular than ever.
FOUR: Sierra Mist
Sierra Mist was a lemon-lime soda released in 1999 that found a devoted following. The problem was that the following wasn’t large enough. Sierra Mist, you see, was competing with well-established market giants like Sprite in the lemon-lime sector and was never able to make significant headway against them. Pepsi (owners of the Sierra Mist brand) tried renaming it several times but the rebranding just seemed to confuse consumers. In 2023 Sierra Mist was discontinued.
FIVE: Slice
A lot of people were surprised when Slice was quietly discontinued in 2005. After all, it had been around since the early 80s and always seemed to sell reasonably well. Its hook was that it was 10% juice, which appealed to a lot of people who wanted something more from their soda pop, and it held its own against its main competitors 7-Up and Sprite. But there’s an after-credit scene to this story. Just this year Slice was relaunched as an all-natural soda with different flavors and no artificial sweeteners. It’s too early to tell if it will find a permanent place in the market.
SIX: Sprite Remix
Remember Sprite Remix? Neither does anyone else. Apparently, the folks at Coca-Cola which owns Sprite didn't learn their lesson from New Coke because in 2002 they reworked the formula of their very popular Sprite soft drink and rebranded it Sprite Remix. You had three options with Sprite Remix: Sprite Tropical Remix, Sprite Berryclear Remix, and Sprite Aruba Jam Remix. Unfortunately for Coke, nobody cared and a scant two years after launching Sprite Remix was discontinued and the company went back to focusing on regular old Sprite.
SEVEN: Tab
Tab was the first-ever diet soft drink and enjoyed a 60-year run for Coca-Cola. It was a hugely influential brand that laid the groundwork for the entire diet soda industry. Unfortunately for Tab fans, it was overshadowed by Coke’s own successor brands - Diet Coke and Coke Zero - and was discontinued in 2020 leaving countless Tab fans pining for the good old days.
Try All-Natural Soda From Rocky Mountain Soda Co.
Rocky Mountain Soda Co. sodas are vegan, kosher, and gluten-free with no GMOs or artificial ingredients. If you want to know where the soda business is headed here in the 2020s, order some Rocky Mountain Soda Co. beverages and find out.
