![New Coca-Cola Cherry Bottle][5]
Has anyone else noticed that Cherry Coke has been renamed “Coca-Cola Cherry”? The flavor is in every way the same, but the name suddenly changed on me. It seems like they’re trying to rebrand everything under the name “Coca-Cola”, and exorcise “coke” from their product titles. Oddly, their press release dated December 15 still refers to a number of “coke”s, including the new Coke Blak, a premium, coffee flavored beverage, diet Cherry Coke, Coke Light Lime, and Coke Light Sango, so either it’s just a can redesign, or their entire PR team hasn’t gotten word of the change yet.
Personally I don’t like it. I like the simple name of Cherry Coke, a sweeter companion to the mainstay Coca-Cola Classic. “Coca-Cola Cherry” sounds more like an expansion rather than its own item, even though it’s been around for over 20 years. It sounds like it’s a temporary flavor-of-the-month, to be discarded in time à la Vanilla Coke (which I rather liked).
Kottke today links to a great archive of photos of soda cans over the years, which includes this selection on Coke 2 and other flavors. If you scroll down to the Coca-Cola Cherry née Cherry Coke section, you can see how the drink has been rebranded over the years. The earlier cans incorporate some white (now associated with Diet Coke) and feature a gradiant to red and a big cherry. The late 80’s and early 90’s cans play up the “fountain style” of the drink, going back to the drink’s soda fountain-era incarnation where a cherry Coke was created by a soda jerk who’d mix in cherry syrup on the spot. 1996 brought the purple “rain of cherries” can, which sticks in my head even though it seems to have been around for two years before being replaced by 1998’s “eXtreme Cherry Coke to the max!” branding, which would last four years until it was replaced by the red and maroon version.
The [new design][5] is, well, exactly like the standard Coca-Cola Classic packaging, but with a cherry under the italic word “Cherry”, the swoosh tinted redder, and with pink top and bottom borders instead of white. It says “there’s nothing distinctive about me, I’m just Coca-Cola Classic with some cherry syrup added in,” which, I guess, it is, but I’d like to see a little more love put into the design of a variety that’s stuck around for so long, and is one of my favorites.
[5]: http://david.ely.fm/davextreme/images/E4BBF1DE-4EC9-4DBD-828C-FEC9FC175D93.jpg” alt=”E4BBF1DE-4EC9-4DBD-828C-FEC9FC175D93.jpg
Edit: Looking more closely at the bottle, on the back, next to the barcode, are the words “Coke Cherry”. Curiouser and curiouser.