🚀 go-pugleaf

The theories of "why Coke (the company) did it" are getting wilder and
wilder.  I will suggest a simpler reason.

Coke (the company) very likely ran blindfold-style taste tests, and
found that a significant majority liked the "new" formula better than
the "old" formula.  Coke said to it's corporate self "Aha!  We really
got something here, let's change the formula!"

When they switched, they found that people don't care how the crud
tastes, since they are emotionally committed to liking the old stuff.
(The new stuff isn't Coke, and I like Coke, so I must not like the new
stuff, by Finagle!)

Coke (the corporation) was probably quite surprised to find that the
same (statistically speaking) people who loved "new coke" in taste tests
rejected it when they actually made the change.

I would bet that, in blindfold taste-tests most of you folks clamoring
for the "good old coke" would be unable to tell the difference.  For a
more concrete example, given a lineup of unlabeled Pepsi, Classic Coke,
New Coke, RC, Shasta Cola (and maybe a few more for yucks), I suspect
that (far) fewer than half of you could pick out the Classic Coke by
taste alone.

(I make this claim because I recall an newspaper article a few years
back reporting the results of just such a test, which found that most
people simply can't distinguish reliably among Cola brands by taste
alone.)

As far as looking for motivations for things in general, you must
remember "never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity".
-- 
Wayne Throop at Data General, RTP, NC
<the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!rtp47!throopw