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AISLE 1 · DRINKS & SODAS
Coca-Cola C2
by Coca-Cola
Gone — retailers began swapping C2 out for Coca-Cola Zero in 2005, and in September 2007 Coca-Cola said it would stop making it once the remaining concentrate ran out. Japan, where it launched first, had quietly dropped it a year earlier.
Coke's answer to the low-carb panic: a cola with half the sugar, carbs, and calories of the real thing, launched in 2004 for people who wanted to diet without saying so out loud. It turned out almost nobody was shopping for a soda that was half of anything.
🧾 One more thingThe launch was enormous — eight NASCAR paint schemes at the 2004 Pepsi 400 and the Rolling Stones' ‘You Can't Always Get What You Want’ as the ad soundtrack, which reads as prophecy now. A planned UK rollout was scrapped in December 2004 after Coke's own research warned that C2 would mostly poach drinkers from Diet Coke rather than find new ones.
Filed under: Drinks & Sodas · the ’00s & later
🕯️ Shoppers also mourned