OK Soda

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Soda

by velmu • 6 years ago

254 108 6 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

schoen• 6 years ago

I remember

① buying a can of this from a vending machine at MIT, when I visited while I was in high school

② occasionally calling 1-800-I-FEEL-OK, especially to test out a phone or something

baxtr• 6 years ago

I upvote this because I’m impressed by the number icons.

qubex2• 6 years ago

“Enclosed Unicode Numerals”

travbrack• 6 years ago

I used to spend hours on the hotline as a kid. It was really weird and entertaining.

PopeDotNinja2• 6 years ago

I just called this number to try it out. It's a phone sex line now. There are supposedly hot girls for guys to talk to, but I didn't investigate the veracity of this claim.

have_faith• 6 years ago

I will volunteer to perform this hard hitting investigate journalism.

DonHopkins5• 6 years ago

In the 80's I once met a guy who claimed to own the phone number on the "HOW'S MY DRIVING? CALL 1 (800) EAT-SHIT" bumper stickers, a parody of all those trucker's bumper stickers with real 800 numbers to report them to their masters.

Not sure how he monetized it, but he had some scheme going on, and paid for it by selling the bumper stickers. Probably he sold more to all the careless drivers who called and wanted one too, than actual shit eaters.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HOWS-MY-DRIVING-CALL-1-800-EAT-SHIT...

DonHopkins5• 6 years ago

Do you remember the vending machines around that time on MIT campus that had games built in: some LEDs that would blink after you purchased a coke, and if you won, you got a free coke!

I think there also were some musical coke machines, too.

(I was also visiting while in high school!)

When I worked at the CMU CS department, my office was right down the hall from the Internet Coke Machine, and you could "finger coke@cmua" to see how many sodas of what kind there were, and what their temperature was.

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/industries/little-known-story-firs...

https://www.livinginternet.com/i/ia_myths_coke.htm

zorpner• 6 years ago

There are two critical things to recall about OK Soda:

1. This article in The Baffler: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/id-like-to-force-the-world-to-...

2. 2/3 Coca-cola, 1/4 Orange Soda, 1/12 Dr. Pepper

sergers• 6 years ago

A funny thing, sometimes a shitmix has it's own unique taste.

Ever try "thumbs up"? First time I tried it I was like gross, what did they mix all the flavors?

But the distinct taste grew on you.

jfk13• 6 years ago

Assuming you mean the Indian soft drink, IIRC it's actually "Thums Up" (no "b").

jablan• 6 years ago

A funny thing, sometimes a shitmix has it's own unique taste.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzo_Mix Mix of Cola and Fanta, and I'd say it's more popular than just Fanta in Germany.

MivLives2• 6 years ago

There was a way to use a coke soda fountain to make something that tasted shockingly like Baja Blast. It involved Sprit and Blue Poweraid from what I remember. There may have been one more ingredient.

anthony_romeo• 6 years ago

Pirko told host Noah Adams that OK tastes “a little bit like going to a fountain and mixing a little bit of Coke with a little root beer and Dr. Pepper and maybe throwing in some orange.”

This is consistent with my memory of the taste. I think I only had one or two cans in my life. The taste was adequate, but not truly compelling.

echelon• 6 years ago

This seems like something that came about a decade too early, like Neutral Milk Hotel. If this launched today, I could see it gaining traction.

The art on the cans is pretty cool.

I love that there was a Usenet mailing list for this:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.fan.ok-soda/WQuelBjd8s8/...

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.fan.ok-soda/9Kxv...

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.fan.ok-soda/1_E_...

(Not sure if Google Reader links are stable.)

mehrdadn• 6 years ago

You mean two and a half decades too early? Or do you mean it'd have fared well a decade and a half ago?

mintplant• 6 years ago

The branding reminds me instantly of OBEY [0], which was really big for a while in the 2010s.

[0] https://obeyclothing.com/

maest• 6 years ago

Indeed, I made the same link. However, even at its largest, obey did not have a broad-enough appeal as what Coca-Cola execs would've wanted. Also, the ties with a mainstream brand would be off-putting to the core OBEY customer.

narag• 6 years ago

Yesterday some girl was wearing one of those T shirts in a newspaper photo. I'd never saw them before. Is it related to Carpenter's movie?

Supermancho• 6 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_Fairey

His work was plastered all over major city centers (Berkley, New York, Seattle) in the 90s. 20 years later, it's a retro cultural icon.

867-5309• 6 years ago

never dreamt I'd see an NMH reference on HN! :)

shaggerty• 6 years ago

I wouldn’t be surprised if someone is reviving it, I’ve seen it mentioned a few places recently.

Torwald• 6 years ago

If this launched today, I could see it gaining traction.

Well, the marketing guys back then thought it could have been a hit backe then and I can see why. If you were around in the nineties, there were quite a few products geared to that cultural stream of the subvertising movement.

kristopolous• 6 years ago

Try it again.

Things that fail, fail in a context of the times it was executed in.

It's especially worth trying a failed idea again if the context appears different.

allworknoplay• 6 years ago

The marketing was a total hit where they tried it (including in my area), but it tasted terrible. It might have been conceptually a little "out there" for the early/mid 90s, but lots of people were talking about it, and my friends and I really wanted it to be great. I really think the problem was that it just sucked.

hvs• 6 years ago

I was a senior in HS when it came out and I remember a bunch of us really liking the style. But, yeah, it tasted terrible.

imglorp• 6 years ago

Another marketing company that deploys product as an afterthought?

How many companies have signaled jumping the shark by renaming and rebranding, as if any product issue can be fixed with messaging? Comcast -> Xfinity. Radio Shack -> The Shack. Sci Fi channel -> SyFy...

As a consumer, I'm insulted when the vendor thinks I'm so shallow. As an employee of such a vendor, it's a sign of thrash and a warning signal to look at leadership.

gojomo• 6 years ago

It'd be really OK if they brought it back, with a better, less-aggressive formula. Or perhaps as a mild seltzer.

They could call it "OK2" and admit in the marketing, "The original OK was not as okay as we'd hoped. This is okayer."

loupgarou212• 6 years ago

I actually liked it back in the day, but it basically reminded me of what it would taste like if you mixed every soda in a soda fountain.

thulecitizen• 6 years ago

Yes! A sugary drink that has no nutritional value - which is shit for the human body - is a great product! // sarcasm [1]

Jesus, the twisted logic of this current system that encourages excluding-enclosures (proprietary 'recipes') is so damaging to humans as well as to the planet.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4kvX1kgJ8Q

VectorLock• 6 years ago

The can art looks like the prototype of every craft beer can on the market now.

deusexepsilon• 6 years ago

I was asked to review a book of beers that were being made, including one which is on one, called 'The Lost and Found: an American Craft Beer Craft Beer Designer' this one.

The book is very detailed and a piece that I would not suggest anything I knew of. It was produced by a small team of professional brewers including a wine writer's producer.

These include a bottle and bottles

MisterOctober• 6 years ago

I was a young teen when it first came out -- in retrospect, I think it's cool, but at the time, everybody I knew felt like it was baldly pandering to our demographic / 'disaffected slackers' in general, and looked upon it with mild disdain

raydev• 6 years ago

This seems like something that came about a decade too early, like Neutral Milk Hotel

Without NMH happening in the 90s we wouldn't have the wave of bands that were inspired by them and found success 10 years later.

mjfl• 6 years ago

If I drink this soda will I become haunted like the guy on the can? lol

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Soda#/media/File:OK_Soda_-_...

ben_w2• 6 years ago

Here in Berlin there is an energy drink branded “ok.-“

jackson1way• 6 years ago

Here is the link with pictures https://www.okpunktstrich.de/

Not too exciting. They also have chocolate and strawberry drinks :-)

mweibel• 6 years ago

also in Switzerland. It's a brand by Valora (Kiosk, Brezelkönig, Ditsch, ...)

raverbashing• 6 years ago

Scored too high in the #fellowkids scale to work out.

Especially since it seems a fine example of design by committee. Test markets, reports. Gee I wonder why Gen X was cynical like that.

Oh and they even had a "manifesto" that was in some ironic way a "selfawarewolf".

mcny• 6 years ago

How come we don’t hear more about gen x? It is always millennials are lazy or millennials are killing this or millennials are destroying that. Even when gen z does this ok boomer thing, it is the millennials who are blamed of being disrespectful (my understanding is very few of us are doing the ok boomer thing — we are in our thirties now!)

kasey_junk• 6 years ago

Preface: generational reasoning is always stupid. The differences in group are greater than the differences out.

That said a) as a gen xer we used to hear all the same things about gen x as we do now about millennials. Its largely time gated. b) gen x is a much more transitional generation, there weren’t as many defining moments and c) its a smaller cohort. Millennials were the largest birth cohort since the baby boom.

rsynnott• 6 years ago

Because the media is currently largely staffed by gen X people on the higher levels. As this transitions, intergenerational moaning in the media will shift from targeting millennials to gen x and gen z; as boomers get less relevant even more ire will turn against gen x. Moaning about people who have the nerve to be too young or old is a time honoured tradition; we’ve been at it for millennia and it’s not going anywhere.

true_religion• 6 years ago

20 years ago, all you heard about was generation X. They had their time.

qubex2• 6 years ago

I think I was into my second year in middle school in Italy when this came out... so it’s far from my experience in both time and space. And yet it triggers an inexplainable sense of nostalgia in me for the nineteen-nineties, grunge, early-New Economy, pre-9/11 world. Somehow it also makes me think of William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, both because it features a protagonist who is hyper-sensitive to branding to the point of allergy, and functions as a funereal eulogy to the era.

It also reminded me of Pepsi Perfect, the fictional brand of Pepsi-Cola featured in Back To The Future II’s (now) alternate version of 2015: http://design.pepsico.com/pepsi-perfect.php?v=101#section2

krstffr• 6 years ago

Yes, for some reason reading/looking at this made me super nostalgic as well! Just want to sit in a couch in the mid 90's and listen to CD's and watch Beavis and Butthead and read stuff in magazines instead of on the internet.

Very strong melancholic feeling.

isaachawley• 6 years ago

I think in Pattern Recognition a character says, "More creativity goes into the marketing of products than into the products themselves."

I'd love to think of it all as some kind of art project, but there are always undertones of manipulation and intentional disaffection.

andai• 6 years ago

OK Soda's concept was that the youth market was already aware that they were being manipulated by mass-media marketing, so this advertising campaign would just be more transparent about it.

samizdis• 6 years ago

It reminds me of a catchline for 7-Up, spoken by the cartoon character Fido Dido (late-80s?): "More a can of drink than a way of life."

ThePhysicist• 6 years ago

When I saw the can design I immediately thought that it looks like the art style of "David Boring" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Boring), turns out it was really Daniel Clowes who designed it. "Ghost world" is one of my favorite stories & movies as well, but I didn't hear about O.K. soda before. Fascinating!

While I really like the art style and dark touch I think it was probably too niche or too off-putting for most people.

yantrams2• 6 years ago

Fellow Clowes afficionado here. That's exactly what I thought too when I looked at the art!

Just a couple of days ago, I discovered Clowes work in the movie 'Paul'. I thought the art work looked very much like that of Clowes' and paused the screen to observe it closely and noticed that it was signed 'Pussey'(after Dan Pussey, the timid cartoonist character in Clowes' universe), which confirmed it for me :) https://imgur.com/a/HbCLB5c

Clowes also drew one of Silicon Valley's promos https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9V2XMLUIAA8oaC.jpg

weare138• 6 years ago

Eightball was one of my favorite comics back in the day.

theandrewbailey• 6 years ago

I chuckled at the quotes around "beverage" on the can.

mclightning• 6 years ago

Am I the only one feeling this has a weird resemblance to "OK Boomer" in its nonchalant attitude?

DonHopkins5• 6 years ago

The "Soda Generation" is the generic version of the "Pepsi Generation".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Generation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0jY4WvCIc

French Firm Targets "Soda Generation" With Cola-Flavored Wine

https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2013/06/28/French-firm...

LeonM• 6 years ago

If you are into this kind of stuff, I recommend watching the movie Syrup [0]. It's a fictional movie about marketing/branding within a soda company.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762138/

improv32• 6 years ago

Weird to see my tiny hometown (Lynden, WA) was used as a test market

DonHopkins5• 6 years ago

I'll just stick to my FUCKING STRONG COFFEE thank you.

https://www.goodbeans.nl/

https://www.facebook.com/fingstrongcoffee/

colinhb2• 6 years ago

Good coffee, nice people. They're my neighbors in Amsterdam.

DonHopkins5• 6 years ago

The stuff sure delivers on its promise! I used to live near you too, since I got it at the place on Binnen Oranjestraat, near Relax and Small World Catering (a really great place with nice people, too).

petetnt• 6 years ago

It's blowing my mind that these had Clowes/Burns artwork on them!

skibz• 6 years ago

OK Soda may be the preferred drink of other people such as yourself.

I love this! Is it a novel piece of copywriting, or a play/parody of something?

dhritzkiv• 6 years ago

Perhaps an allusion to non-mainstream demographics?

micheljansen• 6 years ago

The budget home brand of Dutch hardware store chain Gamma is called "OK". They have everything from paint to power tools and it uses even more brutalist packaging design: https://www.gamma.nl/assortiment/zoeken?f_brand_name=OK&f_ca...

Why buy good paint if you can also buy "OK" paint and pay less?

xxr• 6 years ago

Reminds me of the Japanese brand (non-brand?) Muji: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muji

aasasd• 6 years ago

Just to clarify, the design is 100% post-war-modernist, not brutalist. Not surprising for those parts, what with Scandinavia going all-in on modernism back in the day (afaik).

yantrams2• 6 years ago

They featured the work of Clowes and Burns! Very cool.

Clowes also drew one of Silicon Valley's promos https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9V2XMLUIAA8oaC.jpg

menor• 6 years ago

Yes, two of my favorite comic artists from the 90s. I was clearly in the target for this soda, although I have never been into soda. Maybe that was the error.

Noxmiles• 6 years ago

Perfect marketing for 2020. Hope they'll reboot it soon.

"The drink's slogan was 'Things are going to be OK.'"

MivLives2• 6 years ago

I have a hobby of trying odd sodas. This one was on my list with New Coke, Crystal Pepsi, Surge and Orbitz as things I'd never get to try.

That list has gotten smaller over time as Crystal Pepsi and Surge got mass rereleases, and New Coke got rereleased last summer.

Orbitz I believe said that they no longer have the machinery to make the balls but I have no source on that.

Come on Coke, rerelease OK Soda. Tie it in with OK Boomer for all I care.

thre2ewr4234• 6 years ago

For a moment there I wondered if George from Seinfeld had created a virtual assistant :D

shrimp_emoji• 6 years ago

I've watched all of Seinfeld and I don't get this reference :D

mark-r• 6 years ago

Despite being in one of the test market areas, I don't remember this at all.

valuearb• 6 years ago

Another example of the myth of the omnipotence of marketing messages.

Marketing only works when the product works. Coke works because most peoples first experience is good, not only good, but in many cases magical (kids who've never had caffeine, especially combined in a tasty high sugar drink). Coke advertising just has to trigger memories of the happiness of that original taste association, and the marketing director looks like a genius.

Then he tries to make his own products, and the feathers on his gawdy wings start to smoke.

krzyk• 6 years ago

Design of OK Soda looks quite similar to Fallout Nuka Cola

durpleDrank• 6 years ago

I drank this regularly in Junior High. It basically tasted like "Swamp Water" (all the available sodas at a fountain mixed together) with a slight awkward vanilla or black liquorice tone. I remember it tasting especially bad if it wasn't cold.

Blast from the past, not sure why it is on HN, I did a double take. Didn't know I was in a "Test Market". Ok Soda and ORBITZ were the only flash in the pan sodas I remember from that generation.

hammock• 6 years ago

I love the term "swamp water." We called it making a suicide.

Also, just looking at the ingredients of OK Soda I expected it to taste like Coke and Mountain Dew mixed together.

loupgarou212• 6 years ago

Same here. I actually still had an unopened can and a stack of labels I had peeled off bottles when I moved out of my parents' house and ended up chucking them all in the trash. I kind of wish I still had the can to just stick on a shelf, the cans were pretty cool looking.

dhosek• 6 years ago

When I saw marketed at Gen X, the first thing I thought of was at that time, one of the conventional bits of wisdom about Gen X was that we were resistant to being marketed at. I'm not sure that I buy that—Gen X bought into a lot of lame stuff marketed at them, but this seemed exactly the sort of marketing campaign which would support the conventional wisdom.

spanktheuser• 6 years ago

I was working in college radio and writing for The Onion back when OK Cola came out. I think the money that went into this makes most sense framed as a type of generational panic combined with technological transformation. The early Gen Xers were entering the workforce with a set of behaviors / values that felt unfamiliar & perhaps threatening to Boomers. Boomers began to feel uncool, out of touch and no longer culturally adept in the way they always had previously. This is nothing new, but I think it might be particularly wrenching when it finally happens to a demographically large and dominant cohort. Millennials, let me know how it works out.

More importantly rapid changes in technology caused corporations to lose control of media distribution for the first time. Widespread availability of personal computers / microchips caused media creation and distribution costs plummet in publishing, music, and film production/distribution. New insurgents like Fantagraphics, hip hop, college radio, indie rock, The Onion, The Stranger, Might, indie record labels and indie movies could route around large corporations to find an audience and build a business. Capital was still needed, but was orders of magnitude less than it had been for prior generations.

The resulting panic was deepest in the industries connected to entertainment, including those that depended on it for marketing. It seems absurd, but consumer brands convinced themselves that not only would Xers reject traditional media & advertising - they’d reject the previous generations products as well. There was sincere worry that millions of kids would stop drinking Coke & Miller Lite. Ad agencies helped fuel this panic as it brought with it an opportunity to pry large accounts away from incumbents.

This period didn’t last long, but it did birth a number of experiments like OK Cola, most of which were conceived as experiments and strategic contingency plans. For a brief and shining moment, there was some decent money and cultural cachet showered upon a bunch of smirking early 20s Xers whose only qualifications were helming a late night college radio program. It was wonderful to see Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns and other generation-defining artists get some well-earned money if not recognition.

crazygringo• 6 years ago

Well hey, the branding worked for OkCupid.

The site's not trying to be an amazing Cupid. Just an OK one. ;)

beams_of_light• 6 years ago

I remember being so proud of my OK Soda hat that I won in a can at school.

Good memories.

austincheney• 6 years ago

I find the contrasts between Gen X and Millennial stereotypes quite striking. You can see it in the media, which was often simply a dramatized perversion of generational self-reflection to sell media.

The Gen X generation seems to be characterized as generally depressed with a bored attitude of *its ok, i'll get over it". The primary theme there is some form of muted (apathetic) emotional resiliency, where mute suggests a primary characterization that is unintentionally not primarily communicated. These sort of characterizations suggest something that is not fragile, but not something that is socially exciting.

Millennial generation on the other hand appears to be characterized by maximum inclusion and interconnectedness, which are great... until people are cut off, which is characterized for its stark fragility.

Those are stereotypes and are prone to being wildly inaccurate with respect to any particular group or subculture, but still its interesting to compare those two demographics by solely looking at the representative media. During Gen X grunge, gangster rap, and country music were wildly popular. The really big deal in my area was Nine Inch Nails which was horribly depressing. Shows like Roseanne, Married with Children, and Beavis and Butthead were all the rage which mostly featured primary characters sitting on a couch complaining and getting over it. Also remember the Simpsons were far more depressing in their first few seasons during that period of time.

Media also reflects the stereotypes for the Millennial generation as well. The popular shows of the late 90s and early 2000s were things like Friends, Seinfeld, Sex and the City, Grey's Anatomy, and 30 Rock. These were all friends spending time with each other being happy, and aside from 30 Rock, none of those people ever seemed to go to work. Work is boring and depressing. The biggest things in music during the early years of the Millennial generation were most pop bands that graduated from boy bands or young attractive female pop singers. The theme was be beautiful, happy, and connected, but the moment you weren't connected the rest of it seemed to fall apart.

Comparing the two generations it seems Gen Xers are living an emotional coma enjoying all that numbs them to, while Millennials are living with bipolar disorder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials

OK Soda

Related Stories