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Why Did Crystal Pepsi Disappear In the 90s?
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May 23, 2025
Weird History Food is opening up a can of History on Crystal Pepsi. What’s better than regular Coke? Clear Coke, of course! Or, at least that’s what a majority of the top soda brands in the US thought back in the early '90s. Leading the "Clear Cola Craze" was PepsiCo., which released the first of many clear cola beverages, with their aspirational hit Crystal Pepsi.
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Today, we're going to take a look at why Crystal Pepsi was the choice of a new generation
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but not for long. On December 14, 1992, Coca-Cola decided it was time to roll up their corn syrup
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stained sleeves and release their very own clear soda in an effort to compete with Pepsi's Crystal
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Pepsi, released only one week earlier. Sold under the moniker Tab Clear, Coke claimed they wanted to
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avoid creating too direct a comparison with its own Coke-specific label. In truth, though
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there was a much more devious reasoning at work behind the strategy
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Tab Clear was specifically designed to fail as a product and take Crystal Pepsi down with it
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And after just a few months, the plan worked like a charm. Pepsi decided to promote their big new product at the Super Bowl
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Crystal Pepsi was strewn across television sets nationwide, accompanied by the sounds of Van Halen's hit single, Right Now
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The commercial featured images of the clear soda alongside puzzling images of an animated baby who appeared to be crawling around in what might be a desert or the bottom of the ocean
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That was followed promptly by a chaotically spinning watch, a reminder that right now computers still can't laugh
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shots of animals running in the wild, and other such allegedly thought-provoking imagery
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Apparently, the message was intended to be that there's no time like the present
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to enjoy a pure, crisp, clear Crystal Pepsi. Though many Crystal Pepsi supporters originally believed the innovative soda
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was akin to when the chocolate industry began to sell white chocolate It quickly became apparent such evaluations were wishful thinking Due at least in part to an oversaturated market the clear cola craze didn last long in the US or abroad Within a year of Crystal Pepsi
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initial release, the market became so inundated with copycat sodas and a host of other clear
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products that they were all essentially burned out. In 2013, a now-defunct satire website known as
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the Wall Street Sentinel, suggested Crystal Pepsi would make a valiant return to supermarket
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shelves in early 2014. The examiner quickly got to the bottom of the rumors and determined that
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there was just no truth to them. Just as the memory of Crystal Pepsi once again began to fade from
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public consciousness, a trained competitive eater named Kevin Strahl literally heaved the beverage
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back into relevancy. Thanks to a 2013 viral YouTube video in which Strahl quickly quaffed
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and then 45 seconds later vomited. Every drop of a two-decade-old bottle of the stuff
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a new passion for the soda was ignited. The video's viral success, for some weird reason
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led to the beginning of an internet petition to bring back Crystal Pepsi. This set the stage for the development of a consumer study
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to determine whether bringing back the soda full-time would be worthwhile. On August 8, 2016, Crystal Pepsi made a surprising
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if brief, return to supermarket shelves. While no one knows exactly why PepsiCo brought back the product just then
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some believe the sudden resurfacing of the drink could have had something to do
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with the fact that soda sales in the U.S. had been plummeting
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