On this very day in 1985, the Coca-Cola company launched its new Cherry Coke in New York. A long-time staple of drugstores and soda fountains where cherry-flavored syrup would be manually added to the cola to give it that cherry zing, this was the first attempt to mass manufacture that experience in a can.
We have all different types of Coke now including Coke with lime, Coke Zero and Vanilla Coke, but back then, Cherry Coke was a big deal. It wasn’t available in Los Angeles yet, but I remember one of my friends bringing a can to school that his father had bought on a business trip to the east coast and it was a magical experience. A bunch of us gathered around and we each took a sip from the can. I can still remember how amazing that first taste was. I thought if humans could invent something like this, man, we could do anything we wanted to do! It was that good. Those were much simpler times.
Here’s the first commercial for Cherry Coke from 1985. Like I said, much simpler times (there’s even an Asian chick…uh…jazzercising?):
1. When a non-Chinese person sees a majestic bird flying through the air, he will think to himself, “I wish I could soar like that majestic bird.” When a Chinese person sees the same bird, he will think to himself, “I wonder how that bird will taste with oyster sauce and bok choy?”
