Getting Stranger Things "New Coke"

The newest season of Stranger Things is a little more than a month away, and the hype keeps growing with each trailer release, each tie-in, funko pop, set pic, everything. This season looks like it’s going to be amazing. Set over the summer in 1985, those of use who experienced said summer are going to take a trip down memory lane.

One of the biggest tie-ins, and probably the one with the biggest hype, was that they were going to bring back New Coke. What is New Coke?

Well back in the early 80’s, Pepsi was killing coke in taste tests “The Pepsi Challenge” and eroding Coke’s once dominant market share. They decided to create a new formula, that was sweeter like Pepsi’s. They released in in April of 1985, and discontinues the old coca-cola recipe. PEOPLE WERE PISSED! They didn’t care if they liked new coke better than the old one, they were just pissed the old one was gone.

79 days later, on July 11th, 1985, 3 days after my 3rd birthday, Peter Jennings would interrupt General Hospital to announce that Coca-Cola’s old formula was coming back now as Coca-Cola classic. On the floor of the US Senate, yes the US FUCKING SENATE, David Pryor would call the reintroduction “A meaningful moment in US history”. That’s right, that happened.

New Coke remained for a while, I remember it tasting kind of like Pepsi. My dad hated it and said it “tasted like monkey piss”. How he knew what monkey piss tasted like was beyond me. Eventually they rebranded it Coke 2, and in 2002, it disappeared for good.

On Thursday May 23rd, 2019 at 5pm eastern, Coke put New Coke on sale once again. This time, through their online webstore. You could get 2 cans of it, along with limited edition stranger things bottle of coke and coke. zero, for 20 bucks. They also sold a bunch of New Coke march and Stranger Things coke merch.

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They put an “Upside Down” Coke Machine up in NYC, but Squeezer has a family and I was working so we couldn’t drive up to get it. They only way was to overpay on the website.

I logged in around 4:50pm…… cokestore.com was already crashed.

I continued to refresh throughout the night…. finally around 9:30-10ish, I was able to get somewhere. I kept getting to they payment screen, then crash.

Then I’d try through Apple Pay on my phone. The Apple Pay went through, but didn’t confirm the purchase. Then I tried PayPal, again went through, but didn't confirm the purchase.

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Finally I tried again around midnight, It went through and I got a confirmation e-mail. I for sure was going to get 1 set and the black new coke hoodie.

Then I checked my bank statement.