OK Soda

[echelon]

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.)

[allworknoplay]

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.

[mintplant]

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

[0] https://obeyclothing.com/

[Torwald]

> 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.

[mehrdadn]

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

[kristopolous]

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.

[MisterOctober]

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

[shaggerty]

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

[raydev]

> 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.

[VectorLock]

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

[867-5309]

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

[bergstromm466]

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

[qubex]

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]

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]

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.

[micheljansen]

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]

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

[aasasd]

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).

[ThePhysicist]

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.

[yantrams]

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

[theandrewbailey]

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

[schoen]

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

[PopeDotNinja]

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.

[DonHopkins]

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

[travbrack]

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

[baxtr]

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

[durpleDrank]

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.

[raverbashing]

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]

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!)

[zorpner]

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

[anthony_romeo]

> 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.

[sergers]

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.

[LeonM]

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/

[dhosek]

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.

[DonHopkins]

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

https://www.goodbeans.nl/

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

[yantrams]

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

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

[menor]

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.

[austincheney]

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

[valuearb]

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.

[skibz]

> 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?

[Noxmiles]

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

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

[crazygringo]

Well hey, the branding worked for OkCupid.

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

[petetnt]

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

[improv32]

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

[ben_w]

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