When I was 13, I worked at my grandfather’s business during my free time. Our job was to set up carnivals, which ranged everywhere from a quick 15-minute set-up to more elaborate endeavors that took hours to complete. Before we ever left the area and hopped on the freeway, we always stopped by the Circle K. While someone gassed up the cube truck, the rest of us would go inside and get drinks. Me not knowing any better would usually go for a soda. Sometimes I would get a two-liter, but only if I believed that it was going to be a long day, the sun breaking me out into one long consecutive sweat.
However, there was a time around 2002 that was pretty fascinating for somebody who saw those freezer displays several times a week. It was one of those periods where sodas were starting to change things, and among the flavors that I remembered in constant rotation were Mountain Dew Code Red and Pepsi Blue. While I had a handful of reliable flavors, those two felt special and filled me with anticipation whenever I saw them. I liked those flavors so much that they barely lasted once the cap was popped off.
In hindsight, I realize how much of my love of the novelty food industry came from those days. My coworkers and I were always buying drinks and candy that had these contests going. I remember sodas having answers either printed on the caps, or on the back of the wrappers. Maybe I got my love of this pageantry even earlier from excessive viewing of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1972), seeing The Golden Ticket™ as an opportunity to some wondrous new world. There’s no denying that seeing colorful lollipops fly before your eyes as a child doesn’t cause some salivating.
But Pepsi Blue was one of those fascinating anomalies in my life. The only drink that comes close is Sobe’s short-lived Drive flavor, though that taste has largely faded from my memory to the point that I’m more fond of the name. Considering that Dr. Pepper came out with a phenomenal Dark Berry flavor last year, it got me thinking about Pepsi’s short-lived creation. Whatever happened to the drink that sat on those shelves, so bright blue that it had to have been radiation? I wanted to find answers, and what I found was something that is only disheartening if you consider that I was a naïve kid with bad consumption habits.
In August 2019, Business Insider listed Pepsi Blue among the biggest failures in soda history. Whereas whole generations have New Coke or Crystal Pepsi, I have no opinion of those. I never once saw an ad for those bad boys. What I remember is seeing this commercial that couldn’t be more early-2000s if it tried. I don’t even know that they had a legacy outside of this commercial.
Sev was a band from Virginia who I remember to be more in line with the trendy nü-metal sound of the time. There was some rap and loud guitars. It’s all indecipherable now, but reviewing the commercial made me see exactly what Pepsi Blue’s issue was. They were the “How do you do, fellow kids?” of soft drinks. Sev was performing in a monastery, upsetting the simple life of those around them. If you look at it now, they seem like assholes who just randomly get rewarded a Pepsi Blue for being stuck in this monastery while the simple farmer goes about his life like some sanctimonious jerk. Allegedly there were ads from Britney Spears and Papa Roach, but I can’t imagine them being all that different from this.
If you had to understand at its core why Pepsi Blue was not going to be the biggest drink in the world, just know that I was in their demographic, at an age where anything I bought pandered to me. I was too naïve to notice how stupid that Sev commercial was. I just know it was loud and edgy, reflecting something you’d find more at X-Games than your local corner store. I’m not saying that I loved skateboarding. I got a skateboard a kid, fell off a few times, and called it quits. At most I played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 on loop, but even that’s generous.
This was their target audience and if my dad’s any indicator, they just didn’t understand. One time he asked me how to play THPS2 and I told him “I don’t know, just mash buttons.” He got mad and left. I imagine watching those commercials and feeling the same way. They’re just mashing buttons, capturing a moment in time that has become largely ridiculed for white people appropriating one genre and bastardizing another for popular consumption. Whereas grunge has aged better than anyone expected, nü-metal is that garbage can fire that hobos keep to stay warm underneath the bridge.
This was largely the instinct that I had for Pepsi Blue going into this research. I had no other news to go off of. Then, I began to do research and found the story as a bittersweet tale of several things going wrong.
This begins a bit before the birth of Pepsi Blue. This is in the time when Mountain Dew first released Code Red. The drink was considered a success, causing Mountain Dew’s sales to rise 6% for that first year. The red-colored drink was a phenomenon, and it only extended its brand into new territories. Its parent company Pepsi began to think “What can we do to keep this money train going?” And voila, Pepsi Blue was conceived.
Another thing that has to be considered is that Pepsi Blue was being designed to compete with Coca Cola’s Vanilla Coke. If your competitor has a new drink, why not have something to distract on the market? Given that Code Red had a flavor reminiscent of cherry, why not go again for the reliable fruity taste?
The story goes that they taste-tested over 100 flavors over the course of nine months. The drink was geared towards teenage consumers not only in taste but in its bright blue color. This wasn’t like traditional flavors, which were darker and thus more conventional. This was going to revolutionize your taste buds. To date, there’s no certainty as to what the actual flavor was. Pepsi only labels it as “berry” while consumers would refer to it as either blueberries or raspberry. Some would even argue that its flavor and name were reminiscent of a drink that Jolt Cola had created called Jolt Blue CX2.
Along with advertisements in America geared at youthful audiences, Pepsi Blue sold their drink at the 2003 Cricket World Cup as a gesture of support for the Indian cricket team. Why did they single them out? Well… they were wearing blue jerseys. Also, this was going to be the drink of the sport, and you best not forget it. It was also given out at New York Mets games in 2002, which (surprise!) used the color blue. It was also endorsed by The New England Patriots kicker Adam Vinatieri.
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| I guess The Toronto Blue Jays were busy |
Then there’s the most controversial detail of all. This doesn’t have anything to do with flavor or packaging. In fact, some people likely stayed away from the drink because it had one ingredient that was not only disapproved of, but was banned in several countries.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome Brilliant Blue FCF, commonly referred to as Blue 1. Considering that some think that Pepsi Blue is just Crystal Pepsi with some mediocre berry flavor, they wouldn’t be too far off on one front. Blue 1 was a synthetic organic compound that was often used as a blue colorant for processed foods. While it is nontoxic, there are a whole handful of reasons why this is a bad thing.
For starters, reports have stated that 95% of the ingested dye was found in the gastrointestinal tract. It also had the capability of being absorbed in the bloodstream. While it works as a biological stain, it is less encouraging for those who just want to drink a soda for refreshment It stains your skin and tongue, and it makes the most paranoid of us wonder what else it will do to us. Some reports have suggested that Pepsi Blue’s manufacturing plants were mostly chemical plants.
Drinks were handed out from VW New Beetles at shopping centers around the country. It would also make cameos in the films The Italian Job (2003) and Garfield (2004). The effort for making Pepsi Blue appeal to hip young audiences was admirable, even if it was ultimately foolish. Why didn’t they just try and make it a desirable drink for everybody else? Why did it have to be geared at teenagers who likely didn’t have enough money to keep the Pepsi Blue organization afloat? They probably couldn’t even afford paddleboats to row out and save passengers off of that ship as it sunk at sea.
For what its worth, Pepsi Blue was really only a failure in North America. It lasted between 2002 and 2004 before being discontinued. However, you can still get the drink overseas in the Philippines at various 7-Eleven establishments. Just don’t expect the exports to come cheap. Despite there being an online community desiring the drink to come back, E-Bay currently has a bottle of the drink priced at $70+ dollars. If you want to get just the cardboard box it came in without anything inside, that’s still $19, plus shipping and handling.
Before I conclude, I feel the need to take a look at the casualties of the Pepsi Blue era. In just two years, it thought that it could take down Vanilla Coke. Not only has the Coke subsidiary survived, but it has become a staple of different drinks (the newest being Orange Vanilla Coke). Meanwhile, Pepsi Blue’s marketing crew feel reminiscent of the Blade Runner (1982) curse. Sev disbanded in 2006 and have only reunited for a one-off show in 2019. Papa Roach had a hit with “Scars” in 2004 but otherwise hasn’t had the same level of success since. Britney Spears is the only one to stand the test of time, though she did have a notorious mental breakdown in 2007 that threatened to derail that narrative.
As someone who loves novelty flavors, I am not opposed to trying a Pepsi Blue as an adult, though I’m not willing to put in the legwork to get there. I would rather work on trying that Sprite Cranberry that LeBron James promised me six months ago. Even then, I can’t ignore how I recognize the nostalgic love of Pepsi Blue on various Reddit threads. Berry-flavored drinks are tough to perfect, and very few get them right. Dr. Pepper Dark Berry is possibly the only one in recent years that got it right. If anything, I want that drink back.
Even if it’s only in words and images, to get a look back at Pepsi Blue in 2020 is to find something bittersweet. Those images take me back to looking at those shelves as a 13-year-old and thinking that it was the best thing in the world. Then again, my world view was much smaller. Now every fast food joint has a dispenser with hundreds of flavors, and I will never grow bored with what they have. Maybe I can look through those digital weeds and find a drink on par with Pepsi Blue to match my desire, but I doubt it. I’ve moved on not only from that but also from Code Red. They’re still good, but there are so many other things that I want to drink right now, and that’s why my heart doesn’t exactly long for Pepsi Blue anymore.
Though, if you’re willing to give me one for a discounted price, I will be more than willing to negotiate.
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