A Soft Drink that fell on Hard Times

Anybody remember 7up Gold? Well I do. It had such promise. Such potential. Released in the spring of 1988 with great expectations, the most regal of all sodas quickly lost it's fizz. This is what happened...

As you can imagine, the prospect of a Gold soda excited me so. So much so, that due to an insider tip, I went in and bought a thousand shares of 7up, specifically the 7up Gold shares, in late 1987. I wasn't interested in any other 7up products, just the Gold ones. Everything was looking good. In my mind, it was a can't miss! But I should have paid attention to the warning signs of failure. Here's what went wrong:

1. The taste.

To start things off, it tasted like someone backwashed a cinnamon apple jolly rancher into a can of caffeinated ginger ale. I was there for the one and only taste-test marketing session and I knew just by looking at the test panel, something wasn't right. First of all there was an old lady who had lost the sense of taste well over twenty years ago, sitting next to a kid who had recently burned the inside of his mouth on some pizza, and a Mandarin Chinese man who didn't know how to say "Tastes Bad" in english. They really thought they had a decent demographic spread. 

I should have spoke up...but I was so sure...

2. The can.

Look at the design here. There's one overwhelming flaw. The color. It should be black, not red. Everyone knows that! The color that goes best with Gold is always black. (Look at my friggin' blogs!) Here are some other obvious examples of gold going best with black:

Watches-

Iphones-

Black People-

3. Homoerotic advertising.

Here's the biggest nail in the mausoleum. The commercials. Take a look at this:

Is that the gayest shit you've ever seen? I mean I got no problem if you're a dude and you want to do another dude, just don't do it in a 7up Gold commercial! There's like one shot of the chicks, and the rest is these two jaggoffs acting like a-holes and paying a homeless guy to deliver to them what should be a premier soft drink product! It's all wrong!

And then to finish it all off, you got one guy exploding his can all over his own face while his partner reaches in to get a taste and then licks the precious fluid off his finger! And again, no broads in sight! Super-homo stuff going on here. Straight people drink soda too you know! 

Combine all that, and you've got one doomed product.

Rest in Peace 7up Gold.

P.S. If anyone is interested in a few hundred boxes of unopened 7up Gold, please email me at gusmusterino@gmail.com or leave a comment below.  My goal is to someday be able to park my car inside the garage.

Anyone have any other products they thought/wished had made it but didn't?