In 1985, after dropping two percentage points in the world soft-drink market, the Coca-Cola Company launched a multi-million dollar advertising campaign to beat back its seminal rival Pepsi. The ultimate aim: to replace the artificial sweetener in Diet Coke with high-fructose corn syrup and thus change the face, and the taste, of, preclassic coca-cola America’s favorite carbonated beverage. After months of R & D, their child was finally ready. In blind taste tests conducted that year, New Coke quickly became a titanic hit, smashing the ratings of Pepsi and “old” Coke alike. Coca-Cola knew they had created a Frankenstein.

In a television interview that fateful year, Coca-Cola Company Chairman, Roberto Goizueta, plugged New Coke absolutely shamelessly. Smacking his lips after an ostensibly delicious dip into the Nectar of the Gods, he stuttered in his Southern drawl, “Smoother… uhh… uhh… rounder… yet… uhh… bolder.” The following months found Coke execs flopping around like dying walruses, as millions of Americans nearly went to arms against the company’s taste transformation. New Coke quickly became the most spectacular flop in beverage history.

New Coke is hardly alone. Descend into the rich underground of the dead beverage community for just a few hours, and you will begin to understand how, Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon cards, and coin stamp collecting ever became so damned popular. Wait, just kidding.

But across the blogosphere and beyond, morticians of drink continue to analyze and attempt to obtain their lost loves: loves which often transform into unhealthy obsessions. One fan of New Coke, for instance, who runs a blog by the name “Deadprogrammer” recently bought a can of New Coke for $10 off of e-bay, cracked it open and took it down. Despite the amber fluid being over 15 years old, Deadprogrammer left the experience healthy and mostly satisfied. He wrote, however, that he was disappointed he had never gained any superpowers from his experience.

Speaking of superpowers, do you remember SURGE? That delicious Willie Wonka chocolate river of energy drinks? Yeah, well, it’s dead. But fear not. Be sure that in the technology age, Surge will never completely die in the hearts and minds of the American People. Indeed, savesurge.org—a lavishly built website extolling all aspects of the no-longer-bottled-soda—documents the travails of those seeking the holy grail of dead beverages: lost SURGE soda fountain locations. After Coca-Cola Enterprises, the largest bottler of Coke products in the world, dumped Surge from its line-up in February 2002, the Gen-X-inspired drink simply evaporated from the bottling market. Years later, serious SURGE fans literally travel hundreds of miles to drink from the remaining fountains of greenish delight while they hope, fervently, that the beverage will one day return to soda machines everywhere.

Eric Greene, SURGE fan extraordinaire, hoped to rest his unhealthy obsession with the delicious energy drink once and for all. After he discovered, in 2002, that the SURGE supply in his local vending machine was no longer being replenished, Eric made a run on the last bottles, dropping $10 to purchase every one. And then he waited for the right moment. “Well, I finally did it,” Eric wrote, “I got hitched. I got married on September 4, 2004. On my wedding day, I had planned on drinking one of my last two SURGE cans. I made sure that I was caught in action. Let's just say that my last SURGE made me feel like I was in heaven.”

Having been fairly failed sane forays into the world of beverage experimentation, New Coke and SURGE fans might have some sympathizers; some might even think they don’t deserve to stay buried. After all, a little shoveling of the dirt could be healthy for the multi-billion dollar beverage industry. But some sodas just deserve to stay dead. Take, for instance, Jones Soda Company’s second consecutive foray into the obscene and absurd. In 2003, the Jones Soda Company launched a seasonal Turkey and Gravy soda just in time for the holidays. The result? They couldn’t restock fast enough. The absurdly terrible tasting bottle of junk was a huge hit. In anticipation of another year of great success, Jones launched the soda again in 2004. This time, however, it came in a 5 pack, which Green Bean Casserole Soda, Mashed Potato & Butter Soda, Fruitcake Soda, and Cranberry Soda. Taste results were awful beyond measure. Innovative blog boingboing.com called Turkey and Gravy delicious in comparison to Green Bean Casserole. Delicious. And yet people all over the Internet still clamor for one more year to try their tastebuds against this Gigli of disasters.

Perhaps the most interesting (beverage?) flop occurred when Heublein introduced a “Wine and Dine Dinners” package in the mid 1970s. The premise was simple enough. Take a small bag of pasta, add seasoning and then cook it with a small bottle of wine, all included in the pack. Well, you can probably guess what consumers decided to do with the bottle of wine. All across the country, consumers were rudely shocked when, after doing a quick six with bottles of heavily salted cooking wine, they wanted to boot for entirely different reasons than the alcohol induced one. Granted, people were dumber in the seventies (hey, they invented disco), but economics had once again exposed the myth of the thinking consumer.

Strangely, not-so-delicious wine in a bottle offers a moral to the tenacious dead beverage underground: it’s all in a name. Once people get hooked, they won’t give it up. But don’t mock their affinities: can you imagine the yawning spiritual void that would open and threaten to engulf you if Keystone Light were suddenly pulled off the market, to join the hoards of dead Kool-Aid flavors and failed Coca-Cola experiments?

Well?

Can you?