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OK Soda
- schoen 7y agoI 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
- baxtr 7y agoI upvote this because I’m impressed by the number icons.
- qubex 7y ago“Enclosed Unicode Numerals”
- phonon 7y agoVery common in Japan.
- numpad0 7y agoJapanese language require IME to type, which converts sound written in hiragana to kanji: i.e. you type soba → get “そば” → IME suggests you “蕎麦”. Basically a stretch of modern phone keyboard correction but existed since the 80s. Nice side effect to it is while there are predetermined sets of conversions coming with IME, it also handles some arbitrary mapping for convenience, i.e. かお(face) → ( ´∀｀) or きょう(today) → 2020/04/08. iOS Japanese keyboard gives me following for literally number 1: 1 １ ① 一 ⅰ Ⅰ 1K ⒈ ⑴
- ShroudedNight 7y agoSearching for that string explicitly [on Google] only yielded HN results, but relaxing the search terms yielded: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosed_Alphanumerics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosed_Alphanumerics
- travbrack 7y agoI used to spend hours on the hotline as a kid. It was really weird and entertaining.
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoI 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.
- have_faith 7y agoI will volunteer to perform this hard hitting investigate journalism.
- ben_w 7y agoNow I have two questions: 1. Is the sort of thing ever outsourced to, for example, India? Or wherever else is a common place for call centres if it’s no longer there. 2. Is anyone currently doing this with chat bots and speech synthesisers?
- PopeDotNinja 7y ago>> 1. Is the sort of thing ever outsourced to, for example, India? Or wherever else is a common place for call centres if it’s no longer there I don't know if there are call centers full of phone sex workers. You'd have the same background noise you get when calling any call center. And the workers would have to get paid when nothing was happening. Here's a read on the topic: https://www.businessinsider.com/reality-of-being-a-phone-sex-operator-2015-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/reality-of-being-a-phone-sex... >> 2. Is anyone currently doing this with chat bots and speech synthesisers? Me: Hey Google, talk dirty to me. Google: Manure. Dust. Crusty crumbs on the floor. <Poop emoji> I can only report that Google does not talk dirty to me at this time.
- DonHopkins 7y agoIn the 80's I once met a guy who claimed to own the phone number on the "HOW'S MY DRIVING? CALL 1 (800) EAT-SHIT" bumper stickers, a parody of all those trucker's bumper stickers with real 800 numbers to report them to their masters. Not sure how he monetized it, but he had some scheme going on, and paid for it by selling the bumper stickers. Probably he sold more to all the careless drivers who called and wanted one too, than actual shit eaters. https://www.ebay.com/itm/HOWS-MY-DRIVING-CALL-1-800-EAT-SHIT-VINYL-DECAL-STICKER-/390467834464 https://www.ebay.com/itm/HOWS-MY-DRIVING-CALL-1-800-EAT-SHIT...
- DonHopkins 7y agoDo 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.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt https://www.ibm.com/blogs/industries/little-known-story-first-iot-device/ https://www.ibm.com/blogs/industries/little-known-story-firs... https://www.livinginternet.com/i/ia_myths_coke.htm https://www.livinginternet.com/i/ia_myths_coke.htm
- zorpner 7y agoThere 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-sing https://thebaffler.com/salvos/id-like-to-force-the-world-to-... 2. 2/3 Coca-cola, 1/4 Orange Soda, 1/12 Dr. Pepper
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sergers 7y agoA 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.
- jfk13 7y agoAssuming you mean the Indian soft drink, IIRC it's actually "Thums Up" (no "b").
- nkoren 7y agoThat's correct, and the "weird taste" relative to other sodas was (is? Been a while since I've been to India, and I noticed it was losing market share badly last time I was there...) cardamom. Cardamom is put to good use throughout Indian cuisine (chai, sag dishes, etc.), making Thums Up really much more complementary than traditional western sodas.
- jablan 7y ago> A funny thing, sometimes a shitmix has it's own unique taste. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzo_Mix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzo_Mix Mix of Cola and Fanta, and I'd say it's more popular than just Fanta in Germany.
- MivLives 7y agoThere was a way to use a coke soda fountain to make something that tasted shockingly like Baja Blast. It involved Sprit and Blue Poweraid from what I remember. There may have been one more ingredient.
- echelon 7y agoThis 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/M7t4pcRsBSEJ https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.fan.ok-soda/WQuelBjd8s8/... https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.fan.ok-soda/9KxvfnhmaCE https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.fan.ok-soda/9Kxv... https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.fan.ok-soda/1_E_O_HlXww https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.fan.ok-soda/1_E_... (Not sure if Google Reader links are stable.)
- mehrdadn 7y agoYou mean two and a half decades too early? Or do you mean it'd have fared well a decade and a half ago?
- mintplant 7y agoThe branding reminds me instantly of OBEY [0], which was really big for a while in the 2010s. [0] https://obeyclothing.com/ https://obeyclothing.com/
- maest 7y agoIndeed, I made the same link. However, even at its largest, obey did not have a broad-enough appeal as what Coca-Cola execs would've wanted. Also, the ties with a mainstream brand would be off-putting to the core OBEY customer.
- mjfl 7y agoIf I drink this soda will I become haunted like the guy on the can? lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Soda#/media/File:OK_Soda_-_can.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Soda#/media/File:OK_Soda_-_...
- ben_w 7y agoHere in Berlin there is an energy drink branded “ok.-“
- jackson1way 7y agoHere is the link with pictures https://www.okpunktstrich.de/ https://www.okpunktstrich.de/ Not too exciting. They also have chocolate and strawberry drinks :-)
- mweibel 7y agoalso in Switzerland. It's a brand by Valora (Kiosk, Brezelkönig, Ditsch, ...)
- raverbashing 7y agoScored 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 7y agoHow 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!)
- kasey_junk 7y agoPreface: generational reasoning is always stupid. The differences in group are greater than the differences out. That said a) as a gen xer we used to hear all the same things about gen x as we do now about millennials. Its largely time gated. b) gen x is a much more transitional generation, there weren’t as many defining moments and c) its a smaller cohort. Millennials were the largest birth cohort since the baby boom.
- rsynnott 7y agoBecause the media is currently largely staffed by gen X people on the higher levels. As this transitions, intergenerational moaning in the media will shift from targeting millennials to gen x and gen z; as boomers get less relevant even more ire will turn against gen x. Moaning about people who have the nerve to be too young or old is a time honoured tradition; we’ve been at it for millennia and it’s not going anywhere.
- true_religion 7y ago20 years ago, all you heard about was generation X. They had their time.
- 7y ago
- einpoklum 7y agoPlease try to avoid soft drinks by the Coca-Cola company and its local subsidiaries. It is infamous in several (many?) countries for strong-arm tactics - from squeezing business owners to only carry their products through artificial price hikes and withholding certain benefits, to the likely assassination, yes I said assassination, of union activists in Colombia. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jul/24/marketingandpr.colombia https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/jul/24/marketingandpr...
- epse 7y agoThe Pepsi company isn't that much better. (with regard to strong-arming, don't have much to say about assassinations) Quite a few bars around here have had to choose to not carry any drinks from either Coca-Cola or Pepsi, just to be able to serve some new, more local, sodas
- Funes- 7y agoSo much for "capitalism fosters competition". Who would've expected it, huh?
- llcoolv 7y agoWell. Ultimately it does. In larger European cities very few fancier restaurants/bars cater Pepsi/Coca Cola. Those brands are gradually being seen more and more as low-end McSodas. The winners are Club Mate/Fritz Cola and a whole bunch of local brands.
- nicbou 7y agoI'm not sure if that's really true. Club Mate and Fritz Cola are common in Germany, but not so much elsewhere.
- llcoolv 7y agoI would say that in Prague all the hip places have them, they are also quite popular in Sofia (this is what I had on New Year's Eve as I was on antibiotics), though there are still a few nice bars with Pepsi/Coke. I would presume that this is the case in most of the Eastern EU. The small towns and classic pubs usually got Kofola/Derby or some other cheap local alternative. Btw the manufacturing price of soda is almost negligible.
- qubex 7y agoI 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 http://design.pepsico.com/pepsi-perfect.php?v=101#section2
- krstffr 7y agoYes, 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 7y agoI 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.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- andai 7y ago> OK Soda's concept was that the youth market was already aware that they were being manipulated by mass-media marketing, so this advertising campaign would just be more transparent about it.
- samizdis 7y agoIt reminds me of a catchline for 7-Up, spoken by the cartoon character Fido Dido (late-80s?): "More a can of drink than a way of life."
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ThePhysicist 7y agoWhen 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 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.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- yantrams 7y agoFellow 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 https://imgur.com/a/HbCLB5c Clowes also drew one of Silicon Valley's promos https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9V2XMLUIAA8oaC.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9V2XMLUIAA8oaC.jpg
- weare138 7y agoEightball was one of my favorite comics back in the day.
- theandrewbailey 7y agoI chuckled at the quotes around "beverage" on the can.
- mclightning 7y agoAm I the only one feeling this has a weird resemblance to "OK Boomer" in its nonchalant attitude?
- DonHopkins 7y agoThe "Soda Generation" is the generic version of the "Pepsi Generation". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Generation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0jY4WvCIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0jY4WvCIc French Firm Targets "Soda Generation" With Cola-Flavored Wine https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2013/06/28/French-firm-targets-soda-generation-with-cola-flavored-wine https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2013/06/28/French-firm...
- LeonM 7y agoIf 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/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762138/
- improv32 7y agoWeird to see my tiny hometown (Lynden, WA) was used as a test market
- DonHopkins 7y agoI'll just stick to my FUCKING STRONG COFFEE thank you. https://www.goodbeans.nl/ https://www.goodbeans.nl/ https://www.facebook.com/fingstrongcoffee/ https://www.facebook.com/fingstrongcoffee/
- colinhb 7y agoGood coffee, nice people. They're my neighbors in Amsterdam.
- DonHopkins 7y agoThe stuff sure delivers on its promise! I used to live near you too, since I got it at the place on Binnen Oranjestraat, near Relax and Small World Catering (a really great place with nice people, too).
- colinhb 7y agoSmall World Catering is great! They’re still doing some take-out out business through the window. (During Coronavirus, I mean.)
- petetnt 7y agoIt's blowing my mind that these had Clowes/Burns artwork on them!
- skibz 7y ago> 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?
- dhritzkiv 7y agoPerhaps an allusion to non-mainstream demographics?
- micheljansen 7y agoThe 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_categories=Verf&scrolltofacet=categories 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 7y agoReminds me of the Japanese brand (non-brand?) Muji: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muji
- aasasd 7y agoJust 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).
- yantrams 7y agoThey 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 https://imgur.com/a/HbCLB5c Clowes also drew one of Silicon Valley's promos https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9V2XMLUIAA8oaC.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9V2XMLUIAA8oaC.jpg
- menor 7y agoYes, 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.
- Noxmiles 7y agoPerfect marketing for 2020. Hope they'll reboot it soon. "The drink's slogan was 'Things are going to be OK.'"
- MivLives 7y agoI have a hobby of trying odd sodas. This one was on my list with New Coke, Crystal Pepsi, Surge and Orbitz as things I'd never get to try. That list has gotten smaller over time as Crystal Pepsi and Surge got mass rereleases, and New Coke got rereleased last summer. Orbitz I believe said that they no longer have the machinery to make the balls but I have no source on that. Come on Coke, rerelease OK Soda. Tie it in with OK Boomer for all I care.
- thre2ewr4234 7y agoFor a moment there I wondered if George from Seinfeld had created a virtual assistant :D
- shrimp_emoji 7y agoI've watched all of Seinfeld and I don't get this reference :D
- mark-r 7y agoDespite being in one of the test market areas, I don't remember this at all.
- valuearb 7y agoAnother 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.
- krzyk 7y agoDesign of OK Soda looks quite similar to Fallout Nuka Cola
- durpleDrank 7y agoI 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.
- hammock 7y agoI love the term "swamp water." We called it making a suicide. Also, just looking at the ingredients of OK Soda I expected it to taste like Coke and Mountain Dew mixed together.
- loupgarou21 7y agoSame here. I actually still had an unopened can and a stack of labels I had peeled off bottles when I moved out of my parents' house and ended up chucking them all in the trash. I kind of wish I still had the can to just stick on a shelf, the cans were pretty cool looking.
- dhosek 7y agoWhen 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.
- spanktheuser 7y agoI was working in college radio and writing for The Onion back when OK Cola came out. I think the money that went into this makes most sense framed as a type of generational panic combined with technological transformation. The early Gen Xers were entering the workforce with a set of behaviors / values that felt unfamiliar & perhaps threatening to Boomers. Boomers began to feel uncool, out of touch and no longer culturally adept in the way they always had previously. This is nothing new, but I think it might be particularly wrenching when it finally happens to a demographically large and dominant cohort. Millennials, let me know how it works out. More importantly rapid changes in technology caused corporations to lose control of media distribution for the first time. Widespread availability of personal computers / microchips caused media creation and distribution costs plummet in publishing, music, and film production/distribution. New insurgents like Fantagraphics, hip hop, college radio, indie rock, The Onion, The Stranger, Might, indie record labels and indie movies could route around large corporations to find an audience and build a business. Capital was still needed, but was orders of magnitude less than it had been for prior generations. The resulting panic was deepest in the industries connected to entertainment, including those that depended on it for marketing. It seems absurd, but consumer brands convinced themselves that not only would Xers reject traditional media & advertising - they’d reject the previous generations products as well. There was sincere worry that millions of kids would stop drinking Coke & Miller Lite. Ad agencies helped fuel this panic as it brought with it an opportunity to pry large accounts away from incumbents. This period didn’t last long, but it did birth a number of experiments like OK Cola, most of which were conceived as experiments and strategic contingency plans. For a brief and shining moment, there was some decent money and cultural cachet showered upon a bunch of smirking early 20s Xers whose only qualifications were helming a late night college radio program. It was wonderful to see Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns and other generation-defining artists get some well-earned money if not recognition.
- crazygringo 7y agoWell hey, the branding worked for OkCupid. The site's not trying to be an amazing Cupid. Just an OK one. ;)
- beams_of_light 7y agoI remember being so proud of my OK Soda hat that I won in a can at school. Good memories.
- austincheney 7y agoI 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/Generation_X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials