The Discontinued Coca-Cola You Probably Forgot Existed

The history of Coca-Cola is littered with discontinued varieties. The mega-brand has taken a lot of swings in its time, and it’s had a fair few misses in the process – and while it generally gives its products a fair amount of time to make an impression before they get axed (Coca-Cola Orange Cream had a year before it was exorcised from its product line; it was a limited-time flavor, but didn’t it just feel like it was hoping it would stick?), when it cuts them out, it can be ruthless. 

Videos by Sporked

As such, its flavors tend to fade into the night quietly. Such was the case with one Coca-Cola variety that, unlike some, managed to stay on sale for a good seven years before it rolled into the soft drink graveyard. Let’s take a look back. 

A Life Cut Short

We’re talking about Coca-Cola Life, an interesting little version of the drink that existed from 2013 to 2020 in markets around the world. Debuting in Argentina after a whopping five years of research, it was then sold in Chile, then Europe, and finally made its way to the US, where it was the first major launch of a Coca-Cola product in almost a decade. It remained on sale until 2020, when it was discontinued. 

You might remember Coca-Cola Life from its green packaging – or you might remember the fact that it used a combination of stevia and sugar to sweeten the drink. This combo gave it less sugar and calorie content, but not everyone was totally convinced. Coca-Cola Life got a fair bit of criticism from certain corners, who said that it was simply a gimmick.

So, What Happened?

Well, its mix of sugar and stevia turned out to be a bit of a problem. Despite initially performing well with customers, Coca-Cola Life suffered from occupying a fairly unsatisfying middle ground. Some people wanted full-sugar Coke, while others wanted Diet; not many people wanted something in between. As a result, its sales started to bomb, and Coca-Cola discontinued it in 2020 to rebalance its portfolio and get rid of an underperforming product.

Apparently, its flavor was also a problem. “I worked for a market research company back around when this was launched and Coke was a client,” said a comment in a recent Reddit thread. “We were testing this product with consumers and had 3 or 4 different varieties with different ratios of stevia to sugar and all of them were pretty gross. Not surprised it didn’t last.” Others in the thread piped up saying that they really weren’t fans of the flavor mixture – and others still said that they’d completely forgotten this one had existed. To be honest, we did too.