We asked people not yet born in 1985 to try ‘New...

It’s widely considered the biggest marketing fail of all time: In 1985, after sticking to the same, sacred recipe for almost a century, Coca-Cola unveiled a new version of its eponymous soft drink, blandly titled “New Coke.”

Just about every American of a certain age is familiar with what happened next. Consumers were so distraught by the new flavor that protesting the change became a cultural obsession.

But what about Americans who are not of a certain age? We rustled up a panel of Houston Chronicle journalists who were not yet born in 1985 (there are a lot of us), to sample the recipe, which is being re-released this summer as a tie-in with the Netflix series “Stranger Things,” the soon-to-be-aired third season of which will be set in summer 1985.

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Journalists Brooke Lewis, Jordan Rubio, who were both born in 1992, and Julie Garcia, who was born in 1987, were told to come to the tasting armed only with the knowledge they already possessed about the cultural milestone they never watched unfold live. We hoped that as blank slates, they’d be able to assess the soda on its flavor merits, rather than any bias they may have from its notoriety.

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And they were largely unaware of the legacy. While Lewis violated the rules and did a quick Google search ahead of time (reporters are really terrible about having to know everything!), and Garcia vaguely remembered the soda being mentioned in VH1’s “I Love the ’80s,” Rubio was completely in the dark about its history.

“I actually thought this was a new product coming out, and not something from the ’80s, which would make it ‘Old Coke,’ I guess,” said Rubio.

Perfect.

We set each reporter up with two plastic cups, with one marked “Exhibit A” and the other marked “Exhibit B,” for a blind taste test.

On TV, this is when the participants politely sip the first sample, think for a moment, and then try the second, before forming an opinion.

But this did not go the way things go on TV.

Immediately upon sipping the first cup, all three journalists’ faces betrayed them. This was not something they liked.

“Can we say what we think about it?” asked Garcia.

Given the go-ahead, they each shared their opinion.

“To me, it tastes flat,” said Lewis. “It doesn’t taste good.”

“I think it tastes like Pepsi,” said Garcia — who is not a fan of Pepsi.

“Of all the sodas I’ve tried in my life, this is one of them,” said Rubio, ever the diplomat. He paused for a second and added, more emphatically. “It’s brown sugar-water.”

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I didn’t have to tell them that Exhibit A was New Coke. They already knew. And all three of them hated it.

This is not unlike what happened in the summer of 1985. When Coca-Cola released its new formula on April 23, 1985, after using the same recipe for 99 years, the blowback was immediate and dramatic. Protests popped up across the country. People wrote songs demanding the return of the old formula.

And at Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, the consumer hotline began receiving 1,500 calls a day — up from 400 before the shift.

It was, in short, the biggest marketing bellyflop of all time.

CBS News described it best in a 30th anniversary story a few years ago: “When an athlete is great, he or she is called the Michael Jordan of his or her sport. When a new product launch is a disaster, it is called the ‘New Coke’ of its industry.”

Burn.

In the end, the public opinion of New Coke was so terrible that it only took 79 days for the soda company to reverse its decision and re-release the original recipe.

With this kind of cultural fervor surrounding it throughout the summer of 1985, it’s likely that New Coke will be a key detail in the third season of “Stranger Things” when it premieres on the Fourth of July. And yes, Coca-Cola’s limited release of this old flub will surely generate some novelty sales.

But as Lewis put it in her final thoughts near the end of the taste test, “If I want to feel something burn down my esophagus,” it won’t be this.

maggie.gordon@chron.com;

twitter.com/MagEGordon

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