14. Both benign and nefarious conspiracy theories surrounded the failed attempt by Coca-Cola to alter their recipe in 1985
Suffering a declining market share, with consumers seemingly preferring the sweeter taste of rival Pepsi-Cola, on April 23, 1985, Coca-Cola underwent a recipe change to replace its original formula with an altered version in an effort to appease fans. Triggering a hostile backlash from the American public, despite their apparent disfavor with the original taste, the Coca-Cola Company received in excess of 40,000 letters expressing anger at the change. Forced to reintroduced the original formula after just seventy-three days, the saga remains an influential cautionary tale against tampering with a well-established brand unnecessarily.
Despite being considered a major failure for the company, New Coke has since become the object of conspiracy theories alleging ulterior motives. Claiming a company as successful as Coca-Cola could not have made such a blunder, an erroneous hypothesis to begin any investigation with as human error is near limitless, the most benign but still uncorroborated theories regard the failure as a deliberate marketing ploy to increase sales once the original returned to shelves. Other more extravagant, but equally unproven theories, contend the experiment was designed to cover for the removal of illegal drugs to evade prosecution by the DEA to the inclusion of harmful chemicals to induce psychological changes upon the American populace.