Crystal Pepsi

Crystal Pepsi was a clear, caffeine-free cola that PepsiCo launched in the United States in the early 1990s, riding a brief but intense cultural fascination with transparency as a signal of purity and health. It looked like sparkling water but tasted, more or less, like Pepsi — a deliberate paradox that the company bet would feel modern, clean, and futuristic to a health-conscious consumer. For a moment, it was one of the most talked-about new products in America.

The drink arrived during the early-90s clarity craze, when clear products were marketed everywhere as cleaner and more wholesome: Clearly Canadian sparkling water, Zima from Coors, and a wave of clear soaps and dish detergents from brands like Ivory. PepsiCo’s gamble was that the same logic could sell a cola — strip out the caramel color and the caffeine, keep the cola flavor, and present the result as a purer take on a familiar favorite. It test-marketed the product in 1992 and rolled it out nationally in 1992 and 1993, anchored by a famous Super Bowl XXVII commercial in January 1993 set to Van Halen’s song Right Now.

Trial was strong — curiosity drove a lot of people to try it once — but repeat purchases fell away quickly. Many consumers found a clear cola disorienting: it tasted like cola but did not look like one, a mismatch between expectation and experience that proved hard to overcome. A hurried reformulation, rebranded as Crystal from Pepsi, only muddled the proposition further, and an aggressive competitive response from Coca-Cola helped sour the whole clear-soda category.

PepsiCo pulled Crystal Pepsi in 1994, barely two years after its splashy debut. It has since become one of the most cited product flops in American marketing, studied in business schools and remembered fondly enough that PepsiCo brought it back in limited runs in 2016, 2017, and again around 2022 to capitalize on 90s nostalgia.