Pepsi Max

History

Pepsi Max debuted in Australia, United Kingdom and Italy in April 1993. The rollout was expanded to Ireland the following September, and to France, Greece, Spain, Portugal the Netherlands the following December. By the end of 1994, Pepsi Max was sold in approximately twenty countries. By the end of 1995, that figure had more than doubled. The product remained unavailable in the United States until 2006 (the U.S. is PepsiCo's native market, and the largest consumer of carbonated soft drinks), where one of its principal ingredients had not yet been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The ingredient in question—acesulfame potassium—is combined with aspartame to provide the beverage's sweetness, whereas some other diet colas are sweetened by aspartame alone.

It's one of the most well known drinks in the world. On 28 May 1994, England's Blackpool Pleasure Beach amusement park opened the Pepsi Max Big One steel roller coaster. At the time, the Pepsi-sponsored attraction was the world's tallest and fastest roller coaster. Both records subsequently were broken elsewhere, but to this date, it still remains the tallest roller coaster in the United Kingdom, and one of the tallest and longest coasters in Europe.

In early 2005, Pepsi Max Twist (with added lemon-lime flavour) joined the UK and Australian product line. In autumn 2005, Pepsi Max Punch was marketed in the UK for the festive season. Containing ginger and cinnamon, the product was similar in flavour to Pepsi Holiday Spice, a sugar-sweetened variety of Pepsi that was marketed in the U.S. one year earlier. In late 2005 and early 2006, a coffee-flavoured variety was introduced in France, Finland, Ireland, Norway and the UK. Known as Pepsi Max Cappuccino (Pepsi Max Coffee Cino in the UK), the product is predated by the similar Pepsi Kona (briefly test-marketed in the U.S. in 1996) and Pepsi Tarik (available in Malaysia since 2005).

Pepsi Max was introduced into South Korea, Bulgaria and the Philippines during 2006, as well as being reintroduced into Argentina in the spring of 2006 after being phased out after its launch in 1994. As well as this, Pepsi Max was introduced into Brazil, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and the UAE during early 2007.

In October 2008, Pepsi announced they would be redesigning their logo and re-branding many of their products. Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max all use lower-case fonts for name brands, Mountain Dew was renamed "Mtn Dew," and Diet Pepsi Max was re-branded as Pepsi Max. The brand's blue and red globe trademark became a series of "smiles," with the central white band arcing at different angles depending on the product. The new imagery has started to be used. In the case of Pepsi Max, besides the renaming of the drink to its international name, the logo has a large "smile" likely to emphasize the North American drink's "Wake up people!" advertising campaign, and also uses black in the bottom half of the globe as opposed to the more standard royal blue. The new lower-case font used on Pepsi's products are reminiscent of the font used in Diet Pepsi's logo from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. The website for the "Wake up people!" campaign now redirects to the Pepsi Refresh Project. It is expected that the version of Pepsi Max outside North America will adopt the new logo used by its U.S. / Canada counterpart; this has now occurred in Australia. In the UK, the cans now have the 'pepsi' text and the new Pepsi globe (with the normal pepsi 'smile' and the blue bottom half, as opposed to the black half used in the US) but the 'Max' is in the previous style.

A Pepsi Max Lime version was released in the United States in February 2010 under the name "Pepsi Max Cease Fire". (which later introduced into the UK in late 2011) It was cross-promoted with a new flavor series of Doritos chips called "3rd Degree Burn". In July 2010, Pepsi began to move its North American branding for Pepsi Max to match its global branding. It now carries a Max typography similar to what is used worldwide, and rolled out a new slogan: "Zero Calories. Maximum Pepsi Taste." Its formula has not been changed. In May 2011, Pepsi introduced the drink to Spain. In 2016, the drink was introduced to Venezuela.

Product positioning

Recent UK/Australia Pepsi Max television advertisements have featured the taglines "Maximum taste, no sugar" and "Don't worry, there's no sugar." Some have incorporated extreme sports and video games such as Motocross Mania in an attempt to appeal to young men (in contrast to other diet cola drinks, which tend to target young women). The British advertising campaign involved retouched versions of the American "Do the Dew" commercials for Mountain Dew (A variant of which is sold in the UK ), rebranded as "Live life to the Max".

Coca-Cola Zero, a sugar-free cola from the Coca-Cola Company, is marketed in a similar manner. In the UK some Coke Zero advertising alluded to Pepsi Max, leading to a robust counter-campaign by Pepsi directly extolling the virtues of the concept of "maximum" over that of "zero."

In early 2005, the north american drink Pepsi ONE was revised, with Splenda brand sucralose replacing the aspartame ingredient.

Suicide

In December 2008, advertisements for Pepsi Max that depicted a cartoon calorie committing suicide were run in a German lifestyle magazine, which resulted in a scandal and the revoking of the ads. One of the three ads featured a bean-shaped character simultaneously shooting himself in the head, with a noose round his neck, and poison in his other hand. The character is supposed to be “one very very very lonely calorie.”

Canadian formulation

Beginning in early 1994, an entirely different Pepsi Max was marketed in Canada. Now regarded as a precursor to Pepsi Edge, it was sweetened with a combination of aspartame and high fructose corn syrup. As a result, it contained 2/3 fewer calories than full-sugar colas (including regular Pepsi), but more calories than conventional diet/light colas (or the version of Pepsi Max sold elsewhere). The Canadian product was discontinued in 2002; the Diet Pepsi Max product introduced in 2008 has no direct relationship to the earlier formulation.

Popular culture

In the Nintendo 64 game Conker's Bad Fur Day and its Xbox remake, Conker: Live & Reloaded, Conker meets a scarecrow named Birdy, who asks for "Mepsipax" in return for a manual.

According to Sacha Baron Cohen's character, Borat, a Pepsi Max factory was responsible for the evaporation of Kazakhstan's Aral Sea.

The soft drink has also been seen in the popular "Uncle Drew" commercials, featuring Cleveland Cavaliers All-Star point guard Kyrie Irving.

In the 2001 PlayStation one game, Motocross Mania, Pepsi Max logos are on the sides of all the race tracks.

There is an in-universe advertisement for Pepsi Max on the Tour Championship course in the movie Happy Gilmore.

A Pepsi Max vending machine can be seen during the hospital fight scene in the 2015 film Terminator Genisys.

In the Japanese anime "Tiger & Bunny", Superheroine blue rose is sponsored by pepsi max and is used as a commercial in the anime.

Starting with their video "Doritos and Pepsi Max", Pepsi Max has been an inside joke on the popular YouTube channel h3h3Productions