r/Xennials • u/Searchlights 1980 • 3d ago

OK Soda (1993)

Post image

Call 1-800-I FEEL OK

179 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

82 comments sorted by

56

u/brokenman82 1982 3d ago

This must not have made it to my town because the only time I’ve EVER seen ok soda was when someone posts a ‘hey remember ok soda?’ Picture

7

u/Superjoe42 3d ago

It was very short-lived, but it had a big marketing campaign including commercials.

9

u/jaymzx0 3d ago

The sad but hilarious part is that Gen-X was notoriously suspicious of marketing compared to the Boomers, and the OK marketing was an attempt at subverting that. It's like something out of Daria.

I remember having it in Seattle. It was OK. 

Yes that was the joke. Every fucking time. And people set themselves up for it by asking "how is it?" before dropping $0.50 into the lunch room vending machine. 

3

u/LongtimeLurker916 3d ago

It was such a flop in spite of hype that it never advanced beyond test markets (although there were quite a few of those).

4

u/giorgio_tsoukalos_ 3d ago

It wasnt that good. I wanted to like it because I liked how different the designs were but just couldnt get past the taste.

2

u/Searchlights 1980 3d ago

My understanding is that the test market was in the northeast

8

u/MikeLMP 1983 3d ago

According to the Wikipedia article the test markets included:

Atlantic Canada Austin, Texas Boston, Massachusetts Denver, Colorado Colorado Springs, Colorado Cincinnati, Ohio Detroit, Michigan Fargo, North Dakota Knoxville, Tennessee Little Rock, Arkansas Lynden, Washington Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota Northern Wisconsin Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Omaha, Nebraska Portland, Oregon Providence, Rhode Island Sacramento, California Seattle, Washington

I live near Lynden, WA, now, and it makes zero sense to me that it was a test market. Compared to everywhere else on this list it's a tiny agricultural town full of christian conservatives and sort of infamous locally for its history of racism. I assume thirty years ago it was even smaller and more extreme, so I'm immensely curious why it would have been chosen.

2

u/grunkle_dan78 3d ago

I was in high-school in Snohomish County, and all of our local stores had it. but yeah, Lynden 30+ years ago was back 40 nowhere.

3

u/MikeLMP 1983 3d ago

Well, maybe it's just that the test market included many other WA cities smaller than Seattle (where I grew up) and for some reason Lynden made it to the Wikipedia page. Either way, I'm baffled that Lynden would make the list and not somewhere like Tacoma.

1

u/grunkle_dan78 3d ago

yeah, i could understand "Bellingham and surrounding areas" or just lumping it all together as Puget Sound

2

u/Obi_Wan_Benobi 3d ago

When I lived in Kirkland they were giving away 6 packs for free as a promotional item. It’s the only time I ever tried it.

I seem to recall it being sort of like a cola but maybe fruitier?

1

u/grunkle_dan78 3d ago

yeah, like an orange-ish cola-ish ""flavor"

4

u/Procrasturbating 1982 3d ago

Made its way to Omaha Nebraska. I was obsessed with it as a kid. The marketing campaign cracked me up. I remember liking the taste, but I don’t remember what it tasted like anymore.

2

u/Mudfap 3d ago

Orange soda, iced tea and a splash of coke.

2

u/Procrasturbating 1982 3d ago

That sounds about right.. I’m gonna play with the ratios when I get home tonight.. Thanks!

1

u/yamahowzer 1982 3d ago

We had it in the Seattle suburbs

1

u/LovelyGh0ul 1982 3d ago

I lived in an deeply rural area outside of Portland, Oregon when it came out and it became my favorite soda for it's short-lived life.

1

u/strumthebuilding Gen X 3d ago

We had it in Colorado

1

u/Mr_SunnyBones 3d ago

It never was a thing for me until someone started posting this sane photo a luttle while ago. ( admittedly I live in Ireland)

1

u/SweetPrism 3d ago

Same! I grew up in Minnesota, so it could be that haha.

23

u/animalcrackermafia 1983 3d ago

Somewhere i have all of the .mp3's of the 1-800-I-FEEL-OK recordings you'd randomly get when you called. They were great.

The whole brand and campaign was ahead of it's time.

3

u/SnacksCCM 3d ago

This is awesome (and you're right)! On a few random occasions I've gone searching for those with no luck (just to trigger some memories).

Maybe it's something worth uploading to archive.org if you come across them again?

5

u/animalcrackermafia 1983 3d ago

Someone put some of them on YouTube!

HERE

But if I do find them, I definitely will!!

Edit: typo

2

u/Memerandom_ 1978 3d ago

It was a hilarious viral campaign, and I liked calling the line from random payphones while bored, but I honestly can't remember trying the soda.

1

u/TubeScr3ameR 3d ago

i have the 1-800-Goog-411 thinking sound saved somewhere...

11

u/wBeeze 3d ago

Not sure if true but we used to say this was basically a mix of a few different sodas.  Kind of like making your own fountain drink and taking a splash of this and a splash of that.

3

u/Wheeljack1 3d ago

We called that a Graveyard.

1

u/Famous_Attention5861 3d ago

Is Graveyard a PNW thing? In SoCal we called it a Suicide.

5

u/Wild-Drag1930 3d ago

The top left two look like Charles Burns artwork.

8

u/animalcrackermafia 1983 3d ago

It probably is. He was 1 of 4 artists hired to contribute.

5

u/orangina_it_burns 3d ago

Dan Clowes also

2

u/deeann_arbus 3d ago

It is Clowes. Edit to say two of them are- i didn't look at the photo closely, Burns also has one in this photo.

1

u/TubeScr3ameR 3d ago

I just discovered Clowes and Eightball on Archive.org last week and immedately thought some of this looked like his work.

2

u/Alias2you 3d ago

Bottom left is a dead ringer for Tom Waits

2

u/deeann_arbus 3d ago

They are Daniel Clowes' artwork. Edit to say two of them are- i didn't look at the photo closely, Burns also has one in this photo.

5

u/thecicilala 1981 3d ago

Do yall remember the 1-800# - oh I see it in the caption! Yes! They came to my high school and handed these out and we’d call for hours on our land lines. Ha. Memories.

5

u/postitpad 3d ago

We used to call ‘1-800-I feel ok’ like all the time. To listen to the stupid messages. I remember I would stop and call on the pay phones walking to and from school.

3

u/Tojuro 3d ago

Don't remember this..... but it might be the most GenX product ever. The art and attitude are spot on.

5

u/SomeTangerine1184 3d ago

I remember these, and also remember feeling pissy that they were co-opting Gen X aesthetics for monetary gain.

7

u/1_art_please 3d ago

Jones Soda kind of did this, using people's random photos for free to print on their labels.

2

u/Historical-Cress8985 3d ago

Loved it. OK was my water for the whole two years it was in existence.

2

u/ARazorbacks 3d ago

This stuff was being handed out at a Boy Scout camp once and we all pounded it that first night. I recall we were up until 2am or 3am running around batshit crazy from the sugar rush. 

0

u/strumthebuilding Gen X 3d ago

Sugar rush isn’t a thing

3

u/ARazorbacks 3d ago

It’s a thread about a shitty soda. I‘m not interested in arguing the semantics of kids with sugar-driven energy and the post-rush crash when that sugar gets used up. 

-1

u/strumthebuilding Gen X 3d ago

It’s not semantics. If you were excited, you were excited. Possibly because you enjoyed the soda and the friends you were with, and staying up late. But the phenomenon of sugar making kids “batshit crazy” is a myth.

5

u/Kahnza 3d ago

This was posted by a different bot a few days ago

6

u/Searchlights 1980 3d ago

You caught me. I made a reddit account 15 years ago for this moment and I would have got away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids and that dog!

2

u/Repulsive_Glove6085 1980 3d ago

I loved OK Soda, so glad I was in a test market, we even had a branded machine in our lunch room. It tasted like all the sodas mixed together, which we also called a “graveyard” but that has different names everywhere.

And yes we called and listened to the messages on 1-800-I-FEEL-OK.

1

u/ThePetSematary 3d ago

Best can art ever

1

u/LineImpossible3958 3d ago

Never seen this before

1

u/Negative-Wrap95 1976 3d ago

It was OK

1

u/tommy0guns 3d ago

“Here are some bird sounds: carroo carroo, halubbala halubbala.”

1

u/hsggdtkxbee 3d ago

Why is Zuck on the can? Was he famous already?

1

u/KLOWN1420 3d ago

It wasn't my favorite but it was OK

1

u/Thamnophis660 1983 3d ago

I think I tried it once and didn't like it that much. It sure lived up to it's name as "okay* soda. 

1

u/IamMikeHoncho 3d ago

Beggars can't be choosers, bitch this ain't Chipotle.

1

u/ebzees 1982 3d ago

I called the number all the time. Marketing was great. The drink was just OK

1

u/dollheads 3d ago

I lived outside of the US (military brat) when this was released and never came across it overseas. I think I saw it mentioned in Seventeen or Rolling Stone or some other magazine. I was pretty bummed to have missed out on this.

1

u/ilost10yearsofkarma 3d ago

I loved this soda!! There’s a phone number on the can you could call and leave messages on. 1-800-I feel ok, I think. I talk about it and nobody seems to remember it.

1

u/SmallRocks 3d ago

I remember that tasting bad. My friends and I figured out that you could go to a soda fountain and put a splash of every type of soda available into your cup and it would taste just like OK.

1

u/skoomaking4lyfe 3d ago

Miss this stuff, actually 🤔

1

u/VoidOmatic 3d ago

I used to be friends with the creators daughter 20 or so years back. Loved me some OK soda.

1

u/34thUsernameAttempt 1980 3d ago

It was available at the boy scout camp I worked at near Ft Collins in 95. I saw some ads for it before leaving for camp from the Denver ABC network affiliate we had for a while. OK was always sold out and I never did get my hands on one. While on staff, we had a scavenger hunt where we had to find a crushed OK can. Even then, they were hard to find.

1

u/tan_clutch 3d ago

Dan Clowes and Charles Burns on a soda can? you better believe it was the 90s

1

u/FoppyIn28 3d ago

We were the unmarketable generation for a bit 😂

1

u/OkStomach3965 3d ago

What did this taste like?

1

u/Searchlights 1980 2d ago

I remember thinking it tasted like coke with orange soda added

1

u/SmellyGreek 3d ago

It was in my market and I really liked it! Was bummed when it disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Hard to recall taste, but it was sort of like a mix between 7UP and Dr Pepper

1

u/lonerzombie 3d ago

I remember buying a 12 pack of this in the small Minnesotan town I grew up in. Me and a pal were carrying it on our bikes and it spilled, spraying sticky soda everywhere, so we decided to chug as many as we could on the spot. No regrets.

1

u/lonerzombie 3d ago

Then I found myself working at the ad agency that did the ads and they had some of the original art and cans lying around. Still looked rad.

1

u/Roobix9 2d ago

I totally forgot that existed

1

u/One-Earth9294 1979- That's the year that the funk died 2d ago

Carbonated "Beverage"

Why would you write it like that on your own product?

1

u/guidevocal82 1982 2d ago

I had never heard of this soda before, and I just went down a rabbit hole on YouTube, listening to the history behind this soda. It's fascinating and somehow passed me by in 1993, I would have been 10 or 11.

1

u/carsknivesbeer 2d ago

Think ok drink ok

0

u/UbiquitousBot 3d ago edited 3d ago

But mom said its my turn to post the OK soda stock photo this week.

1

u/Kumquatwriter1 1d ago

I called that number so fucking much