I Like Pie

Normally, Coke -- which has trailed Pepsi in sugar colas in food stores for most of a decade -- loves to emphasize that food stores are only about 43% of the whole story. But when Coke inched past Pepsi in that category in December and January for the first time in a decade, it temporarily changed its tune. It put out a news release announcing that its momentum in the soft-drink industry had "soared to new heights." When February and March rolled around, Coke was quiet. Pepsi had once again regained a slim lead.
After the test, Miss Strednak doesn't even ask about the results of her blind taste test; the whole thing was so obvious."I can't drink Coke," says the 16-year-old. "It gives me a headache. It doesn't quench my thirst. It has an aftertaste. I have Pepsi with everything."
In the cola wars, the taste test is the ultimate Big Gun, and it has changed the course of soft-drink history. Pepsi hauled it out to fire the Pepsi Challenge at Coke in 1975, and it was Pepsi's consistent superiority in taste tests that is widely believed to have pushed Coca-Cola in 1985 to change its formula.
Nonetheless, Coke and Pepsi are at it again. Coca-Cola is pitting new Coke against Pepsi. PepsiCo Inc. is pitting Pepsi against Coca-Cola Classic. And to try to get to the bottom of all this, we decided to pit all three against each other in our own taste test a few weeks ago.
If it's any consolation, she has a lot of company. In this taste test, recently conducted for The Wall Street Journal, fully 70% of the 100 taste testers were mistaken about what they were drinking.
In the cola wars, the taste test is the ultimate Big Gun, and it has changed the course of soft-drink history. Pepsi hauled it out to fire the Pepsi Challenge at Coke in 1975, and it was Pepsi's consistent superiority in taste tests that is widely believed to have pushed Coca-Cola in 1985 to change its formula.
But the consumer rebellion that followed the introduction of the new Coke formula two years...