I always suspected there was more to 'New Coke' than just a supposed marketing failure.

Turns out, it was the plan all along -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke

The putative switch was planned all along to cover the change from sugar-sweetened Coke to much less expensive high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a theory that was supposedly given credence by the apparently different taste of Coke Classic when it first hit the market (the U.S. sugar trade association took out a full-page ad lambasting Coke for using HFCS in all bottling of the old formula when it was reintroduced[41]).