A couple colleagues have suggested that I publish material cut from the book during the edit process here on the blog. “Think of your book like a film,” said one. “It gets a tight edit for the theatrical release, but the blog is like the DVD version—you can include all the cut scenes and extras that were lost along the way.”
You might be thinking, Hey, Lucas, your editor no doubt had a reason for cutting the stuff in the first place. Why publish potentially substandard or irrelevant material? It’s a valid question—but, thing is, it’s often the material writers love most that we’re encouraged to cut. In fact, the dilemma is common enough among writers to merit its own gruesome little adage: Drown your kittens. So with that, I introduce you to “Drowned Kittens,” an (occasional) blog series devoted to unpublished OBD reporting. Enjoy!
The Arrival of Coke and Pepsi
It was the late 19th century. No claim was too outrageous—no marketing too extreme. Just as the American public was obsessed with skyscrapers, racing to erect taller and taller totems of capitalism, marketers were doing the same with brands, heaping one ridiculous claim on top of the next until their products outboasted all rivals. Many of today’s most dominant brands sprang out of this era of frenzied exaggeration. In 1886, a husky, generously bearded pharmacist from Atlanta named John Pembleton mixed up extracts of the coca plant and the kola nut and proclaimed it, among other things, an “esteemed brain tonic and intellectual beverage.” Indeed, Coca-Cola’s zippy concoction of cocaine and caffeine, not to mention some good old-fashioned sugar, were guaranteed to live up to Pembleton’s promise of an “exhilarating,” “invigorating” drink for the nerves.
Two years after Pembleton began selling Coca-Cola in Atlanta, Caleb Bradham, a pharmacist 500 miles to the east, in New Bern, NC, founded Pepsi-Cola to market his own special recipe. Where Pembleton had opted for cocaine, Bradham apparently called for pepsin, an enzyme that helps the stomach break down food. (Pepsin gets its name from pepsis, the Greek word for digestion.) Bradham’s early ads boasted that Pepsi-Cola “aids digestion” and was a “pure combination of pepsin—that’s what your stomach needs these days.”
Today, neither Coke nor Pepsi contain the ingredients from which their names were derived. Cocaine was phased out of Coke by 1929. Pepsin? If Bradham did include it, it’s gone today. Various theories accounting for the name are available—one noting that Pepsi-Cola is an anagram for Episcopal. The official history on Pepsi’s Web site mentions neither the enzyme nor the religious congregation. As the recipes faded from memory, so did the marketing linking them to their ingredients. In reality, it’s debated that Pepsi ever contained pepsin; Bradham may have just branded it as such for a marketable hook. Up against miracle cures like Hamlin’s Wizard Oil [a brand I'll return to in another post] it’s easy to understand why Pembleton and Bradham resorted to wild claims to boost their brands.
