The NEW New Coke.

Coke tries to blame C2's dismal sales on overpricing.

C2 Mistake Coca-Cola's soft drinks on average are priced 6.1 percent higher than PepsiCo's drinks, as of Sept. 4, according to Sanford Bernstein.

High prices helped undermine the new mid-calorie C2 cola, Coca-Cola's biggest product launch since Diet Coke in 1982. The introduction was backed by a U.S. marketing campaign with commercials using music from the Rolling Stones.

The cola was priced about 40 percent higher than other Coca- Cola soft drinks in grocery stores, and sales have generated less than 1 percent of the company's revenue.

``We need to take our share of the blame,'' Isdell said in an interview last month. ``We are going to correct it.''

Isdell said he'll reduce the price gap on C2 to about 15 percent.

That's part of it, but not the whole story. Like Pepsi's Edge, it targets a consumer (Atkins fanatics) that is and has been for a while now, drinking diet soda, which has zero carbs and zero calories. I don't see Atkinsoids suddenly deciding to switch to a higher carb, higher calorie drink when they've already gotten used to the taste of diet soda.

Another part is that, unlike Pepsi's Edge, Coke C2 is just plain awful.

I look for Coke C2 to go the way of New Coke soon. Speaking of New Coke, why is it that, almost two decades after the demise of New Coke, Coke is still calling the real stuff 'Coca-Cola CLASSIC'? Isn't it time to drop the 'Classic'? If New Coke still exists in some small market somewhere, wouldn't it make more sense to change IT's name to something like "Coke Formula B" so that the "Coke" default returns to where it SHOULD be -- the original Coca-Cola?