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The Curse of Max Headroom Is the Reason New Coke Failed
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by Tina Kells | April 23, 2009 at 03:38 pm
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I hated Max Headroom from the moment I first saw him. The creepy animated character, that wasn't an animation at all, first debuted on April 23, 1985 to promote a new and improved version of Coca Cola and I firmly believe that he is the reason the new Coke failed.
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Touted as an innovation in animation when the commercials first aired in 1985, it quickly turned to scandal for Coke when it was revealed that the character of Max Headroom was played by an actor named Matt Frewer.
Matt Frewer rode out Headroom mania as long as he could with a short lived "animated" series based on the Coke advertising character. The series first aired on Cinemax and then on ABC for barely two years from 1987 through 1988.
Max Headroom then disappeared from TV in both series and commercial form; thank God for small miracles.
New Coke also disappeared after a rather short run replaced by something called Classic Coke, which was the original Coke. Coca Cola Classic (Classic Coke's more formal name) stuck around for quite a long time with it's classic branding and was given back the plain name Coke earlier this year.
All of this history does have a point; and that point is the curse of Max Headroom.
Max Headroom ruined new Coke by freaking out a generation of young kids who's parents were mad that they had to soothe the nightmares. New Coke was joined, and quite quickly usurped, by Coca Cola Classic, because kids refused to drink it and parents refused to buy it.
Matt Frewer didn't fare much better. He went on to star in a series of B and C movies and another short lived TV series (or two) before making his mark as a doomed-to-be-undead but very loving father in the remake of Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Playing a zombie dad was Frewer's finest performance ever and much less creepy than his Max Headroom role.
The curse of Max Headroom killed new Coke and it killed Frewer's career. Max Headroom is without a doubt one of the worst things to come out of the very ugly decade we call "the 80's."
He’s kinda the epitome of the bizarro pop culture landscape that was the 80’s. I barely remember him, but I remember him enough to conclusively wonder what the hell kind of drugs people were doing back then aside from lotsa blow.
Also, New Coke was a failure. But we won’t talk about that inauspiscious debut.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 20:30 on April 23rd, 2009
Two movies I loved with Matt Frewer: Steven Kings The Stand and Honey I shrunk the Kids.
at 00:27 on April 24th, 2009
Max Headroom did a 30 minute pop music video show that I found hilarious. Generally featuring asinine clips of dubious or over-the-top quality.