The folks at 99 cent only (a huge closeout/dollar-type store on the west coast) have managed to obtain Raging Cow & Mad River for their stores and are selling them (surprise) 2 for 99 cents!

Bring your Pallet Jack, because they close out anything and everything. Heck, last week they were selling Pabst NA beer 2 for 99 cents.

...and 99 Thanks for shopping 99 cent only (now open at 8)

(Thought I'd quote their annoucements!)

man i'd love to see a can of pabst NA...

http://dopeman.org/diamonds/

Pabst...

Yes, thanks alot Coca-Cola for taking an up and coming brand like Mad River away from all of the people who built it, and then Atlantacizing the artwork and imagery and running it to the ground and dumping it on the side of the road. Whenever I meet a manufacturer who wants us to distribute their product, if they talk about their excitement about some day having Coke, Pepsi, or Cadbury knock on their door to buy them out... that makes me disinterested in moving forward with their brand.

You forgot to mention that Coke took Mad River out of glass and put it into plastic.

I wil give you one reason not to buy Mad River!... It is horrible!! I swear it is pure syrup! Here in Canada you can still buy it in glass. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I used to buy their Red Tea every once in a while, years ago. I bought a bottle last month. Ugh.... You can immediately tell the difference between the glass bottled tea and the plastic bottled one. The plastic residue flavor totally throws off the taste. So, to hell with Coke. They need to get the message that people want quality. When you take away the quality, sales suffer. Except for Classic Coke. People won't stop drinking that, no matter how Coke cheapens it down. Classic Coke's an American icon, so it'll always sell well, no matter how lousy it is. Coke learned that with the New Coke fiasco. Just keep the old name that everyone knows and loves, and lower it's quality until it's nothing but cola-flavored Kool-Aid. People will keep buying Coca-Cola because of their childhood memories of how it tastes and not it's current flavor.

Coke did Mad River a favor by buying it, then killing it. It was only suffering there on the shelfs, letting the crap all settle to the bottom of the bottle. Some people seem to like it, I have never ever seen one bottle sell. That used to be one of the big brands I would trade out for Jones Soda space, so what does that tell you.

CCE Mid-Atlantic has killed Mad River. The space will be eventually taken over by the new 4pk MM Lights.

Well, Ron... I guess it all depends on where you were working. We were delivering Mad River to movie stars' homes and nobody was coming along offering to exchange Jones for it and I would suspect that if someone were to have tried, they'd have been taken away by security...

Anyway, it's not like Mad River was the best thing in the world. It's just that Coke came along and messed it up and messed up alot of the small distributors' infrastructures. At the end of the day I guess they won because they just stifled a part of the market that was getting noticed.