{"product_id":"vintage-1986-max-headroom-coca-cola-poster-🚀-c-c-c-catch-the-wave-space-theme-advertising-litho-plate-signed-mckelvey","title":"Vintage 1986 Max Headroom Coca-Cola Poster 🚀 \"C-C-C-Catch the Wave\" Space Theme Advertising Litho, Plate-Signed McKelvey","description":"\u003ch2\u003eRemember Max Headroom's Coca-Cola Ads? 🛸 A Soda Pitch Beamed in From Deep Space\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 17\" x 14\" ~ New Old Stock, never hung.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uEyzkGsOOnQ\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eHere's what you get: Max Headroom, dark sunglasses and a dark suit, grinning in front of a huge ringed orange planet, with Earth, a small moon and a spiral galaxy scattered through the starfield behind him. Down at the bottom a Coke can tips forward and pours out a stream of cola that curls up and becomes the planet's own ring - a genuinely clever bit of commercial art, turning a soda pour into a planetary ring system. \"MAX HEADROOM\" sits in a red-bordered box up top, and \"C-C-C-Catch the wave.\" runs along the bottom beside the can, its \"Coke\" script marked Trade-mark, and the Coke logo again at the corner. Down in the starfield, lower left, it's signed in the plate: McKelvey. The back is blank. New Old Stock, never hung.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🥤 Look Closer at That Can\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRead what's actually printed on it: it just says \"Coke.\" Not Coca-Cola Classic. That one word is the whole joke of this poster, because in 1986 \"Coke\" and \"Coca-Cola Classic\" were two different drinks sitting on the same shelf, and this poster was built to sell the one nobody had asked for. By 1986 Coca-Cola had even split its advertising between the two: Coca-Cola Classic got \"Red, White \u0026amp; You,\" and plain Coke got \"Catch the Wave.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe story starts on April 23, 1985, when The Coca-Cola Company announced it was changing the formula of Coca-Cola itself, the first change to that formula in 99 years - a project developed in secret under the codename \"Project Kansas,\" led by marketing vice president Sergio Zyman and Coca-Cola USA president Brian Dyson. The public did not take it well, and 79 days later, on July 11, 1985, the company brought the original formula back as Coca-Cola Classic. The reformulated drink didn't go away, though - it kept right on selling alongside Classic, and Coca-Cola needed someone to sell it to. Bill Cosby, who had spent years telling America the original Coke was less sweet than Pepsi, walked away from the account, saying the new-formula ads had hurt his credibility. So at the start of 1986, going after the young Pepsi drinkers they'd wanted all along, they landed on the strangest spokesman imaginable: a \"computer\" named Max Headroom, telling younger drinkers to \"C-c-c-catch the wave!\" That reformulated Coke was renamed Coke II in 1990. This poster is a piece of the campaign that tried to make it cool while it still just answered to \"Coke.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1995, ten years after new Coke came out, Coca-Cola held an employee event to mark the anniversary, and chairman Roberto Goizueta looked back on the whole thing: \"We set out to change the dynamics of sugar colas in the United States, and we did exactly that -- albeit not in the way we had planned.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1986 was a big year for Coca-Cola for another reason, too: it was the company's 100th birthday. On May 8, 1886, an Atlanta pharmacist named Dr. John Stith Pemberton brought his new syrup to Jacobs' Pharmacy downtown, where the very first glass of Coca-Cola was poured and sold for a nickel. His bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, gave the drink its name, figuring the two Cs would look good in advertising, and wrote it out in the flowing Spencerian script that's still one of the best-known trademarks in the world. Pemberton sold the last of his share in 1888, the year he died. Atlanta businessman Asa Candler owned the business outright by 1891 and incorporated The Coca-Cola Company on January 29, 1892. A century later, in May 1986, the company threw itself a four-day centennial celebration back home in Atlanta, finished off with a parade down Peachtree Street, in the same year Max was out telling teenagers to catch the wave.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e📺 The \"Computer\" Who Wasn't One\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMax Headroom was already famous before Coca-Cola ever hired him. He was created by George Stone, Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, and he debuted for British audiences on April 4, 1985, in the Channel 4 film \"Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future.\" Chrysalis Visual Programming made that film for Channel 4, and Stone worked out its story with screenwriter Steve Roberts. Channel 4 billed him as \"the first computer-generated TV presenter,\" and a lot of people believed it. He wasn't. Under the stutter and the glitch was actor Matt Frewer, sitting in foam-latex prosthetic makeup and a molded fiberglass suit in front of a blue screen. The character went on to his own program on Cinemax and then an ABC series that ran 1987 to 1988 - and somewhere in the middle of all that, he became the face trying to convince America that new Coke was worth a second look. And it worked better than anybody expected. Two of the \"C-C-Catch the wave\" spots were directed by Ridley Scott, the man who gave us Alien and Blade Runner. Newsweek called them maybe \"the most cleverly structured pitches ever aimed at the under-30 viewer,\" and Coke's marketing chief John Reid said 76 percent of teenagers had heard of Max after the very first flight of ads. Coke's consumer hotline got more calls about Max than about any spokesman before him, and some of those callers just wanted to know if he had a girlfriend. The ads kept running through 1987, and Video Storyboard Tests of New York picked the campaign as the best of 1986.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e👻 The Night Somebody Stole His Face\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere's the part of the Max Headroom story that has nothing to do with soda, and it's the one I like telling most. On the night of November 22, 1987, someone wearing a Max Headroom mask broke into two Chicago television broadcasts - first cutting into WGN's evening news, then, later that night, interrupting WTTW's broadcast of Doctor Who. Whoever did it was never identified, and the case has never been solved.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI love that this whole strange chapter - a fake \"computer\" hawking a soda nobody wanted - produced glossy, cosmic advertising art like this. It's a genuinely odd little artifact of a genuinely odd year for Coca-Cola.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/1993-max-headroom-coca-cola-coke-nos-bumper-sticker-advertisement\"\u003eVintage 1987 Max Headroom Coca-Cola Bumper Sticker 🥤 \"Don't Say the P Word\" NOS Chrysalis Catch the Wave Cola Wars Ad\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/diet-coke-magnet-brings-1980s-coca-cola-nostalgia-home-vintage-treasures\"\u003eVintage 1980s Diet Coke Refrigerator Magnet 🧲 NOS Coca-Cola Advertising Promo Collectible\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1930s-coke-coca-cola-soda-bottle-protector-chicago-il-treasures\"\u003eAntique Coca-Cola No-Drip Bottle Protector 🥤 1930s Chicago Paper Sleeve, Take Home a Carton Bag\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67890526617812,"sku":"VAG-7882852532456","price":31.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0685\/2309\/8324\/files\/il_fullxfull.4038653726_d5oi.jpg?v=1792549071","url":"https:\/\/role-players.shop\/products\/vintage-1986-max-headroom-coca-cola-poster-%f0%9f%9a%80-c-c-c-catch-the-wave-space-theme-advertising-litho-plate-signed-mckelvey","provider":"Role-Players","version":"1.0","type":"link"}