Coke freestyle machines show who creates the real thing

As teenagers, we thought we were being creative. Low-level outlaws.

Same thing today. Give a teenager (or younger) a glass and a Coke freestyle machine – the touch-screen machines that some restaurants have where you can create your personal soda, either by going deep into their flavor archives or by combining flavors – and watch them "break the rules."

They'll combine a Monster drink and Coke and Minute Maid and Dr. Pepper and Fanta. They'll make their own drink. It's crazy.

Back in the day, it was the same – albeit without the Freestyle machine. When we'd go to the rare restaurant where they let you fill your own soda, you'd go crazy. Mix Sprite and Coke and Dad's Root Beer. Add some fruit punch to it. It was crazy, too. (Admission: I lived in the 1980s and didn't try cocaine. So this is my version of crazy.)

We would call them "kamikazes" or "suicides," two insensitive phrases. But it was bold! It was brazen! We weren't playing by their stupid rules!

Turns out, we were. At the minimum, we were setting the stage to do field studies for them.

Coca-Cola, which has more than 50,000 such machines, according to an article on Food Dive's website, combs through data from those machines every day to determine what flavors people want.

They're using us to do their scientific research! We're lab rats for Coke!

Since launching the freestyle machines, Coke has added four new flavors based on the data: Sprite Cherry, Coke with Cherry Vanilla, Coke with Orange Vanilla and (coming this spring!) Sprite with Lymonade.

On one hand, that's pretty cool. A company giving customers the freedom to select what they want (within the 32-drink flavor profile offered by Coke) and listening to them.

On the other hand, it makes the creative use of those machines seem much less, well, freestyle-y, right? If I'm being really creative with something and the result is that one of the world's largest corporations can make another product to make more money, am I really "freestyling?" Or am I an unpaid intern, doing market research?

Back when I was in college, I'd often play basketball with my friends at a church gym. We'd play for hours and then, apropos for the era, we'd go to the local Denny's. Some people would eat breakfasts (it was often late at night), others would have a soda. As a diabetic, I was limited in my soda choices, but there were two things I liked to drink: Diet soda (Tab was the only available choice at Denny's then) and milk. 

So I'd order one of each and an extra glass. Then I would combine Tab and milk, 50-50 in the glass and drink it. Daring!

Even now, it seems hideous, but then it seemed kind of cool and kind of dangerous in a not-really-dangerous way. It was unique. It was mine.

So after reading this – or after Coke examines data from drinks ordered at Denny's 40 years ago – if you see that Coke is introducing its new Tab With Milk drink, you can thank me.

I'm the unpaid 1980s intern at Coke who created the world's greatest drink.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@outlook.com.