Coca-Cola rival shares big news on three canceled soda flavors | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Usually a product gets removed from shelves when demand falls. Every inch in a grocery store is valuable, and products that don’t move lose their spots.

Companies tend to stay ahead of this because they don’t want to lose that shelf space. That’s why many snack or beverage companies introduce new or seasonal flavors.

When people get bored with Double Fudge Oreos, the cookie company brings out Strawberry or, for some reason, Selena Gomez. The same happens with Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.

Both companies want to claim as much shelf space as possible. That’s why they rotate out flavors and bring out new ones.

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Coca-Cola (KO) and Pepsi seem to be battling an endless array of new companies trying to sell everything from healthier sodas to energy drinks. If offering Cool Ranch Coke or Pepsi Grey for a few months keeps one of those rivals out of a store, that’s good for the beverage giants.

It’s not common for popular soda flavors that are selling well to be pulled from store shelves. That, however, is what happened to three flavors offered by a growing Coca-Cola and PepsiCo (PEP) rival.

Soda brands are fighting for shelf space.

Image source&colon; Shutterstock

Ghost forced to pull 3 flavors

Ghost, which markets its beverages as “feel good energy,” offers a lot of flavors. That includes classics from Iced Tea Lemonade, Electric Limeade, and Welch’s Grape to wackier offerings like ‘Merica, Pop, Strawbango, and Sour Pink Lemonade.

The company offers energy drinks, but it’s also trying to present them as healthy.

Ghost describes its beverages as “authentic flavors, zero sugars, and no BS.”

It’s hard to detect whether a drink has any “BS” in it, as there’s no FDA standard for that, but the company tries to explain its mission on its website.

“The fully transparent, fully loaded, feel-good energy drink we’ve all been waiting for,” the company shared on its website.

In the interest of transparency, the company shared some bad news in early May.

More Food & Dining:

“Yesterday, @ghostlifestyle announced that Mondelēz International (parent company to Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish, @oreo, @chipsahoy, @nutterbutter, and many others) was not interested in moving forward with their long-standing product licensing deal,” the SodaSeekers Instagram page reported.

That means Ghost will have to stop making its Sour Patch Kids and Swedish Fish flavors and will no longer be able to bring customers those authentic flavors.

Ghost fans get one last chance

At the time that news was shared, it was unclear whether Ghost was going to be able to sell off its remaining stock. Cans that were already shipped to stores were not pulled, but no new shipments were scheduled.

Now, it appears that fans of the three discontinued flavors will get more chances to enjoy them (or fill their basements with as many cans as they can hoard).

“A few days ago, the CEO of @ghostlifestyle stated that an agreement had been reached to ‘soft land’ the @mondelez_international collaborations over the next 12 months, including the three Ghost Energy flavors seen here,” SodaSeekers reported.

Exactly what that means remain a little unclear.

“While firm details have not come out on what that ‘soft landing’ entails, this likely means that Ghost has been permitted to sell the remaining stock of these collaborative products while supplies last. No further product will be produced,” the Instagram page shared.

Many fans remain upset that the flavors are being pulled.

“I’m still salty about this. Legit took away the 3 best flavors in my opinion,” itz_thomas84 wrote.

Many people suggested that Ghost would bring the flavors back under different names.

Haven_I_price has a more cynical view: “They’ll bring it back after a few months or a year or so to spike demand for a quick buck,” they posted.