It’s been 50 years since some savvy marketers launched the Pepsi Challenge, a series of blind taste tests conducted all over the U.S. in public places giving everyday soda drinkers samples of Pepsi and Coke while cameras were rolling. The ensuing results provided Pepsi with a healthy montage of people choosing Pepsi as the better-tasting choice for future TV ads that would become part of the lexicon over the decades that followed.

Soda drinkers in Bentonville have three opportunities to officially take the Pepsi Challenge this week as the 50 year anniversary Taste Tour ’25 rolls into Northwest Arkansas. But this isn’t the same sugary Pepsi Challenge that launched in 1975; this is a zero calorie, artificially sweetened soda taste test pitting Pepsi Zero Sugar versus Coke Zero Sugar. Accord

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