It's What's Her Name, the Everywoman of advertising.
As Mental Floss notes, Royal Crown Cola was innovative. "It came out with the first canned soda, the first caffeine-free soda, and the first 16-ounce soda. It was the first to take diet cola mainstream, and the first to stage nationwide taste tests."
RC, rolled out in the 1930s and boomed soon after, cornered the diet market in the 1960s. The artificial sweetener, cyclamate, horrified Big Sugar, but studies about cyclamate horrified consumers. Royal Crown divested into juices, bizarrely into furniture, and finally into Arby's. It was all mismanaged, and then a new owner came and slashed everything, especially the marketing, just when Coke and Pepsi began their modern marketing blitzes. Perhaps you've heard of the Cola Wars.
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