Coca-Cola Trademarked ‘Spricy’ And We Have Questions

A while back, a fellow food-and-beverage writer confided something in me: she hated the word “swicy” and how buzzy it had become. For a while, every other press release claimed to have perfected a trend that seemed predicated more on how fun it was to say than on any actual consumer mindset. While swicy products are still hitting shelves with some regularity, it seems the bulk of the trend has passed… at least, until now.

Earlier this month, The Coca-Cola Company frankensteined its own spicy portmanteau: Spricy. The new term has been trademarked specifically for soda, meaning it’s more than likely we’ll see it attached to some sort of beverage release in the near future.

What is Spricy? What will Spricy taste like? Was Spricy teased in an April Fools’ Day post four years ago? Let’s get into how big these six letters could be.

Does this have anything to do with that discontinued Spiced Coca-Cola?

I’m pretty confident this will be as far from Coca-Cola Spiced as possible. That “spiced” version of the original cola was received by the public only slightly better than New Coke. Sure, we weren’t throwing crates of it into the river, but I can’t recall a single person I know who preferred it over the original.

(Considering Cherry Coke and Diet Coke are figureheads of their own cultural religions, new Coke variants have to live up to that potential if they want to stick around for good.)

While it wasn’t spicy per se, it definitely had more of a kick than the original Coca-Cola formula we’re all used to.

Without betraying the identity of any specific Coca-Cola employees I’ve had the privilege of chatting with, I can say multiple people across the Big Red ecosystem have literally laughed out loud when I’ve brought up the Coca-Cola Spiced debacle.

It’s genuinely refreshing to see a company as large as Coca-Cola completely whiff a pitch every once in a while. They’re big enough to survive it in stride, especially since the limited-time Sprite Chill they released around the same time actually overdelivered—to the point that it’s now a permanent offering with its own limited-time variants, including Strawberry Kiwi and Mango Citrus.

And speaking of Sprite…

Is Spricy some kind of Spicy Sprite?

If I were a betting man, I’d say this is almost certainly related to Sprite. While I can’t say for certain whether this will be a brand-new formula or simply a marketing campaign, I know what the internet is hoping for.

On April Fools’ Day in 2022, Sprite posted the following tweet to little fanfare.

Per the agencies that worked on it, this single April Fools’ Day joke ended up becoming the biggest original tweet by any Coca-Cola-affiliated account to date. Tens of millions of impressions later, it became clear the internet really resonated with the idea of a retail release for McDonald’s “spicy Sprite”—a concept that can actually be chalked up to a combination of factors, including the water and syrup being kept at a lower temperature, a larger-than-average straw, and the water and ice being filtered multiple times.

(As a known fanatic, I can confirm McDonald’s has the best fountain Coke products in the game.)

Since there isn’t actually anything different about the Sprite formula served at McDonald’s, it isn’t immediately clear how a retail release would work.

One potential route would be to incorporate the cooling agents from Sprite Chill to recreate some of that crisp, extra-cool sensation delivered by McDonald’s colder-than-average fountain system.

Alternatively, this could simply be a marketing campaign. Coca-Cola could lean into the fact that McDonald’s Sprite isn’t actually different from the original by slapping the tagline “Spricy” onto the classic formula we already know and love.

Whatever it ends up being, you’ll catch me on the waiting list.