Canning it

Coca-Cola’s climbdown from its white holiday-can debacle has been awkward, to say the least. The soft drink giant is already phasing out a limited edition white Coke can launched one month ago as part of a special holiday promotion with the World Wildlife Fund to protect polar bears (key figures in Coke’s Christmas marketing for decades). Confused consumers took to social media sites to register their displeasure, complaining that the snowy white cans were too difficult to distinguish from silver holiday-themed Diet Coke cans and, somehow, made the fizzy brown pop taste funny. Now, two weeks after putting up a bizarre “fact sheet” on its website to explain which cola was in which can, Coke is talking up the abrupt return of its “iconic” red holiday cans (“Phase II”) as though it were in the cards all along. A Christmas miracle!