The Extra Caffeinated Vintage Breakfast Pepsi That No One Liked

Before the rise of über-caffeinated canned drinks in tall, thin cans like Red Bull, Celsius, and even V8 Energy, Pepsi was already trying to crack the code of getting people to crack a cola in the morning. In the cola wars between Pepsi and Coke, and with the mid-'80s arrival of Jolt Cola promising "twice the caffeine," Pepsi decided it was time to try its hand at busting open the morning market. 

So in 1989, with coffee sales on the decline and soda sales climbing, the company launched Pepsi A.M. with diet and regular versions in Midwest test markets. The new morning beverage contained 28% more caffeine than a regular Pepsi, still less than coffee, and featured a smoother taste thanks to reduced carbonation. Its packaging leaned into the theme: a can designed with yellow sunrise rings at the top and a bold "A.M." stamped under the logo, ready to slot itself into your morning ritual.

But like other Pepsi coffee experiments — Pepsi Kona, Pepsi Cappuccino, and Pepsi Café — it didn't pan out as planned, disappearing after just one year. The Pepsi company's biggest competitor in the cola wars later watched a similar product suffer the same fate. The discontinued Coca Cola BlāK was a drink that tried to combine the tastes of soda and coffee in the early 2000s.

People might not have liked Pepsi A.M. when it launched nearly 35 years ago, but it might have just been ahead of its time. The concept — a soda with extra caffeine designed to kickstart your morning — seems a lot less strange when you remember what came after. Jolt Cola was already bringing the extra caffeine in the mid-'80s, and by the late '90s, Red Bull exploded onto the U.S. market from Austria, helping kick off the energy drink craze. Within a few years, Monster, Rockstar, and dozens of others turned "crack a can for energy" into a multibillion-dollar habit.

Gen Z's doing it their way; instead of an afternoon smoke break, they're headed for an afternoon "fridge cig" to get that daily bump of energy with a Diet Coke. By three o'clock every day, my desk usually has at least three drinks. My morning cold brew is watered down to second drink status and my functional beverage of choice — which is water with plenty of fresh lemon added — is lacking in the energy department, so I usually head for a "fridge cig" myself for that 46 milligrams of caffeine to push me through the day and into the evening. Maybe Pepsi A.M. was missing the functional beverage point. You can add caffeine to anything, but coffee has powers that wake you up that a cola just can't compete with.