The company came up with what is now known as New Coke in what turned out to be – pardon the pun – an absolute fizzer.

The reworked product was such a dud that within weeks plans were hatched to return to the original formula.

To cover their embarrassment, company executives trumpeted the line that consumers were being given great choice and Coke was going to win the Cola Wars over Pepsi.

We know how it all panned out. The original recipe was returned as Coca-Cola Classic and marketed alongside New Coke, which eventually slunk away and died, unloved, in a corner.

The thing about New Coke is that its creators really thought they were on a winner. It was, reportedly, market tested on more than 200,000 people, the majority of whom gave it a thumbs up. Of course, market research didn’t count for diddlysquat in the real world and Coke fans forced a backdown and return to the original.

Here in Australia, we’ve had our own versions of the New Coke fiasco. Anyone remember the Vegemite iSnack 2.0 snafus or the absolute slapdown delivered to Glad when it tried to change the positioning of the cutter bar on its boxes of Gladwrap?

The fierce reaction of users – who bombarded social media with complaints – saw Gladwrap revert to its original box.

Right now, the Arnott’s Biscuits company must be wondering how 11,000 taste testers could have stuffed up so badly when they gave the thumbs up to changes to the Shapes biscuits range.

Arnott’s is so far refusing to back down on its reshaped Shapes, so bikkie fans will have to keep bombarding Arnott’s Facebook page with videos of their kids turning up their noses at the new-style snack.

But what all of these cases demonstrate is that consumers have a huge amount of power and they should demonstrate it more often to bring about improvements in what products manufacturers and supermarkets foist on us.

As this newspaper reported earlier this week, Riverina consumers have heard the plea to assist struggling Victorian dairy farmers and have been shunning supermarket-branded milk that is sold at a loss-making $1 a litre. Earlier this month, The DA reported that Coles had promised to develop a brand of milk which would pledge 20 cents a litre towards a fighting fund aimed to help dairy farmers.

NSW Farmers dairy committee chairman Rob McIntosh was quoted in this newspaper, pointing out that not all consumers want to pay more for proprietary brands, but those who do certainly have the gratitude of farmers.

“As has been pointed out in this debate, milk is currently cheaper than bottled water and no one would give that a pass mark through the pub test,” he said.

As Mr McIntosh pointed out, consumers need choice and, increasingly, we are finding our choices are being dictated by manufacturers eyeing their bottom lines or supermarkets doing exactly the same.

But we don’t have to cop it, you know. Whether it’s upside down cutters boxes, vomit-tasting reworked biscuits or, far more importantly, a change to buy products which are produced in line with ethics we support, all we have to do is vote by simply keeping our cash in our pockets … and leaving a few choice messages on social media for good measure.