French Man Trying Coca-Cola for the First Time

Submission 1,889

About

French Man Trying Coca-Cola for the First Time refers to a black-and-white photograph and reaction image of a French man spitting out Coca-Cola after trying it for the first time. Made by photographer Max Kauffman for LIFE Magazine during the 1950 Coca-Cola marketing campaign in France, the photo went viral online in March 2022 and has been humorously captioned in memes since September 2022.

Origin

In 1950, Coca-Cola, which had been available in France since 1919, launched a marketing campaign in the country, with Coca-Cola vans touring the streets and salesmen distributing samples of the drink to adults and children.^[1]^[2] At that time, photographer Max Kauffman took photographs of French people tasting the beverage for the first time for LIFE Magazine. One of the photographs (shown below, left) depicts a bar patron violently spewing out Coke upon trying the drink.

Prior to 2022, the photographs appeared in a number of online collections, including Rare Historical Photos^[1] and Bygonely.^[2]

On March 2nd, 2022, the Facebook^[3] page Old Photos posted the photograph of the French man spitting out Coca-Cola with the caption, "The first time a French man tasted Coca-Cola, 1950." The photograph (shown below) garnered over 40,000 reactions and 9,700 shares in two years. On the same day, X^[4] user @GalanZJ1 posted the image with the same caption, with the post gaining over 4,000 reposts and 17,000 likes in the same period (shown below).

Spread

On September 5th, 2022, X^[5] / Twitter user @connenrad90 posted the earliest caption meme based on the image, quoting the March post with the caption, "SACRE BLEU ZISS IZ NOT *!" The meme (shown below) garnered over 6,500 reposts and 45,000 likes in two years.

Following the post, the photograph achieved virality on X / Twitter as it was paired with various captions. For example, on September 6th, 2022, X^[6] user @realestruli posted a meme that received over 13,000 reposts and 97,000 likes in two years (shown below, left).

On November 3rd, 2023, X^[7] user user @NiGHTS108 posted a Showing Things to a Victorian Child joke that received over 14,000 reposts and 189,000 likes in four months (shown below, right).

The image saw more use online in 2024, often being used in conjunction with other viral X / Twitter posts such as the 97-Year-Old NYC Diner Still Serves Their Coke the Old Fashioned Way.