The TV figure Max Headroom is best remembered for appearing in commercials endorsing which product?

Today, the name Max Headroom may not register with many young Americans or with those who are under the age of 35. But the half-human, computer-generated TV talk show host leaped into media super stardom on ABC from 1987 to May 1988. Besides appearing on network television, Max obtain great fame and notoriety by allowing the Coca-Cola Co. to use beverage rights to Max Headroom's persona as its most visible licensee.

In a one-year $400,000 deal to lure back young soft drink buyers it was losing to Pepsi, the Max Headroom ad campaign was created by Coca-Cola. The advertising executives at the time said that it was the most exciting Coca-Cola campaign since the beverage maker abandoned its popular "Coke Is It" series featuring actor Bill Cosby.

The new commercials were developed to awake Coke from a creative slump that saw the beverage maker experiment with everything from patriotic themed ads, featuring the Statute of Liberty and images of the nation's past, to ad spots that used trick photography to show the contents of a can of Coke defying the laws of gravity by flowing horizontally across the screen.

By having the Max Headroom promotional ad campaign, it was seen as a shrewd way to both capture the imagination of a fickle--but lucrative--youth audience and boost the financial fortunes of Max Headroom's creators. Nonetheless, most parents and middle-aged Americans still remained mystified by all the hoopla. What did people (Coke drinkers) see in Max?