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The subject of this article:
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Alfred Hopewell is the absentminded vice president of the CokeCola company and the inventor of the infamous New Coke. Alfred's ideas to improve the product amount to lunacy: he excitedly suggests adding steel wool shavings to remove the turpentine taste.
His seductive wife, Alice Hopewell, invites Forrest in when he tries to give her encyclopedias (simultaneously signing her to a contract to buy yearbooks). While attempting to seduce him, she offers him a Coke, which is described by Forrest as tasting like "a combination of turpentine and bacon grease, with a little sugar an fizzy-water throwed in" Forrest mixes "twenty or thirty" things from the cupboard, ultimately improving the taste of the Coke. Alfred is amazed, but frustrated when Forrest cannot immediately reproduce his drink, and compels him to come to Atlanta.