Dark Berry Mountain Dew

The most important thing to know as we move forward with this review is that I am a seriously handsome guy.  My beard is lush and waves in the wind, I haven't a single feature that would be described as other than "finely chiseled".  When I move my head hair tosses and eyes twinkle, when I shrug well-toned muscles ripple, and when I walk all the ladies swoon - and many of the men.

So here's the high point of this review for you, dear reader:  I open the bottle of Dark Berry Mountain Dew, toss my head back with all the requisite waving of hair and rippling of muscles, and take a drink.  The first bit there was pretty good, but it gets better:  Dark Berry Mountain Dew sloshes out of the corner of my mouth, it sounds silly but I assure you it happened in a very sexy way.  The soda rushes through the sieve of my beard and pours down my shirtless chest, over my six pack abs, and moistens the top of my underwear.

It was awesome.  I was standing in front of a window and actually saw the tree outside shiver with arousal.

That right there is review enough for you.

Tropical Banana

That's all - Tropical Banana.  Not Tropical Banana Fanta or any other brand name, just "Tropical Banana".  No brand name is attached to this, and as far as I can tell no manufacturer either.  Producto Centroamericano Hecho...  Blah blah blah.

Oh, I guess it was made by a joint called Cerveceria Hondurena, they have a crazy website which seems to say that they make things that are wet, including beer.

So it smells awful.  There's nothing good about the fake banana smell ever.  It tastes not great, not even that good, but there's a weird creamy aftertaste which keeps bringing me back.  It has a tang, not like a banana but a bit like a green banana.  Something just a bit off.

In fact, the more I drink it the more the aftertaste pleases me.  If I could get this aftertaste without putting the actual drink in my mouth I think we'd have something.

Holy shit, I got it.  The drink tastes like spray paint smells, but in a good way.  I like the spray paint smell, I find the same pleasure in this that I find in the odor of non-metallic sprays.  Nice.  That's it entirely.

I want these people to make a cola, it would be fantastic.  Seriously, if fake banana - the worst taste ever - is this good coming from them then they would be able to make poop taste magnifico.

All in all, this stuff deserves a magnificent review about how complexely bad/good it is, but my new austerity style reviews can't handle that.

Crush Strawberry

Or Strawberry Crush.  Whatev.  The best thing about this stuff is how little it tastes like strawberry.  If I squint my taste buds, it runs through like Strawberry Twizzler, or cherry something. 

When it comes to chemical flavoring, strawberry is second in awful only to banana.  This stuff somehow does it right.  And it's not too fizzy, either.

Tahitian Treat Fruit Punch

Imagine you're on a subway platform and a big, scary looking dude starts cursing at you and shaking his fists.  It's definitely you he's talking to, it's 3am and no one else is around.  Then he dashes up the steps and you're all "There ain't no way he's coming over here" but he does.  The menacing guy stomps down the steps, looking mean as hell, walks up to you, reaches into his jacket like he's going for a gun, then pulls out a twenty dollar bill and gives it to you.  "Enjoy this, young man", says he and leaves.

That's Tahitian Treat Fruit Punch. 

Russian "Soft Drink Lemonade"

I get the name off of the lying import label.  It's not lemonade, it's some sort of orange drink.  But classy.  A classy russian orange drink, I feel like I am a classy kid pretending to drink a dry champagne while sipping on this stuff. 

But yeah.  Not much more to say.  Doesn't really taste like oranges. 

Pretty good, actually.  None of the comedy you'd expect to see with Russians making soft drinks.  Just plain old not awful.

Big Shot Pineapple Soda

Boasting that it's "New Orleans Own", we are forced to question whether New Orleans has many good ideas.  This one, I think, started out as:

"Hey, let's make taking medicine fun!" and by the time they'd gotten through legal they were left with a vaguely pineapple tasting soda.  That dude on the can needs to go back to Gasoline Alley and stick to working on cars.

Cherry Slurpee

Once again, a picture really isn't worth the effort. Imagine a Slurpee cup full of red crap. It isn't hard.

Now take an imaginary drink of that red crap. It's cold right? If it isn't, your imagining it wrong. Keep trying. Cold aside, the flavor you need to imagine is something foul. Focus in on burnt corn syrup and a taste of particle board. Seriously, imagine that as a drink and then add cherry syrup. It's not good. At least, it's not good for the first few drinks. That's the trick.

The cherry Slurpee tastes like crap, but like beer it numbs your mouth until you don't notice the taste. It's sort of like an unending burnt avalanche of gross which you grow accustomed to, and that lets you pick out the slighter sweet flavors. But don't stop drinking it, or you lose the numbness.

It's a similar effect to that crap Ralph and Charlie's, but realized in the opposite manner. Whereas you have to keep drinking Ralph and Charlie's to avoid the hideous perfume aftertaste, you have to keep slugging back cherry Slurpee to avoid the horrible initial taste. Ha.

Anyways, get the Mountain Dew or the Coke before you get any of the crappy fruit flavors.

Waist Watchers Diet Citrus Frost

That's the bottle six months after I first opened it, being photographed in my work room.


Waist Watchers Diet Citrus Frost

I bought this at a pseudo-fancy market in NYC right before descending into an abandoned bank vault basement, yes the vault itself had multiple levels. I had to paint a floor. They whys and hows of this situation I'll leave to your imagination. Suffice it to say that I brought along the bottle of Diet Citrus Frost and enjoyed it much more than I ever would have imagined.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to enjoy the whole bottle and brought it home with me. As I tend to do, I put it in the refrigerator to review later and promptly forgot about it. Six months later my wife walks into my room, slams it down on my desk, gobbles up a bunch of my candy while I'm still distracted, then demands I finish reviewing it. Finish? I haven't even started. And how am I supposed to review a beverage six months flat?

Poor poor Waist Watchers Diet Citrus Frost.

Anyways, I guess I need to choke down some of the stuff to get a reminder of why it didn't offend me from the outset... Yeah, it ain't so bad, even as old as it is... Okay, my wife is yelling at me to come into the living room and look at the TV. Hold on. All right, she showed me the beginning to a movie called "Tropic Thunder" which had a commercial for a fictitious drink called "Booty Sweat". I guess this somehow relates to me being in here trying to write a soda review.

Thank you dear.

Anyways: This stuff is made with Splenda and not aspartame, I'm not a big Splenda fan but in this case it's great. Ain't got no complaints, it's sweet and delicious and none of that diet flavored funk. I can't imagine a drink living up to the Citrus Frost name any better. It's primarily a grapefruity drink, but just a touch.

Ha. The ingredients list says "Crystal Clear Carbonated Water". That's a new one. What the hell does "crystal clear" mean? Why? This is good, Adirondack Beverage Company, no need to gussy it up in fancy talk.

So I'm done with this review. I'm now being summoned into the other room to watch the rest of the movie. Bah.

Sweet Leaf Pomegranate Green Tea

Don't look her in the eye, or you'll be condemned
to a thousand years servitude in the pomegranate mines.

Sweet Leaf Pomegranate Green Tea


I had the Sweet Leaf Black Tea, or some such thing, some time ago but lost the review. That was merely one of a long chain of foolish Sweet Leaf related incidents thwarting my honest intent of A) drinking a bottle of the stuff and B) writing about drinking a bottle of the stuff on the internet.

I finally succeeded with the Cherry Limeade, and this one too.. Sadly, "Pomegranate Green Tea" falls further from the high bar set by the first two.

The pomegranate green tea performs a small marvel, it takes a drink that is all organic and makes it taste like a Jolly Rancher. It's a mov of syrupy, cardboardy, and fake fruit taste chasing an honest green tea flavor with torches and pitchforks. You can see the fear in the green tea's eyes as it feverishly searches for cover.

It's sad really. It tastes more like Fruitopia than anything natural.

The worst thing about this flavor of Sweet Leaf, is that it's everywhere. EVERYWHERE. If a store has only one Sweet Leaf flavor, it'll be this one. Whether that's because this is the default flavor you get if you only order one, or if it's because the good flavors all get drank up and this is what's left, I dunno. And I don't care. Burn it.

Sweet Leaf makes amazingly delicious tea drinks, but as soon as they start adding flavoring to them things go a little awry. So this is officially labeled a "bad drink", even though the unblinking, bug-eyed goblin lady on the label compels me to do otherwise.

Stala Cherry

My cat doubles as a bottle opener during the day,
discount Fleshlight at night.

Stala Cherry


Stala Cherry ain't so hot. It belongs to the "sour cherry" school of drinks, which one tends to find in Greece and Eastern Europe. I'd had such high hopes for Stala Cherry, as the Orange version made me wet my pants in ecstasy.

Let's start... So cherry Stala is thick and syrupy. It has only the slightest trace of carbonation, which is just absolutely perfect. Or wait, is it carbonated at all? It has a bite to it, but I can't figure out what it is. Anymore or this mystery tang and it would be fighting with me, as it is it gives me a nip as it slides down.

The syrupy bit is fine too, I dig thick drinks. The main ingredient in this stuff is cherry juice. Pardon me, "pure cherry juice". Pure cherry juice, Spring water, Sugar, Aromatic Flavorings, Citric acid, Benzoic Sodium, Sorbic potassium.

But the flavor. Sour cherry. Yuck. A nauseating taste, calculated to make vomiting come easy.

The best thing about this drink is that it was a birthday present for my wife. I wrapped it up, gave it to her, she opened it and I drank and began reviewing it immediately. She hounds me about having too much soda around, so this was a funny gift. At least she thought so. I intended it to be romantic, and hoped she'd got all hotted up.

Alas.

Fanta Orange ah la Russia

I kind of dig that orange slice graphic.

Fanta Orange, Russian

So I fall all over myself singing the praises of sugary soft drinks, as opposed to their corn based cousins. Sugar can do no wrong in my book. Well, this crazy Eastern European Fanta I bought falls flat. Not in a non-carbonated way, but in a flavor way.

I've never been a big Fanta fan, but sometimes when you travel it's all you can get. I've drank enough of the stuff that it doesn't bother me, and I'll even sometimes pick it up on a whim when given other choices. It definitely has a European reputation, and I have a vague memory of some guys I used to play the Palladium RPG with calling me "Eurotrash" when I brought a bottle to their game. I'm not sure if these guys had ever left New York City much less gone to Europe, so that reinforces its Back East reputation.

I'm so unenthused about Fanta that I changed my plans for this review minutes after buying this ginormous bottle of the crap. My plan had been to buy an American bottled Fanta as well, and then taste test the two back to back. Common sense stepped in and declared that this was going to be way too much Fanta, and I shouldn't think about that sort of crap.

So, one huge bottle of Eastern European Fanta. That's what I have. The little sticker says it was imported by "Trilini intarnational Imports..." That's all I can read of their name, as the sticker is rubbed away at that point. Or burned away, or something. Their phone number is (718)437-2700, I'm going to call them and ask what other wonders they import. The best thing about this little white sticker is that it reads "Drink with taste of an orange".

That is pretty much what Fanta is, I cannot deny it. There is definitely a taste of an orange in there. The oddness about this stuff, though, is that it tastes like corn syrup. The sweet is the burned corn husk sweet of Coca Cola. So, Russian Fanta loses big time. How can you screw that up?

Further investigation of the little white sticker tells me that there are a whopping 31 calories per serving, with 20 servings living inside this big old bottle. Europeans certainly are classy folks if they drink their Fanta a third of a cup at a time. This is a soda, not a hard liquor. Wait, Russians don't drink hard liquor in small doses, clearly they flipped their drinking volumes around.

But that little white sticker is where the sanity ends. Everything below is in cartoon Cyrillic, except the actual "Fanta" itself. And the numbers. And the Pepsi Cola logo. Blah blah blah.

So, to wind up: Eastern European Fanta is not much better than US Fanta. And US Fanta is pretty unremarkable, so the idea is not to bother with either. The follow-up thought is to wonder why someone would bother importing this stuff if it's so similar to what we already have?

Edit: Oh neat, there's a little raised star inside the cap. It probably means I just won a zillion rubles.

The bottle text comes out looking like a lonely chat log.

nBn Carbonated Lemonade

It kind of looks like the credits from a spaghetti western.

In an effort to find some English transliteration of this drink name, I went to the website plastered all over the bottle. I thought that this was the website for the drink, but I actually think it's a Greek dating site. I'm not joking, either, there are pictures of young people all over the site arranged in little "my file" ways. The dead give away was that about half the pictures looked like they'd been pulled off professional model sites, a sure sign that someone is stacking the deck.

Dig the greek dance music, though. And be sure to notice that all of the pictures listed have 0 or 1 viewing, how sad.

I'm gonna call this stuff nBn, for lack of a better way to type it. I'm willing to bet I'm making an ass myself with this simple decision, and that "nBn" is hentai emoticon slang for "I like to be tentacle raped in a bathroom stall". Nonetheless, I'll let it stand so I can get on with this rather unremarkable review - just know I won't go in any bathrooms unarmed.

nBn is a carbonated lemonade. Carbines have a rich history in Greece, most notably being used by the rebels during WWII. How this ties into nBn is probably explained in all the Greekified text on the bottle, but I'm not willing to fuck with my keyboard settings so as to be able to type the stuff into a Google translator. Some mysteries deserve to be kept.

The flavor isn't bad. Again, the Loux drinks scarred me - I'm still trigger shy around Greek drinks even after the heavenly transubstantiation of Stala. It's not bad, but not good. It has the taste of lemon juice concentrate out of a metal can, as opposed to a plastic bottle. I think I'm imagining those terms more than speaking from experience, but they definitely feel right.

Not too sweet for a lemonade, not too sour. It's more like the sour took three steps to the right and became some other slightly challenging flavor, maybe dour instead of sour.

The nBn label design is straight out of 80s Thrasher magazine. A line of cut-out and irregularly reapplied bits of text happily gibber along in Greek, telling me only one thing: Greeks don't have a word for "virtual chat". Take a letter from the French, Greek people, and make up your own words for stuff - that way even your own people don't understand what you're talking about.

Blah blah blah virtual blah blah blah blah virtual chat blah blah...

I have to take a moment and describe my cat. He's sleeping in front of my keyboard while I type, having cat dreams. Violent twitches wrack his little cat body, then like a penitent pleading his case before the Holy Ghost, one little clawed paw reaches up and curls in the air, as if he was begging for forgiveness. Apparently he didn't get it, as the body tics are even more pronounced than before.

When he's like this I can do just about anything to him and he won't wake up. Pry open his eyes, stick a pencil in his mouth, whatever. It's hilarious.

So, nBn isn't bad at all, it's just not as good as Stala. The next time you are plundering the treasures of Greece, pick up a bottle and laugh in their faces when they try to "repatriate" it.

Look at the gunk in the threads of the bottle cap.

Stala Orange Drink

This mind bogglingly scary advert was on the outside of the place
I bought the Stala. It's like the Silent Hill franchise
went into pushing ice cream.

Ho hum, another dumb soda.

Those are all mediocre games there on the shelf behind me.
Except Empire Builder and British Rails, I guess.
Crayon train games rock.

Why, this is delightful!

Stala, Gaseous Refreshment

This stuff is so good, that I almost glugged it all down before scrambling to my computer to write a review. It's like the best orange juice in the world and the best soft drink in the world had sex, and not "and they had a baby" sex but "sex on video I downloaded from the internet and my Mom found it and took my internet away and made me see Dr Stan" sex. This stuff is marvelous, incredible, stupendous. I'm falling all over myself trying to think of how describe it. I'm doing other things to myself while I'm thinking of it, but Google will take away my advertising if I get too specific.

I don't think I can really improve on the above description, except to say that in my special case the stuff was also well seasoned with dread. I've had other Greek drinks, specifically from the Loux company, which tasted a lot like a "lou" or however British people spell their toilet abbreviation. Loux made me ill, I was expecting the worst when I drank Stala. So it wasn't just delicious, it was a reprieve.

I take a few more pulls and stare intently at the bottle, I'm feeling for some hidden foulness, some chemical taint deep in the back of the drink. I'd settle for a foul aftertaste, or maybe a loose human tooth rattling around in the bottle. But I ain't getting none of it. Stala is perfect.

Perfect.

The ingredients are: Pure orange juice, Spring water, Sugar, Aromatic flavorings, Citric acid, Benzoic sodium, Sorbic potassium.

My word, what a beautiful ingredients list. It shines like an angel from heaven bearing a pardon from the governor on a plate made of barbecued ribs.

What pushes me even further into the heights of unadulterated joy are two little words on the front of the bottle: "Gaseous Refreshment". It's like being on a date with a beautiful woman who puts in a Three Stooges DVD to "set the mood". A divine drink with a phrase best enjoyed as a verb right there on the label.

After experiencing this drink, I finally understand the movie Rocky I. I understand his pain and I weep.

While trying to get an interesting photo of the my cat
and the bottle together, I tilted the bottle too far back
and all the sticky backwash ran down my arm and onto the floor.
At least I assume that's why the floor under
my computer desk is sticky.

Edit: Since writing this review, I stopped by the Greek grocers and picked up some more Stala for a party. The Stala wasn't half as good on the second go-round, a real disappointment. That said, I'm pretty sure that this was a different batch of the stuff - the refrigerator case had been almost empty the last time I was there and was overflowing on my second visit. Sodas heavy in fruit juice are often a little erratic in flavor, that's the reason Coke and Pepsi are such chemical nightmares - they had to replace seasonal things like lemon juice with chemistry independent of the sun.

Bah.

Cintron OrangeAde

Sympathetic magic says that drinking this
will make my penis long and orange.

If pursued by a police helicopter,
don't stop to drink crappy orangeade.

Cintron OrangeAde

I've always liked Arizona Iced Tea's Orange Drink. I can now pair that phrase with "I've always disliked Cintron OrangeAde".

This stuff sucks. It's thin and watery and leaves a mucusy slime in the back of my throat. It hardly has any taste, but what little orange taste there is in this stuff walks hand in hand with a cheap-metallic tang. It's awful, there's nothing there. And when I say "metallic-tang" I don't mean that in a good way, like on a sex robot.

Cintron OrangeAde is so unremarkable that I'm having trouble of thinking about thing to say about it. Watery, weak, metallic-tang... that about covers it. I think I need to break my rule and look this stuff up.

Well, first off I can tell you that Cintron isn't one of those funny European cars. And the OrangeAde isn't an epic Greek tale. What I can tell you is that, according to the Cintron site:

-OrangeAde is one of the four new innovative flavors of their beverage "family".

It makes me uncomfortable to think of these cans of corn water being part of a family. What sort of family sends their members out to be consumed en masse? Wouldn't "stable" be a better word to describe these flavors in relationship to the company? Like a stable of boxers?

-Cintron OrangeAde uses high fructose corn syrup.

That's almost a given in our soda world, but I only feel it necessary to say this as the company's "about" page has a seemingly fake article boasting that their energy drinks don't use corn syrup. "...ideal for an increasingly health conscious public, CINTRON uses no high fructose corn syrup."

Wait a minute, they say there that the COMPANY doesn't use high fructose corn syrup. It does. I'm drinking it right now. It's the second ingredient on the OrangeAde ingredient list. The company is lying on their about page.

-Cintron uses a series seemingly fake articles article in it's "about" page.

Not only is the article on the about page a lie, but it's a "fake". Two fake headlines top a page, and the article body begins "PHILADELPHIA, PA -- The CINTRON Beverage Group is proud to announce a breakthrough innovation..."

Listing the city and state makes it seem like it's a newspaper account. Boo.

-These deceitful lies are being told by a company founded by "Joe Roberts, Pastor of Holy Spirit Cathedral in Camden, NJ"

For shame. A man of the cloth being dragged into a deceitful mess.

-The "press" section has other apparently fake articles.

Four articles are listed, and only two list sources. The other two are, at best, press releases. Press releases aren't press releases if they are mixed in with legitimate articles, they are fake news items.

-Possibly Cintron wants me to drink and drive.

On their main page they show me a page of mixed drink recipes made with Cintron, this page is right above photos of a boat and a car. While I don't think they want me to drink and drive, they certainly aren't encouraging me to be cautious.

-Cintron approves of gas guzzling SUVs.

And they use a HUMVEE as a mobile billboard. While this is just my personal beef, I think it's pretty awful.



Cranky about all this, I filled out the customer contact form on their website, asking about the High Fructose Corn syrup thing and about the legitimacy of some of their articles. After a week and no response, I called their contact number. No phone tree, no wait, a pleasant woman answered the phone.

I asked about the discrepancy between the website and the stuff they sold, she told me that the website hadn't been updated since they started selling the OrangeAde drinks. Well, they ADVERTISE the drinks on the website, so clearly that ain't logical or true. She told me that the website would be updated in a month, after they had some new pictures to put up.

I asked how long they'd been selling the OrangeAde and she told me about nine months. The can has a copyright date of 2007, for what that's worth, which indicates to me that they've been selling it for over a year.

About a week later I sent the below email, fabricating a "concerned and loyal customer" scenario to see how they would react.

----

Hey there,

I've always been a fan of your drinks and appreciate how they don't have corn syrup in them. I ordered a case of the OrangeAde from the local wholesaler, when it arrived I drank some and realized it had corn syrup.

Your website specifically states that NONE of your drinks have corn syrup. I called your 267 number and inquired, the woman told me that she was "sorry" and that the corn syrup drinks have been on sale for nine months. That's a LIE on your website, a lie that cost me money because now I am stuck with a tremendous amount of corn syrup that I'm going to have to pour down the sink.

I'm really disappointed, I thought your company was small and well run and CARING.



---


I sent the above email in December, it's now February and no response. In December they had told me they were updating the site in about a month, which is also untrue.

To wind up I'll say that I think this stuff tastes like total shit, and they tell lies about it on their website. Boo.

Old Colony Uva

Lots of enticingly clad girls in roller skates,
and I photograph a stupid soda.

Old Colony UVA

Okay, what the hell is "UVA"? Context makes me guess that it means "grape" or "soda" in Spanish. But if it's Spanish, then why do we have a guy in a tricorn hat on the label? That's old timey English/American colonies crap. I prefer to think of it as an acronym for something science fictiony. The word "Colony" in a sci-fi context always sets my innards to an excited quivering. The worst possible things you can imagine happen on space colonies. The WORST.

Old Colony UVA is not the worst. It's actually pretty good. More popsicle than soda I think, though it is on the foamy end of the carbonation scale. I'd like to know exactly how all these different sorts of carbonation work. You have hard, burning carbonation and foamy, expanding carbonation, and probably a few other kinds but they elude me at the moment. Anyways, this is foamy carbonation, something of which I am normally not a fan.

I don't hold it against O.C.U.V.A., in fact, it helps it out. Somehow makes it sweeter. Refreshing. Nothing nasty about nuthin' in there.

I drank the stuff at a roller derby match. The NYC teams were playing against two visiting teams, one from Canada and the other from I don't know where. I had unknowingly worn the Canadian teams colors, pink and green, and must have seemed a long time fan what with my determined under-dog cheering. One of the Canadians even pointed at me and waved. Anyways, thats why you can see derby stuff in the background, though nothing exciting. (I finally broke down and called my derby pal who told me that the Canadian team was "The New Skids on the Block" from Montreal, a particularly offensive and silly name. They had a lime green and pink flash dance thing, which was sort of funny, though. The Canadians lost after a strong start.)

Drinking something at a derby match doesn't add much to the drink, but it did mean I was with my pal Dino. Dino thought the UVA tasted like Big League Chew, which is not unreasonable. Big League Chew was a favorite gum of mine as a kid, though I preferred the regular pink flavor.

Anyways, the UVA drink isn't as cool as it sounds but it isn't bad at all. Especially for a Dr. Pepper/7up product.

Tymbark Apple-Mint Drink

Horror or not horror?

Not horror? Crom be praised.

Tymbark, a surprisingly not disgusting apple-mint drink.

Tymbark Apple-Mint Drink

This tiny bottle contains a surprisingly drinkable pseudo-juice. It's awfully syrupy for an apple juice, but I'm not complaining.

It's a cold and tastes clean, but there is something wrong with it. Something missing. The normal bite of apple juice isn't there, I guess. It's just too watery. The mint is pretty subtle, but so is the apple taste so it all evens out to bland water. Yep, it's just cold water with a little bit of appley-mint.

But that's the trick, it mostly tastes like water but it's still syrupy. Syrupy water, that's a good trick. Nicely done.

Looking at the ingredients list there is nothing to indicate any sort of thickener. The actual list is pretty commendable aside from possible corn syrup:

water, apple juice from concentrate (25%), sugar (D), and or glucose/fructose corn syrup (G), acidity regulator (citric acid), natural mint aroma. D,G - depending on the used ingredients.

So maybe the corn syrup thickens it up. That'd make sense. The "D or G" thing is pretty interesting, it makes reading the ingredients into a choose your own adventure. Choose G, flip to page 34 and get diabetes.

And what is "natural mint aroma"? It sure heck tastes like mint, so it's not just aroma. In fact, it tastes more like mint than it smells. Perhaps the crafty Poles are learning the art of misdirection? "No, no, no. I got it. We tell them it smells like mint when it actually tastes like mint, that'll confuse them, eh?" Without a Polish Pope to keep 'em in line, no telling what hijinks they'll get up to.

Of course, I think a German Pope would be better at keeping them under control. Eh? Get it? Eh?

I've always been a fan of the Polish over-sized juice boxes. This is basically the same thing, just in a tiny bottle with a cool pull off cap and a lot more wateriness in it.

Randomly placed stickers are always welcome.

Tizer and Club Diet

Tizer and Club Diet, a two for one review

Tizer tastes like fermented lime juice. Fermented lime juice which someone thought too weak, so they added beer. That is what Tizer tastes like, and nothing else.

I had this stuff at the Chip Shop, a British style restaurant in Bay Ridge. I'm a big Chip Shop fan, and state with confidence that this is one of the worst things they've ever served me. The Chip Shop menu stated something along the lines of Tizer being a "chemically loaded and flavored soda", yet when the crap arrived at the table the can boasts no artificial "colours", "flavours", or "sweetenours".

Of course, the can also claims "Great taste", so I don't know where to stop believing. If you can't trust socialists, this world has indeed become a dark and awful place.

Now, I've heard some confusing things about Tizer and have trouble confirming or denying what is or isn't truth. I don't, as I've often stated, do any research. This is a little extra confusing, as I don't seem to have a photograph for this Tizer, which I feel was yellowish. (Oh wait, there it is. At the end of the article.) The confusion is that there is something called "Tizer Red" which they no longer make, but I managed to acquire a can of. I think I tried the new Tizer, whatever that may be. Orange. Whatever, it sucked and I'm sure I'll get botulism from the outdated cane of Tizer Red. When I drink it. Which isn't now.

Club Diet, on the other hand, was worse. I thought this was a British made soft drink when I bought it. Instead I learn that the Irish really DO hate the British in ways I can't even begin to imagine.

With my first sip I had to flap my arms like a penguin to shake off the horror. It's terrible, terrible stuff.

I feverishly typed out notes on my stupid iPhone, which claims I wrote down "Need more inbreyigayion." I don't know what that means at all. Information? Carbonation? Or was I temporarily possessed by a Great Race of Yith? I dunno. I do think that this might be the gibberish I would write if I thought my hands were claws.

Club Diet Orange is flat and foul. It has bits of what I presume are orange in it. I mean orange the fruit, not orange the color, though the bits are that too. It also has a lot of "diet" in it, which is always awful.

When I drink a British soft drink, or a soft drink the British have claimed as their own, I expect quality. I expect the sort of drink that King Arthur would give to his trashy wife, or that Robin Hood would give to cottagers. Britain is a land of moustached men smoking in gentleman's clubs, and not the kind of "gentleman's clubs" we have here in the US. It's class all the way. But this crap, is this some sort of World War II hold-out, like that awful yeast paste?

Two dirty "hoes" looking to "party".

Blue Sky Black Cherry Cherish

The can looks like it's wrapped in some kind
of pre-EU currency from a European micro-republic.

Notice that my Aryan Nation haircut is finally growing out.

And then, Oh no! Shanked in the belly.

Blue Sky Black Cherry Cherish

This stuff hearkens back to the bad times I had with the "sour cherry" Greek drink and Polish cherry syrup. It's sour, almost bitter, and has an odd chemical taste. It has a bunch of strange flavors hidden inside of it, none of them very good. This foul host is followed by a phalanx of after taste calculated to clean up any survivors. Fear it.

A few drinks in, I figure out what I was tasting: The closest thing I've tasted to this are inflatable vinyl toys. Yep. The kind you have to blow up yourself because you don't have an airhose. I wonder if I drink this for a half an hour if it'll make me woozy, too.

I'll go ahead and confess that the last time I tasted that inflatable vinyl taste was inflating a blow up sex doll for a friends bachelor party. We made him crawl through giant tube full of dead squid, pornography, a spiky durian, and said blow up doll, all the while filling the tube with icy water. It was great. That blow up doll was disturbing, it had these pull-tab "hymen" things blocking all of its orifices. And the face was a photograph of a real person, a porn star I presume. That part was as creepy as fuck.

Anyways, this Blue Sky Black Cherry Cherish crap is vicious. Every sip tastes like something different, and usually something foul. It tastes like a Bosch painting, I think, with something evil and unique at every turn.

Ok, this stuff is pretty awful. I'm going to commit some ice cream to it and try and see if can be made into a float...

Looks innocent enough, but so does an eye dropper full of e. coli.
The actual stuff was more of a brown color,
the photo doesn't do it justice.

My stomach churns just looking at the photo.

First off, the color revolted me when I poured the soda into a glass. The only thing "cherry" that should be that color is my daughters hymen. When she's sick. There comes a time when artificial coloring is a great idea, certain things need it. Cherry soda for certain, margarine being another example. I was reading a book recently about rationing during WWII, they mentioned that certain items became more expensive both cash and ration points-wise after they were aesthetically treated for consumer sale. Margarine was their example, quadrupling in price if you bought it with yellow coloring already added. The savvy shopper bought the yellow coloring and the au naturale margarine separately for big savings.

That margarine has to be colored is pretty gross. I mean, I knew it was artificially colored but I assumed that was part of what made margarine into margarine - just like you can't add granular sugar to Coca Cola. This breaks the whole raw and cooked process.

Anyways, I made the float and my first sip, I shit you not, tasted like the big jar of creamed herring I have the refrigerator. A big jar, by the way, that I have to throw out soon as I suspect it's going bad. Turns out my creamed herring eyes were bigger than my creamed herring stomach, not that I didn't try my hardest. The stuff just keeps puffing up, though, I'd eat a bunch and the next time I opened it the jar was almost full. Magic, like the renewing coin poor whatsisname has at the end of Mazes and Monsters.

That taste went away after that first sip, as did the horror show of morphing flavors I got when drinking it straight. The vanilla ice cream mellowed it out. It's still not good but it is certainly drinkable. The smell has taken an exceedingly interesting turn, smelling like my grandparents old house a few hours after they'd cooked bacon. Imagine that with a hint of sour cherries, and that's the smell.

You know, rereading the above makes me wonder if I had a stroke while drinking this.

Goya Coconut Soda

That's a disconcerting picture
once you take in the background.

Free yellow jaundice in every bottle.

That's the look when the coyote runs off the cliff
and he looks at the camera,
sharing the realization of his
impending demise with the audience.

Goya Coconut Soda

I didn't really want to write up a new soda tonight, but it was either that or watching "Desperate Housewives" with my wife. She insisted I watch it after I'd subjected her to half of a Futurama movie earlier in the day. The two things aren't exactly equal, when she watches "my" television programs she has her laptop to fiddle with, I do not any such luxurious distraction. I sit and keep my eyes on the screen, not wanting to hurt an actor's feelings by letting my attention wander.

In a moment of inspiration, I gave my wife a choice between my watching her television program or my drinking a soda. Her hatred of my soda shelf far outstrips her desire to spend time with me, so here I am with a Goya Coconut Soda.

It tastes a little like suntan lotion, tasty suntan lotion. When I say "tastes a little bit", the emphasis is on the little. There's hardly any taste here at all, it's all just cold and sweet. A little syrupy, too. Goya Coconut Soda has the consistency and carbonation and faint vanilla tinge of a cream soda, but coconuty. And again, it's very very slight.

The barest trace of taste is not a bad thing, in this case. I'm not a big coconut fan, so much more and it would have registered too strongly. I like that it tastes like I'm drinking 7-Up out of the cooler that held my leaky sunscreen. It's a good thing, tastes like a beach without the dead fish and loud radios.

There's a fizzy end to the taste that kind of feels like drinking a sparkling water, that flat carbonation taste that dries off your tongue after a sip. Goya Coconut Soda has that, but its competing with a bit of waxiness.

What the hell is that waxy feeling that some sodas leave in the mouth? I think I've been encountering it mostly in fruit sodas. Is a coconut a fruit or a nut? Either way, I fear this waxy aftertaste - no good can come of it. Oh wait, it's obvious where that taste comes from: They make this stuff out of wax fruit. Duh.

Here's some more of that crazy Goya dithering.

Columbiana Kola Flavored Soda

Columbiana Kola Flavored Soda, Brooklyn Bottling, New York

My great uncle Reinhardt had
a bunch of medals like that from WWII.

Colombiana Kola Flavored Soda is a lie. There is nothing Kola flavored about this, it's that meringue flavor, that generic Hispanic mixture of bubble gum and raspberry or whatever it is. What does Kola mean in Spanish? Does it mean "blatant deception" or "meringue"?

Is that how you spell "meringue" flavor? Is that right? I think I've also seen this atrocious flavor called "champagne", but that is usually in the North American versions. An awful flavor you find in the discount soda section, made by a company you've never heard of. A company that hates New Year's Eve and tried to spoil it by selling liquid noxiousness disguised as champagne.

The lies don't stop with the flavor, the distributor, too, is full of misdirection. "Imported and Distributed by Brooklyn Bottling of Milton, NY". Yeah, shooting for that Brooklyn street cred, eh? Well Milton is a long way from NYC, my friends, and I ain't buying it. That they have a Brooklyn phone number only compounds the lie.

Now I have to admit, the stuff isn't as bad as it could be. Maybe if you liked this flavor of soda you could dig Columbiana. It's sweet and not too chemical tasting, a little watery. Really carbonated, and leaves a heartburn feeling in the back of my throat. A few quick, consecutive drinks leaves me with a waxy coating on my tongue which quickly dissolves away.

Interestingly enough, the bottle is returnable in eleven states, usually it's only a couple. That's pretty neat.

I get up at the crack of dawn to drink soda for you fools.

That, my friends, is a Grade A flinch.