Mountain Rush

So I write these reviews then let 'em sit
and ferment a while before I post them.
I think that background is from my old apartment -
two years is probably a little too much lag time.

Mountain Rush by Tropical Fantasy

I always love a good imitation Mountain Dew. I used to have quite a collection of empty cans from across America, if I saw a Mountain Dew knock-off, I drank it and filed the can away. Mountain Rush bites off the Mountain Dew gimmick at the base. Mountain Dew flourescent yellow, Mountain Dew label colors, the whole shebang.

It also does a pretty good imitation of the drink itself. Sort of. It doesn't taste like actual Mountain Dew so much as the "urban legend" of Mountain Dew. Like an idealized form of Mountain Dew described by an ignorant person. A few years ago I met a guy who insisted that Mountain Dew was nothing more than carbonated Sunny Delight. I complemented him on a funny description of the drink, and he insisted that he was telling the literal truth.

"What?", I incredulously asked, "you think that the Mountain Dew bottling factory has Sunny Delight delivered which it then magically makes carnbonated, translucent and bright green, then rebottles as Mountain Dew?"

This guy, I wish I could remember who it was, stopped at that point and reconsidered what he said. Then he returned to insisting that Mountain Dew was identical to Sunny Delight.

Ha.

That flavor, of Sunny Delight made into magical green carbonated sugar water, is the flavor of Mountain Rush. Very orange juicey. Very orange kool-aidey. Very good, actually. I would drink this in small quantities in the future. Mind you, this DOESN'T really taste like Mountain Dew, but it's in the ball park.

Another major difference is the amount of carbonation. Mountain Dew is very carbonated, Mountain Rush isn't. Not flat, but just not in-your-face carbonated.

The last thing to admire is the label. It looks like someone went crazy with the spline tool in Illustrator after color sampling the Mountain Dew label. And yellow. They added the bottle cap yellow from the Dew bottles into the label. Sneaky.

Dig that crazy toucan.

Sobe Green Tea

It's always astonishing when
a company changes a formula for the better.

Sobe Green Tea

Bought it with an early lunch in grand central, hadn't had a Sobe Green Tea in years and years. I was shocked at how cool and refreshing the drink was. I felt like I was in a beer commercial and the product really did taste like a mountain stream instead of fermented urine. Not that Sobe tastes like beer, but that it tastes refreshing. And yes, beer does taste like pee.

It's clean and incredibly sweet, not in a saccharine way but in a shock to the tongue way. The flavor is there but almost unnoticable, hard to pin down. It's like that perfect blend of wonder that becomes an unquantifiable nothing.

The first three ingredients are water, sugar, and natural fkavor. Following these are green tea extract and a host of the crap normally found in energy drinks. These may account for the vigor of the drink, but I prefer to tlinagibe* that the natural flavor is industry code for beef blood, as I've been warned many times by many vegetarians.

But seriously, Sobe made a drink with guarana in it which tastes good. That's incredible. Every guarana drink in the world tastes like satans penis, except maybe China Cola - does that have guarana? Actually, I don't remember that it does.

So yeah, Sobe green tea is great. My true love used to be the black tea, I'll have to dig some up now that they seem to be screwing around with the mix. The only reason I stopped drinking sobe in the first place was an inability to find the decent flavors. The deli across from my work stopped carrying the Sobe teas in preference for the Arizona teas, of which only their green tea is really drinkable.

*This word is iPhonese, and has no suitable translation in English.

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.