Two Boots Cherry Coke Slushpuppy

Ker-boring. No taste of coke whatsoever, it's just a slightly sweet crushed ice taste and some food coloring.

Five bucks waste at Two Boots pizza, an otherwise wonderful restaurant.

 

Cinderella was liquid and collected in her glass boot.

 

Pretty to look at.  

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.

Reed's Cherry Ginger Beer

Okay, stick your tongue out about half and inch and bite it lightly.  Bend your chin down tight against your neck and nod your head up and down while flapping your arms around like broken penguin wings.

There.  You just drank Reed's Cherry Ginger Beer.

Smells like sour cherries, which is always a bad idea.  Not like sour cherries, but like sour cherry flavoring you see in Polish markets.  What genius said "Let's go to an Eastern European market and find the nastiest thing there that isn't kvass, and then let's mix it into our soda?"

This stuff is bad.  About eight bads out of ten.  Fifteen bucks would get me to finish the bottle but I ain't seeing any takers.

Ouzon Soda, Opa! Originals

Ouzon Soda, Opa! Originals

Dare I take the Ouzon plunge?

Whenever a company offers to send me a soda for free in the mail, I am always slightly afraid someone is trying to poison me. I mean, it's the internet, right? There are people out there who want to poison me. It's a given.

Ouzon was sent to my by, I presume, the company that makes it. While they didn't actually poison me, it wasn't exactly clear at the beginning if I would walk away or not. The initial yuck factor was pretty high.

Pre-yuck.

Post-yuck.

There's a handful of strikes against Ouzon before you even open the bottle. "The Original Non-Alchoholic Ouzo Flavored Soda" is a bad start. Any non-alcohol alcohol I've ever tried has been bad, except for Senorial Sangria which is dreamy. Senorial Sangria sets a high standard for unalcohol alcohol. The other strike against Ouzon is a suspicious panel on the back of the bottle saying that 5% of the after-tax profits go something to do with "Orthodox Minsteries". I'm not sure what that means, let's deploy google... Okay, the Farah Foundation seems to give out piles of money to Christian organizations of a certain bent.

Elsewhere on this blog I've made my opinion of that stuff very clear, so I'm going to pretend really hard that these are the bad-ass Christian types who fund secret anti-vampire squads and make epic mosaics. I hope. So if you spent a dollar on Ouzon this foundation probably gets two cents, don't do this if you are a vampire or are mosaicrophobic.

But to business. What does this stuff taste like? To me it tastes like bad, natural licorice. Or you can read this sentence aloud:

"Ouzon tastes like anise".

Read it aloud to a friend and watch their face. It'll be great.

But yeah, I don't like natural licorice. I don't like fake black licorice. I don't like things that are anise flavored. BUT! (Anise, but!) But, I keep taking little micro-sips while I write this. I can't really stop poking at the bottle, it's like a scab ready to pick. It hurts to do it, but I gotta keep sipping. Partially, it might be because it is delightfully cold - something Opa Originals can't take credit for. Partially, there might be some secret bit of good in here. But I doubt it.

Not the best thing to come out of post-Atlantis Greece, not as good as Stala Orange Drink. Maybe if I was a recovering drunkard this might help stave off my ouzo urges, but I'm not. And I don't like anise things. And I think religion is bad for everyone. So...

Coca Cola Icee from Burger King

Over two months ago the Slurpee machine broke at my local 7-11. Not the whole machine, just one mixer/spigot arrangement, and that particular spigot dispensed Coca Cola Slurpee. They never bothered to change the flavors around, so I've been mostly Slurpee-less for quite some time. I mean, sure, I can bicycle to the far off 7-11 but now it's cold...

On occasion, I would walk past the Burger King and be tempted in for an Icee. They are always awful, but I always forget how awful they are. Today I was tempted in and the Icee was, as I should have known, awful.

This is the story of that Icee and how I came to get ahold of it:

I think my description of the broken Slurpee machine above is ample proof that my life is one of disappointment and pain. From all sides I am assailed by the horrendous forces of despair. This morning I went to the post office to pick up a package, but they didn't have it - apparently it had been sent out for redelivery instead of being stashed away for pick-up like they slip said.

The horror.

Moping home, I stumbled into the local Burger King for an ersatz Slurpee fix. I mean, if people can drink chicory and dirt in place of coffee, I can drink an Icee just this once. I order and watch as the counter guy takes one of the extra large drink cups and fills it up with Coke Icee. Holy shit!, thinks I, that is a SODA sized extra large cup - I'm going to get a lot more Icee than I'm paying for. Huzzah!

The oversized cup is filled, capped, and is about to be delivered to me when the manager stops the counter person and explains the mistake. The manager pops the lid off of the extra large cup and pours the Icee out into a standard large cup of the size I was supposed to receive. As soon as I saw this operation commence, I called out that the extra large was fine but they ignored me.

The manager handed me my smaller cup and here's the conversation:

Me: You know, it was pretty wasteful to replace the extra large cup with a smaller cup. I know it was a mistake but you could have just given me the larger cup.

Manager: It was a mistake, you ordered a large cup.

Me; I know it was a mistake, I'm saying it's wasteful. Now you are throwing away a perfectly good cup and the Icee left in it.

Manager: We need the extra large cups for the soda.

Me: Are you going to wash that cup out and reuse it?

Manager: Uh, no.

Me: Then what good does it do to change out the cups? All you did was cause more waste.

I might have accepted an answer of "We need mistake cups to count for inventory" as acceptably managerial. This guy was just dumb.

But yeah, Burger King Icees are crap. I regret buying it.

Manhattan Special Sarsaparilla

Manhattan Special Sarsaparilla


I imagine the creation myth of the stuff goes something like this:



Bob: Hey Rob, we need to make a handful of generic soft drink flavors to round out our coffee line. I mean we got all these bottles and labelers and shit, so let's get 'em to use.

Rob: Do we care about taste or quality or anything?

Bob: What'd I say? I said, "Let's round out the line". Get a list of ten soft drink flavors we don't have in development already and get back to me.

two weeks later...

Rob: Here you go, sir, a list of ten new flavors. All written out.

Bob: To make it convenient to the conceit of conversational format, please read them aloud.

Rob: Coca Cola.

Bob: That's a good one, but I think it's claimed.

Rob: Ah. Okay. Cherry. See, I'm doing them in alphabetical order.

Bob: Rob, "Cherry" should come before "Coca Cola" alphabetically. You see, you go to the second letter to determine the order if the first letter is the same.

Rob: Oh, I thought that the second letter would be the "C" in "Cola". I do envy you your liberal arts degree sire. Anyways, I thought we'd make our cherry "natural" or some such thing. People like that nowadays.

Bob: Whatever sells. Next!

Rob: Chamomille.

Bob: I hate to hassle you, but you spelled it wrong.

Rob: What? How can you tell? I said it out loud and you aren't even looking at my paper.

Bob: It's "chamomile". I know it looks wrong but that's it.

Rob: I find this conceit of a written out conversation script thing to be confusing. I don't like it.

Bob: Anyways, chamomile is a stupid soft drink flavor and your a gigantic stupid head for proposing it.

Rob: Sob

Bob: Man up. Next.

Rob: Gassosa.

Bob: No one knows what gassosa is, but it gives fake class to the rest of the line by being all Italiany. Let's do gassosa.

Rob: Iron brew.

Bob: One authentic old country thing is enough. Hey, wait a sec. Why don't we pick something old Country, like Country-Music country, to draw in the cowboy hat people.

Rob: There aren't a lot of those in our distribution area, sir.

Bob: You're thinking small, son. With the sort of money that big manufacturers give the Republicans, cowboy hat people will soon be everywhere. Everywhere.

Rob: As you say, sir.

Bob: Root beer is too kiddyish, though is certainly in the right area. Anyone can make a rootbeer. It's just Root Beer Flavoring Pack 12H and Brown 3. But root beer is for kids, and we make classy adult soda candy.

Rob: How about a whiskey flavored drink, sir?

Bob: That has potential, but gimmee something else.

Rob consults Internet in whispers. Internet gestures wildly.

Rob: Apparently "sarsaparilla" is a cowboy word for a drink similar to root beer.

Bob: That sounds great. Perfect in fact. It'll be cowboy to the cowboy people but the word is weird enough to sound European or Amerindian to the non-cowboy people. Win/win!

Rob: The trouble is, sir, that an authentic tasting sarsaparilla is tricky to make. It has to be spicy but earthy at the same time, sweet and creamy but have bite. It's a root beer, technically, bit it's made from a whole other mess of stuff than what we call "root beer". This is going to take a lot of time and research to blend together a meaningful yet unique mixture which we can sell as "Manhattan Special Sarsaparilla".

Bob: Rob...

Rob: I foresee six months of work. I'd also recommend some research trips, sir, to areas where
people hand craft sarsaparilla at home.

Bob: Robert...

Rob: It will be a rewarding process...

Bob: HEY! Shut up. Listen up genius, you said sarsaparilla is just like root beer...

Rob: Actually, no...

Bob: ...AND we'll make ours out of what we have on hand. Root Beer Flavoring Pack 12H and Brown 3 will do nicely.

Rob: But sir! You are completely missing the point. It's not root beer, it's something else entirely, with a long and rich history...

Bob: FINE! You can add DOUBLE the Brown 3 to make it look dense.

Rob: And some Red 4, sir? Oh please can I add some Red 4?

Bob: Yes, Bob, for you anything.

Rob and Bob hug, curtain falls.

I used my web cam to take this picture,
and had to put the bottle super close to the camera
because it's 10am and I haven't put on any clothes yet.

Okay, to be fair, the ingredients claim there are no artificial colors and it uses natural flavorings and real sugar, but this does not taste like a sarsaparilla to me. Not in the least. It's overcarbonated and tastes like a generic root beer. Or at least the top half of the bottle does as I couldn't bring myself to drink the bottom half.

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.

Mtn Dew Typhoon

Yo Punchy! Do the Dew!

Holy shit, never have I had such a disconnect between drinking a Mountain Dew and reading about it on the internet. Hee-larity reigns. Okay okay okay, I guess I guess I have to do this in order:

Mountain Dew, as many of you will know, is having a hokey "Choose the Next Dew" contest votey thing. They are trotting out three Mountain Dew flavors and we the drinkers can call or vote or text or something to get one of them to stay around. Straight up marketing gimmick, I dig it. In fact, I actually worked on a marketing campaign for a cereal which had a voting gimmick for new flavored shapes mixed in the cereal. What stupid shape will win? You decide! Of course, the commercials advertising the voting gimmick and the commercials announcing the winner were made at the same time. Your votes didn't count, not one bit.

Jerks.

Anyways, Mountain Dew is doing this stupid contest and there are three new flavors running around: A Sprite Mountain Dew, a Lime Mountain Dew, and a baffling little retard Mountain Dew. Being in NYC, it is completely random what any given store keeps in stock. I go to a dozen different places to round up new versions of standard drinks, getting suspicious glances every time I leave without a purchase. The three new Mountain Dews I found, drank and didn't write about. And repeat. Two of the three test flavors are really good which is why I kept buzzing through them without writing, the third one sucks. That sucky Mountain Dew flavor is, of course, what I'm stuck reviewing today - Mountain Dew TYPHOON! I first drank some in desperation two weeks ago while playing with my XBox, horrified I returned it to the refrigerator half empty. Today my wife prods me into drinking it and writing a review, something about needing space in the refrigerator for "vegetables". Bah.

So:

It's a fruit punch Mountain Dew. Not good fruit punch, not 1950s-era-dance fruit punch, but bad discount store fruit punch. The sort of fruit punch that's a mish mosh of random fruity flavors poured directly out of a vat, each flavor denoted by a number. "Hmmm, this here fruit punch needs more 1297A". That sort of punch. It tastes cheap. It's too perfumey. It's all yuck. It's similar to the grotesque Red Alert or Code Red or whatever it is.

So yeah, the Mountain Dew Typhoon flavor sucks. And it doesn't only suck, it's named in poor taste. Hey! Let's name a soft drink after a natural disaster! I'm looking forward to "Coke Plague! Feel the POX!" next.

But the hilariousesness isn't in the bad Mountain Dew drink. It's in the label. And not in the label but OF the label. The label has a random name on it: Shanea Wisler. It's next to a little star, so I thought it was a sort of footnote but it wasn't. Puzzled, I broke my "no research" rule and typed "shanea wisler mountain dew" into a Google search bar. Or at least I started to, it auto filled so I didn't even have to finish typing.

I THINK this means that a lot of other people searched for the same thing, because, seriously what the hell is this random name doing on the label? The public needs to know! I immediately found this article by Jason A. Kahl on the Reading Eagle website. In it we get some juicy quotes from Shanea E Wisler who designed the bottle label:

A 2007 graduate of Boyertown High School who is studying to lead religious youth groups has won a $10,000 award for her label design for a new flavor of Mountain Dew soda.

Shanea E. Wisler... said she felt divine inspiration for her design for the new Typhoon flavor Mountain Dew set to hit stores in April.

Okay, so the design wasn't even hers. I wish she'd given credit where credit is due, though. Who inspired it? Jesus? God? Mary? Buddha? I guess Satan would technically be "diabolic" intervention, so it probably wasn't him though he IS the Prince of Lies and could certainly put one over on a 20 year old aspiring graphic designer.

"I got an e-mail about the contest and felt the Holy Spirit move me to design this," said Wisler, whose interest in art began at Boyertown Junior High School...

Oh, wait. It was the Holy Spirit. That's the Catholic version of God, right? Where you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and you say the names and say "The power of Christ compels you" and Satan stops being an Exorcist or whatever. I thought the Holy Spirit was supposed to be the unknowable one, the one where if you "got it" you were a real Catholic. Hmmm. Seems unworthy of the ultimate Omega being to be dabbling in soft drink labels.

Regardless, I want to see this email. I bet it was all like "Yo Shanea, It's G-O-D and I (that's like double capitalized) got an idea for this thing you have to work on or, like, there'll be a toad plague to beat the band."

The three finalists were flown to New York City for a press event and each received $10,000, an Apple laptop computer and other prizes.

What? Mountain Dew had a press event in NYC and I wasn't invited? Oh the shame! I live next door Mountain Dew, you could have at least phoned!

"I found out that I won on Oct. 14, which is my parents' anniversary and also the 10th month and the 14th day of the year," Wisler said, continuing her sense that winning the contest was her destiny. "I see those numbers, 10 and 14, everywhere and have been seeing them since I was in junior high school."

Given the above quote, I'm surprised that the label didn't have a little more Dr. Bronner in it.

Wisler said her name will be on every can and bottle of Typhoon Dew nationwide and she hopes the flavor and design are selected to be permanent parts of the Mountain Dew lineup.

Okay Wisler, I think you just pointed out the worst thing about democracy: Those with a vested interest in something bad often vote against the greater good. Typhoon is a disgusting flavor, I earnestly doubt that anyone - ANYONE - would be able to say it is better than the other two flavors.

At last she looks nice...
Hang on a second, that design looks NOTHING
like the actual label. NOTHING.
(photo from the Reading Eagle, credited Erin Shoaf)
Seriously, look below:






What the hell? There swirl is completely different,
the color palette is only vaguely similar,
the actual can has fluer de lis or whatever
they are called... I call shenadigans.

Because I am interested in the sort of people that get to meet the Mountain Dew higher ups, I'm going to internet snoop for some more "dope". Here's some quotes from her on a Yugoslavian site called "http://www.formspring.me":

I will only pursue relationships that the Lord tells me to pursue and will hold that relationship with the utmost integrity. The Lord is continuing to do a work in me to become exactly what I need to be for my future husband. It's a beautiful journey :) and I'm loving every second of it!

Careful there, Shanea, that's the sort of stuff left Mary giving birth in a barn. A jealous God forbids her seeing other people, spending his time showing her how "to become exactly what I need to be for my future husband". Bang zoom, giving birth in a manger, hunted by Romans.

[The Dewmocracy contest] seems rigged to me too. I truly believe that people only like white out because it's white. :( which is a sad reason. I can understand though, how many times do we see soda thats white? but Typhoon tastes so much better.

Whoah there lady, let's not go hating things just because they are white. But I must say that your suspicions point you out as more than an unthinking tool of the Mountain Dew brand...

[In response to a question about what goes into the Typhoon drink] if you're talking about mountain dew typhoon, i did not create the flavor. That would have been Dominick from the Mountain Dew Brand team.

Dominick? You know these guys on a first name basis? I am afire with jealousy. I must craft a latex suit which gives me the appearance of a Shanea Wisler, then I will seduce this "Dominick" and soon the Mountain Dew empire will be MINE.

I'm with you on Supernova being the best. That one was by far my favorite in the last dewmocracy. I still think its probably better than typhoon, but typhoon does have more sentimental value.

What? But this is positively human. You liked another flavor better, and admit that you like Typhoon for special reasons? Curses! My innate dislike of you for your connection with horrid Typhoon is being confounded.

[On being a vegetarian] I tried it last year for a little while while working out. I was losing weight, getting into shape and feeling really good about myself. But then I stopped. So I decided I wanted to start again. No political or social or religious reasons.

Wait, what? You're a vegetarian? But Christians are supposed to be consuming the Earth as fast as possible in order to bring on the rapture... Stop making this so difficult for me!

[On designing the label] Though it was a collaborate effort because the typhoon flavor nation in the dew labs helped me create what I created. They gave me opinions, voted on different designs. I had to change a few things and if I would have just made it on my own without the flavor nations input, it wouldn't look nearly as good as it does.

Hey, you just totally cockblocked my righteous anger over the blatant adjustments your design went through between the two photos above. It's like you are purposefully not being a horrible, boastful, lying person. Man that pisses me off.


So what do we learn from Typhoon flavored Mountain Dew? I'll tell you!


The Christian God can't come up with a unique Mountain Dew label. He just sort of looked at all the other Mountain Dew labels and made something that looked like them. Then he showed it to the rest of the triumvirate who said "Dude, shouldn't you be worrying about more important shit?" Then he beamed it into the head of a girl and probably got her fired from her job at the t-shirt printing place. Good job God, you jerk. I somehow think a Japanese God would have made a totally awesome label and then gotten the girl a job flying robots in the army, much cooler.


Facebook is useless for picking soda labels. You offer people dozens of identical nothing designs and, yeah, one'll get picked BECAUSE IT'S DESIGNED BY GOD. Jesus, people, God has totally fucked over democracy here. I sort of suspect that the submissions were pretty carefully vetted by MD first, anyways.

This Dewmocracy gimmick isn't very good. I mean there's all this crazy shit going on about "Flavor nations", but I've never heard about any of it and I sit down and write about soda once every month or two.


Religion ruins everything and this horrible Typhoon drink will prove that when it wins.


God likes natural disasters and I propose that when he made this label He didn't know it was for a soft drink. "Holy shit", says He, "they are doing branding for the disasters I use to punish people for being brown? I'm all over this."


This sort of nonsense is going to run Mountain Dew out of business, I mean seriously, they already had to pawn off the vowels in Mountain.


Don't use Yugoslavian social networking sites that make all your postings available to an internet full of creepy, bearded soda reviewers who want to become your body double so they can seduce Mountain Dew flavor designers. Just don't.



In conclusion: Don't even try this Typhoon crap. Get the other two new Mountain Dew flavors or one of the video game flavored ones. Or a Mello Yello, they're being nationally distributed now. I think I have a new motto relating to how Mountain Dew should resemble a chartreuse spinner bait:

"If it's yellow
then I'm mellow,
if it's not
it'll taste like snot."

Elephant Ginger Beer

EGB - "Elephant Ginger Beer"

As far as I understand it, ginger originated in India. Here is a historical account from the Bagha Disaata Bahir:




...and for seven days did Baahir walk

along the dusty road towards the sea,

until he did come upon a large and ferocious head

buried partially in the roadbed.

"Oh grotesque head, how did you come to be

buried in this road that passes by the sea?



The head was that of a man, with

a fearsome brow and tremendous teeth

upon it's brow it bore a shining trapezohedron

knitted upon a band of gold flecked iron.

It's hair was snakes and the nose

was that of the small bears found in the hills

near Muldorre beyond the mountains.



When the head opened it's mouth to answer

Baahir was as quick as a snake -

he cut out the tongue which was rough

and dry like an undesirable root vegetable.



"Ha ha fearsome head, I have cut out

your tongue" crowed Baahir.

"And I don't even want it, observe as

I bury it here in the roadbed beside you.

Now watch as I shame you further."



Baahir squatted over the head

lying in the roadbed

and began bobbing up and down.

From the locked camera view of the head

on the roadbed

it was quite degrading.



Thus was ginger brought onto the Earth.



---

Anyways, that tongue grew into the first ginger plant. It was promptly trampled by a passing ox cart because it had been planted in a roadbed but by that point everyone thought it was such a swell idea that Jesus made a new one and put it some place else and God made Moses get it and put it on the Arc because saltwater would ruin the plant and Jesus didn't want to have to go and evolve a new one again. It's a lot of work and Jesus just likes hanging around.

The moral of this story is that India loves ginger and wants to honor it as one of its most famous sons. Which is why I initially theorized that EGB - Elephant Ginger Beer - was created by Pakistan for Indian markets.

I found this bottle of EGB at one of those Indian groceries on the middle East side, in the 20s and 30s. The NYC indy comic thing was held at the armory there, and I'd loaded up on enough shit for my wife to kill me twice over. Barely able to move under the combined malefactions of a fortune in comic books and my awkward comic-girl-admiring erection, it truly shows my dedication to both of your readers that I stopped to snoop in an Indian market. After all, my wife couldn't kill me three times so more soda didn't really matter.

Truth be known, I'd already picked these places over pretty well. I was shocked to find three or four drinks previously unknown to the Western hemisphere - one of them being EGB. I bought 'em up and lugged all the crap home.

When I finally got around to trying the EGB I was shocked. SHOCKED I say. India, the first birthplace of ginger, had made an utterly unremarkable ginger drink. It had the most generic taste of any ginger beer or ale I've ever tasted. I'm thinking I would be unable to distinguish it from Tommy's in a blind taste test.

Now let's be clear: This crap was bottled in Tekkawatte, Biyagama on the island of Sri Lanka. This shit came from the OTHER SIDE OF THE FUCKING WORLD and pretty clearly uses "Generic Ginger flavoring no 3" as it's main ingredient. AND I PAID $5 for it! I think it's the most expensive drink I've ever bought over the counter, the most expensive period if you don't count shipping. And to think that other assholes thought this crap worth sending over here.

A quick aside: I have a theory on how most foreign grocery items wind up in the US. I believe that every country has its own version of the dollar stores that are ruining our cities. Poland, India, Canada, all of 'em. And when these dollar stores go out of business they have a fifty cent sale, and then when the doors actually close for good they are opened one more time and all the crap that no one would buy for fifty cents and no store employee would steal and no store owner would take home to store in his basement, all that remaining junk is put into a shipping container and sent to the United States to be sold in an ethnic market or whatever you'd call it. Because, seriously folks, why the fuck would anyone want a Polish made Brillo pad? Is grandma really so attached to that crap that she needs her Korean rubber bands enough that someone needs to import them? No. It's totally random crap. But anyways...

In the bottom middle of that there picture is a
bit of what us literary types call "foreshadowing",
just like on Lost.

India! You are magic! You are supposed to be bizarre and wonderful and a little uncomfortable to visit! How can you FUCK UP GINGER BEER!... Oh, wait, I see why, because it's bottled under the authority of Coca fucking Cola.

Coke, like religion, ruins everything.

I'm going to copy out the label for you completists out there:

Nutritional Facts
Ginger Beer Soda Soft Drink
Savings Per 100ml (3.5oz)
Energy 42 kcal
Fat 0g
Proteing 0g
Carbohydrates 11g

Containts: Carbonated Water, Sugar, Permited Flavours, Colours (110, 102, 122, 150d), Acidulant (330) & Preservative (2111)
Manufactured by:
Coca-Cola Beverages Sri Lanka Ltd
Tekkawatte, Biyagama
Under the authority of
The Coca-Cola Company
GINGEER BEER AND THE DYNAMIC RIBBON
DIVICE ARE TRADEMARKS OF THE COCA-COLA
COMPANY


There. My favorite bit is "Containts". It's a perfect amalgam of "Contents" and "Contains".

So here's what we need to do to wrap this up: Imagine me drinking some of the bottle, looking disgusted, a freeze frame and Animal House style text pops up saying

"Tim went on to get both diabetes AND pancreatic cancer from writing this soda blog".

Then we zoom into the bottle and the text reads

"The EGB bottle was left on a file cabinet corner, unfinished, for two weeks. At that point a cat knocked it off the cabinet and onto the floor, making a sticky mess all around Tim's desk. It looked liked he'd had one boss internet pornography session you bet. He walked in and got all pissed off and had to clean it up but did a bad job and still sometimes finds little bits of sticky here and there and put the bottle on the big table in the area that passes for a living room in his tiny apartment and the bottle sat there for like another three weeks before Tim realized that his wife hadn't yelled at his for leaving it there for so long which really WAS her way of yelling at him for leaving it there so he finally decided to write up the review. The bottle will eventually be emptied down the sink and recycled and Tim will wonder if the empty bottle itself should be sold on eBay but, man, that's a lot of work and probably no one would want it anyways."

This review is dedicated to the blog poster who posts actual comments on the blogs but still advertises Viagra in his little name tag thing. This is for you buddy.

Coca Cola Review

If I was dramatic, I might say that my writing a review set the entire Coca Cola intelligence machine into action. I could paint a picture of wires tapped and commandos sliding down ropes dangling from black helicopters. All very cool, but the sad fact is that Coke is so huge and so prevalent that their CEO himself could declare it was made of human feces, angel ashes, and rendered baby fat and it wouldn't impinge on sales at all. Not even if he showed video to prove it. Hell, Coke HAS murdered people according to these sources....

http://killercoke.org/crimes.htm
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_20311.cfm

Nobody cares.

Instead of covering the wide world which is Coca Cola, I'm going to focus in it's two greatest failings. Coca Cola, the great American drink, tastes more like Coca Cola the further you get from the USA. What we drink here isn't Coke, it's something else - a half-assed doppleganger too lazy to even roll its own hit dice.

If you want Coke, go to Mexico. Or Bermuda. Or Europe. I can't vouch for it in Asia or Canada, though, but I bet it's delicious there too. You try here in the US of A, it's crap. Total crap.

Coke the company is cheap cheap cheap. To make an extra few pennies they sell you corn syrup instead of sugar, and try to tell you there's no difference. Stop and actually taste the next American made Coke you drink, think about the taste of burnt wheat as you drink it. Focus on that odd sensation of sweetness, because it isn't sweet. It's something else entirely, something masquerading as sweet but failing upon any sort of second glance at all. Revel in the slimy coating it leaves on your tongue and teeth - you don't get that with sugared version.

Other sodas use corn syrup but it's Coke that suffers the most from this foul practice. Sugared Coke is delicious, possibly one of mankinds most delicious drinks. Corn syrup Coke is foul. This bitter is made all the more bitter by Coke having had the furthest to fall, from an astoundingly perfect soft drink to the worst of the worst. Poor poor Coke, cast from the garden and molded into a new Satan - by it's own choice. Boo!

Murder and incredibly unhealthy corn syrup and bad taste aside, Coke also suffers one of the worst sins a mass produced consumable might engage in. It's inconsistent in taste and quality.

Some Cokes are more burned tasting than others. Some cokes are more or less chemical tasting than others. Even carbonation can be inconsistent, from watery nothing to something tasting more like carbonated gas water sans syrup. Long ago I called Coke to ask why. They told me that it was the vagaries of the shipping process, that maybe the bad Coke I had drank was frozen at one point. Or was too old for consumption. Or whatever.

Well, Coke, I say you're full of shit. I've drank your demon brew from one coast to another and it always tastes different. Always. You're the biggest company in the universe and you can't even keep your product straight. Spend a little less time worrying about getting the red on the can within a half percent margin of consistency and try getting the horrible beverage you serve back on track. Please.

The reason that Coke changed to a chemical swill was because of consistency issues. Lemon, a prime ingredient, was unavailable in consistent quality year round. In the name of making consumers happy, they used a chemical lemon substitute. Repeat for every other ingredient and what are you left with? A chemical formula which should be perfectly reproducible, but they don't reproduce it and don't even seem to try.

Coke is huge and almighty. If they can't manage to give us a delicious and trustworthy drink it's because they choose not to. They know that consumers don't drink Coke for any reason other than that it comes in the shiny red can that they have been buying for their whole lives. They save two dollars a year by churning out a cheaper product and no one cares or notices because nobody cares or notices.

Coke is a huge failure as far as trustworthiness goes, but consumers are idiots so its a perfect match.

Let's recap:

Coke, the American drink, tastes better the further you get from the USA. This is because US producers use corn syrup, overseas they tend towards sugar.

Coke, a chemical formula, is incredibly inconsistent between cans. It can taste like burned wheat, or random chemicals, or very rarely like Coca Cola. The company doesn't seem to care about consistency and quality.

Coke has allegedly done incredibly wicked deeds overseas. You are practically drinking blood.

Within the next month, I'll drink a Coke. You probably will too. And that sucks because Coke has become the default drink, and everytime we grab one we are letting the company know that we don't care about quality.

This all applies to canned and bottled Coke. Between the containers I would say there is variance, with small plastic bottles of Coke tasting the worst and 2 liters tasting the best.

None of this, though, applies to fountain coke. Not even the human rights part. Fountain Coke generally rocks.

You know what. I'm going to take a vow that I am going to stop drinking regular Coca Cola. I might drink another Coke product, or I might drink Caffeine Free sugared coke, and I'll drink Mexicoke or other sugared variants, but no more regular Coke. You hear that Coke? I'm sick of your lousy, inconsistent taste which even at it's best isn't that good. And I'll probably feel better about myself too, knowing that I'm doing less to support the possible wickedness they are engaged in.

So there.

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.

Snake in the Grass, Coca Cola Slurpee

It's important to grip the adder firmly behind the head,
so it cannot twist and bite you. Be strong.

Snake in the Grass, A Coca Cola Slurpee Betrayal

In an effort to offset the crushing sadness inherent in my being a guy who gets up for work before six and seldom gets home before ten, I bought an xbox. This was to ensure that the twelve free minutes I enjoyed at home each day weren't frittered away on my wife, or my cats, or my robot or my novelization of this blog. None of those things hold up to being cursed at by the effeminate voices of the next-next generation, a rather high strung people thick with racism and innumerable other incarnations of ignorance.

I mean, really, I have yet to meet a twelve year old who actually knows what "hull down" means. What do kids learn in school nowadays?

So in this "xbox" there is a game called World at War. One of a myriad of World War II games where we get to take the role of soldiers who never lived to be our grandfathers. While playing these men doomed to never don the mantle of "confused giver of unwanted and uncool Christmas gifts to ungrateful children", you can earn "achievements".

At least I think that's what they are called. An achievement is acquired when you've done something deemed noteworthy by the game designers like killed three enemies with one bullet, or having team killed your fiftieth crying eight year old.

Achievements, by the way, are pretty arbitrary. I've done things I thought were pretty remarkable but went unrewarded by the happy little pop up bubble announcing my accomplishment. In World at War, for example, I managed to roll a tank all the way over and back onto it's treads. Pretty cool, and I've only ever managed it once, no matter how much effort I've devoted to repeating the feat. But, roll a tank - no accomplishment. Neither do you get an accomplishment for making your friends sputter with anger, or for choking on a grape during "Headquarters". Fall off a building roof, however, and the game congratulates you.

I've fallen off roofs before, and nowhere in my swimming vision was a pop up commending me for it. Blood, gravel, stars - but no pop ups.

A charming characteristic of achievements are their often clever names. "Hammer Time" and "Soul-Survivor" are two examples. Maybe not so charming. "Saved Private Ryan" is another that quotes popular media, kids love that.

One particularly not charmingly named achievement is called "Snake in the Grass". You get it for shooting a Japanese soldier in a gilly suit while he is hiding in the grass. In the campaign versions of the game, there are numerous places where enemy soldiers hide in the underbrush, then leap up and rush you with bayonets. After playing once or twice you learn where they hide and can gun them down before they act.

Not very sporting - after all, it's basically cheating to use knowledge of the ambush to forestall an otherwise unforeseeable event. But that's sort of the point of any xbox game, to break the unfolding of the game so as to play it out with the least possible enjoyment.

But, "Snake in the Grass": an incredibly easy achievement to collect. I have it, got the way I described above. I'm not proud of it and certainly didn't learn from it. I wish the achievement conditions had been refined a little - that you only had the chance to earn it the very first time you passed through a level, before you learn where all the enemies are hidden.

But that just means that someone would release a cheat guide, detailing enemy locations so you would enter prepared. It's my honest belief that xbox players hate a challenge more than anything else, except possibly being surprised by something.

As someone who has a bronze medal in shooting threats before they manifest themselves, you might think I wouldn't have been surprise-bayoneted by a slurpee. But like I said, my qualifications weren't honestly earned.

Here's the story:

I was craving a Coca Cola slurpee, but the dispenser at the local 7-11 was broken. Two weeks went by without satisfaction, even the Burger King slurpee dopplegangers were consistently unavailable. During that time I even pressured my workmates to buy me a slurpee from a nearby town when they drove over on business. They merely laughed in a sinister manner and consistently "forgot".

I started calling the 7-11 and asking if the machine was online, to save myself the six block walk. Eventually the machine was fixed, I was informed via telephone and scudded over to fill my void.

I was immediately suspicious, the machine which dispensed Coca Cola slurpees wasn't repaired, they had merely changed one spigot on the sister slurpee machine over to Coke. This wasn't a well reasoned suspicion, but more of the feeling a cat seems to get when it enters a room and discovers something has been fundamentally changed about it's universe, maybe that someone dropped a sinister envelope on the living room floor or left a frightening umbrella leaning in the corner. Alert!

So I filled my cup, tasted and a screaming Japanese soldier rushed out of the weeds and stabbed me in the mouth with artificial banana flavoring. Alas, the worst of all artificial fruit flavors - and in my mouth no less! The slurpee machine had not been cleaned out properly, and a horrible flavor lingered from before. Awful.

Having committed myself (those cups are inventory!), and still burning with slurpee lust, I resigned myself to my imperfect drink, cut it with extra fountain Coke, paid and left.

Bah.

[Note: This was written on my iPhone during my daily commute. Please excuse the ad hoc nature of the writing, and any totally bizarre words. I would assure you non sequiturs are the result of the auto-spell build into my treacherous phone.]

Maine Root Sarsaparilla

I get those stupid plastic pillows
from Amazon and keep them to reuse, but they suck to
store as they are just little balloons which take up
a lot of space en masse. Keep forever, though.

Maine Root Sarsaparilla
Maine Root Sarsaparilla smells like a mixture of lake water and SweetTarts, being from Missouri I like this. Really. It smells like a good summer's day spent menacing fish from the safety of a flat bottomed boat. Taste-wise it ain't so hot, though.

It has a great aftertaste, a bit like minty discount toothpaste. The initial flavor though, ugh. Somewhere between freezer burned vanilla ice cream and cardboard. You only get a flash of sarsaparilla about two seconds into a taste, then it yanks off it's Halloween mask revealing itself as root beer.

Yeah, this is a pretty bad flavor right out of the gate. Too foamy, too, right when it's opened but much better after it sits for about fifteen minutes. The foaminess early on covers some of the nastiness, but it really is better flatter.

Maine Root is puzzling in the big picture. It's part of a wave of designer soft drinks waving the flag of environmentalism and responsible social activism, which rocks. These are great things. What baffles me is that I bought this at Duane Reade in a fancy 4-pack. Why are these hoity toity drinks being carried by a big pharmacy chain? Is this part of the movement that put fancy coffee and fresh made sandwiches in 7-11s? It's puzzling.

The thing is that I don't trust it. Maine Root sells itself like it's a small label, but it must have a pretty significant factory output to fill all the Duane Reade's and everything else in the world. It says right on the label that it's a handcrafted beverage, but how? It's that sort of fake down-homeiness that puts my guard up.

I mean, yeah, it's awesome that it has certified organic fairtrade sweeteners and spices. That's hard to beat, but it feels... disingenuous. And it doesn't taste good, which is a bummer.

By the way, I used to work in Maine during the summers and have no idea how this relates to Maine at all. It doesn't taste a bit like the state.

I dub thee, Sir Buck the Cat, defender of the true faith
and upholder of my right to look at internet
pornography when my wife isn't around.

Jones Berry Lemonade

Jones Berry Lemonade

There's one of those fancy metal
water flasks in the background. See? I'm hip.

I knew this stuff was trouble the minute me wife took off the cap. A thick roiling blue cloud of berry/bubblegum/champagn horror billowed out and flowed knee deep around the living room, I half expected to see some stupid blue Disney djinni appear. My first wish would've been that I hadn't let my wife buy the Jones Pure Cane Berry Lemonade Soda. The second wish would be for the paradox to go away.

This is a real loser. It's like an American soda tried to imitate the cheap Central American champagne sodas. It did it just about perfectly, which means they copied the "suck" part just as well. Bah. It's slightly lemonadey, which tempers the horrible champagne berry crap. It also helps to take a drink, recoil in horror, put the cap back on and let it sit overnight. Drinking some more the next day you'll find that foamy foam foam aspect of the drink has calmed down.

It's sweet and potent, filling my mouth with a skim coat of sugar scum that makes my teeth vibrate and my gums go numb. I'm wondering if this some side effect of the diabolical "inverted cane sugar". This "inverted" sugar is that same stuff that gave St. Peter all his martyr cavities. (Is it St. Peter? I think he was the guy who was crucified on an upside down cross, right?)

All my complaining aside, the stuff is bearable after it airs out. The berry perfume drops off and the lemonade is allowed to come through. The ingredients are all pretty good, you know things are comparatively healthy when "Natural Flavors" shows up fourth on the list.

I'm embarrassed to say that this is my first Jones drink that I can remember. They aren't terribly common, and are usually sold in four packs, not the sort of thing I buy - I'm a low commitment kind of guy. A few years ago they had that Thanksgiving stunt, where they made sodas that were turkey flavored and the like, sadly I didn't get to try any of those.

So overall, I dunno. I think this is probably a crap flavor from a pretty good company. It's certainly a better "champagne" than most, and certainly healthier. The best part, though, is that it's something I can hold over my wife for a few days, "Honey, I let me pick what we watch on the television because that soda you bought was total crap."

Note: I did the tasting about ago, two full bottles still sit in the refrigerator, waiting for some sucker guest to come and drink them.

Note note: It's been three months and I think there are still two bottles in the refrigerator.

Note note note: Four months, still two bottles in there. That's a horribly long lag between writing and posting this article.

Wonderfarm's Nuoc Yen Ngan Nhi

Those are the noises Curly makes when he's slapped by Moe.

The can tried to tear out my throat,
but fastened onto my upper lip instead.

Pray for death.

Imagine a baby vomiting up curdled milk, to which an enterprising entrepenuer adds vanilla and more vomit. That's Wonderfarm's Nuoc Yen Ngan Nhi. Let me add that the baby might have vomited because it had taken a sip out of someone's mint flavored chewing tobacco cup. Just a sip, but enough to add a certain tang of despair and loathsomeness.

My pals Todd and Katherine brought me this stuff from their rolicking trip around Asia. I'm not sure where they actually bought it, but it was made in Malaysia. Lots of drinks are made in Malaysia, I have a whole boxful waiting for my attentions. Them Malaysians sure like to drink awful, awful things.

The magic part of Nuoc Yen Ngan Nhi is revealed by the translation on the reverse of the can: White Fungus Bird's Nest Drink. Yep. I'm down with the fungus part, but the bird's nest part is the novelty.

It's also exceedingly naughty.

These nests are built only in certain caves, which have been traditional collecting sites for hundreds of years. Photos of the caves are impressive, as the collectors have ancient bamboo scaffolds reaching up to the cave roof many stories above, allowing them access to the nests.

Everything I've ever heard about the edible bird's nests says that they are an overharvested resource. There is a traditional schedule of bird's nest collecting. You let the birds build a nest, then you harvest it, and they build another one. Then you harvest that one, after they are through with it. Apparently nowadays greedy bird's nest collectors harvest the second nest immediately, and that nest isn't replaced. A whole generation of birds are lost.

0000026 <- That's where my cat just stepped on the keyboard. In The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Poe describes how he thought the bird's nests were formed. He wrote that cave swallows (I think the birds we're talking about are swallows) flew to the sea where they picked the innards out of sea cucumbers. These innards were used to build the nests. The nests are actually made from bird vomit. But from Poe we can take a reasonable guess that the dried innards of sea cucumbers and the bird's nest nests are similar stuff. And both were valuable commodities in the Asian markets, perhaps another reason to confound the two.

But back to the White Fungus Bird's Nest Drink. It's awful. If I was Pym and had drank this stuff, I would shove the white angel aside and embrace the steaming waterfall. They don't mess around with the ingredients. Water, sugar, white fungus, bird's nest. Peering into the murky depths of the glass, I'm not quite sure what's what. I imagine the little white jelly shreds are white fungus, but if so then where is the bird's nest? Part of me vaguely remembers bird's nest soup being compared to shark's fin soup, which might mean that the bird's nest is embodies in the thickness of the drink itself.

Eh. Who knows.

It smells just like it tastes, by the way. I don't think I can finish this stuff. Many drinks I choose not to finish, but this stuff chose for me. I suspect I'll vomit if I try to choke it down, in fact, I'd probably do so if I took another drink. I just tried to fool myself into drinking some more, I picked up the can and started to read it then spun around and grabbed the glass and tried to drink. Sadly, the smell got to my nose before the glass reached my lips and I had to abort.

Back to the can. Right here on the side it says "Under 100% Foreign Processing Technology". Hey Malaysia, have some nationalistic pride. More can looking shows me the address of the company: Trade Ocean Holdings SDN, BHD. 700, Jalan Valdor Dungal, Valdor Industrial Estate, 14200 Sungai Bakap, Penang, Malaysia. First off, arch-villains shouldn't put their addresses on their products, it makes it too easy for James Bond to find your lair. I mean, c'mon, if "Valdor Industrial Estate" isn't an evil lair, what is? I'm just disappointed that the Penang region allowed such a horrible taste to come out of it. I mean, they created Penang curry, and what could be better than that? The manufacturer has a website, www.wonderfarmonline.com. Go there and explode them.

The last bit of information I can garner from the can is that what I drank is about two years old. It looks like it was canned on 03.08.07, which could mean March 8 or September 3 - I don't know which way Malaysia goes on this issue. However, it's good till 02.02.10. That's February 2 no matter where you're from, unless it's Dyslexia-ville. Okay, I'm going to go in the bathroom and try to chug this stuff down. Wish me luck... ...Couldn't do it. Tried to drink, gagged. Poured it into the toilet and peed on it. Go to hell Todd and Katherine.

Like a glass full of jellyfish
cleverly disguised as semen.

Goya Jamaican Ginger Ale

Much like in the GTA games, the Spanish hate the Jamaicans.

Goya Jamaican Style Ginger Beer


Oh my god. It's all the burn you can ever want from a ginger beer without any of the good. Tastes like medicine mixed with jalapenos. I think that macaw on the label must have been trained by the Prince of Lies to scream "fahk you! fahk you, Tim!"

Seriously, this is horrible. Who would drink this? I once drank a novelty ginger ale that was formulated to be novelty hot, I'm not sure if it was as bad as this. The worst part is that I'm really thirsty, so I can't stop drinking it. I drink it and it burns and I drink more to quench the burning, which is like that whole quenching-a-fire-with-a-bucket-of-gasoline thing.

Help me.

Hot aside, it still tastes bad. Like discount medicine that your grandmother gives you just because she has it laying around. "Grandma, no! I don't want to take your out-of-date hormone pills!" "Now Tim, if you don't take them they'll just go to waste. Look at the fine tits on your Grandpa, don't you want some of those?"

But that's a wholly different kind of hot.

You get a half whiff of the stuff before the burning starts, and that split second of flavor is awful. Awful awful awful. It's kind of like... Kind of like some sort of cheap fruit drink mixed with alcohol and poison. And hot peppers. They're on the ingredients list.

Do not drink this crap. It goes down bad and burps up bad. I just took a pull and got distracted looking at some render settings, it sat in my mouth too long and it made me cough/gag. My mouth was full of shitwater that I didn't want to spray on my keyboard, so this cough/choke full of moist ginger ale vapors came out my nose. It hurt. Then I swallowed down the rest of the soda, and that hurt too.

Okay, no more. Down the sink and a big glass of water to flush me out.

Turkey Hill Iced Tea - Lemon Flavored

Okay, so I seem to have lost the photo I took of the bottle,
here's one swiped off their website. My bottle was this shape,
but the flavor was "Lemon Iced Tea".

Turkey Hill Iced Tea - Lemon Flavored

I've seen Turkey Hill stuff around for some time. They make ice cream, and I believe I've seen Turkey Hill convenience stores in Pennsylvania, I think they had Slurpee type dispensers there, too. In NYC I see the teas in the medium to large sized supermarkets, but had never actually seen anyone drink one till an evening of games at a pal's house.

It was a bad evening, I lost at Power Grid and Around the World in 80 Days.

Early in that dismal evening, a brother-in-law of my host showed up with a bottle of Turkey Hill Iced Tea. Someone said something about him being addicted to the stuff. That sparked my interest and moved the Turkey Hill onto my "acquisitions" list, an item I checked off just today.

My first drink almost made me vomit. Once again, I drank something without reading the fine print on the back instructing me to "shake well". Bah. That first sip was pure, unflavored syrupy sweetness. Horrible.

A good shaking makes the stuff much more bearable, but still not great. Not bad, but not very tea like. It tastes alot like the instant powdered iced teas I grew up with, and that ain't a great thing tea wise. The real pull of this stuff is in the sugar/caffeine rush, I think. Drinking about a cups worth puts me in race car mode. Brrrrrrrummm-bum-bum-bmmmmmmmmm. Honestly, the taste is only about half a pip less good than Snapple Lemon Tea, and it isn't really that it's worse but just different in a slightly less desirable way.

It's much more mellow than Snapple, that's for certain.

The bottle art is pretty tacky, with a poorly drawn polar bear wearing sun glasses and a scarf, hugging himself for warmth. He's there to illustrate that it's "cold fashioned for freshness". On the back they boast that the stuff is kept cold throughout the entire process. Wait, they DON'T say that. The cold part starts at the bottling, it's supposedly kept cold from then on. I confess I was suspicious of any tea that could be made cold.

It's sad to think that in another decade or two it might be in bad taste to use polar bears in advertising.

The side of the bottle has a relief that says "Imported from Lancaster County TM". Trademarked. They trademarked that phrase. That's sort of silly and sad. And I wonder if they sell these same bottles in Lancaster County, where it wasn't imported because it was made there. Maybe I'll call 800-MY-DAIRY and ask.

Anyways, this stuff ain't great but it ain't bad. It's a pretty neutral way to get lots of sugary crap in your body fast. Honestly, I don' really recommend it.

White Rock Ginger Ale

White Rock and Power Grid share a similar color scheme.

White Rock Ginger Ale

Wow, this is some mundane crap. My first drink tastes like flat carbonated water. I put the cap back on and give it a few light twists, hoping that the stuff has separated in the bottle and needs to be remixed...

...No, it's just awful. The flavor is really weak and all I can really taste is the carbonation. My taste buds don't rebel completely because of the delightful amount of corn syrup, it's still a sugar rush. Basically, it tastes like weaker and slightly sweeter Schweppes.

It has a sideways chemical taste hidden in the carbonation reek. Mixed in there is a flat 7-up taste that isn't all bad. The whole thing ends in a watery aftertaste, not the usual cardboard burn found in ginger drinks.

"Psyche the Goddess of Purity and White Rock's trademark, signifies White Rock's commitment to the upmost quality, purity and refreshment in beverages". Personally, I think Psyche should hit them with a defamation suit, both for being associated with this soft drink and being labeled "the Goddess of Purity". She was no such thing, at least I'm pretty sure she wasn't. I invoke my "no research" rule as an excuse for not coming up with a footnote on this.

Positive things about this drink... Hmmm. It comes in a bottle with the picture of a girl with wings on it, that's a plus. It's not caffeinated. I like that. Simple ingredients list is a plus as well. I bought a quart and not a two liter, that's the best part .

So yeah, White Rock Ginger Ale tastes like a cheap discount soda. Why it was for sale in an upscale New York grocery store, I have no idea. It certainly didn't measure up to its surroundings.

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.

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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.



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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.