The Fridge Monkey

Combining drinking with stacks of glass bottles, brilliant!

The Fridge Monkey


My wife showed me this gimmicky device, I could see the hopeful glint in her eye, right through the email. A good idea, I think, but not for me. I have eigth bazillion bottles in my refrigerator and none of them are the same size, it kind of spoils the trick.

The Ginger People Ginger Beer

Aw, look at the little dude on the tiger.

The Ginger People Ginger Beer

The bottle art is thoroughly charming, a cute little ginger guy in a turban rides on the back of a tiger. Arcing over the head it reads "A Toast to Your Strength and Vigor". The bottle is suspiciously cloudy, but we are reassured everything is fine at the bottom of the label: "Natural ginger juice gives our ginger beer its uniquely cloudy appearance..." How nice! They knew we'd be concerned but took the time to ease our fears.

The best part is the instruction to "Gently tip to and fro and enjoy". To and fro! I want the copy writer to read me bedtime tales.

I pop the cap with my everpresent Leatherman after realizing it wasn't a twist-off. "Realizing it wasn't a twist-off" is code for "nearly tore my shirt". The first whiff of the ginger beer lifted me off the ground, it smelled like heaven. Like concentrated Canadian made Ting. I literally snorted the CO2 mist drifting out of the can up into my nostrils, there was no visible gas left after I whiffed it all up.

Heaven. Then came the first drink. It's not so much that this stuff is bad as it is that it doesn't measure up to the promise of the label and the smell. It's foamy but not full of carbonated fight, it expands in my mouth and sits there like a big slug. This corpulence is matched in the taste, nothing much happens. It's not a typical ginger taste, not at all. Compared to other ginger beers it's more like a root beer than anything else, this is reflected in the foaminess as well. There's also a hint of something like damp earth, from a forest. Which I guess makes sense, considering that this is made from a root that likes loamy soil.

Which brings me back to the label. The little root guy riding the tiger, I am suspicious of who exactly he is. What root is known for resemblance to a man, eh? Not ginger, but most certainly mandrake. Unless gathered under the most carefully arranged circumstances, mandrake root gives a death wail when pulled from the ground that will strike any hearers dead. DEAD. Furthermore, mandrake can be used to create a homonculus, animating the mandrake into a little person that will do as its master wishes. We are now back to the label, where we see a little animated root man riding a tiger.

The tiger, of course, is the hole in this theory. Unless we have tiny tigers this would mean that root man on the label is actually quite large. Bigger than a person, actuallly. At this point, I'll fall back and blame the disproportinate scale on photoshop trickery.

Ha.

All that said, Ginger People Ginger Beer ain't that great. It's sweet, and leaves a delightful residue on the lips and wherever else you slop it, but otherwise the taste is pretty bland. Sure it's a ginger beer and not a ginger ale, but that ain't no excuse.

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.

Regatta Ginger Beer

Boooooring.

Regatta Ginger Beer

There's a lot going on in this ginger beer, it's seemingly sweet at first but that quickly dissipates in the busy melange of spice and flavors. For all the complicated nonsense, it still seems a straightforward taste. You have to listen to hear all the different instruments.

It smells perfect. It smells cold, and gingery, and clean. This level of nose perfection I've only found in Canadian Ting and Australian Bundaberg.

It's not too hot, it doesn't fight on the way down but does tend to simmer in the back of the throat long after the bottle is finished. Such is the nature of ginger and carbonation, though, and I can't find fault with a ginger beer for doing what comes natural to a ginger beer. It's like getting mad at your neighbors dog for barking all night and day until its fed poisoned hamburger.

The funny thing about this, is that it's good but soulless. It's all the good stuff of ginger beer, but none of the bad - no cardboard taste, no overwhelming ginger wackiness. Even the label is a little too well designed, what with its logo of two boats about to crash. It's a little too classy looking.

And the old rule applies: Anything that says 'authentic' on the label, probably isn't authentic. But don't avoid it, it's better than most.

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.

Pepsi Throwback

This isn't your father's Mountain Dew, nor is it that punk kid's,
it's YOUR Mountain Dew. At least judging by the label.
And assuming your about my age.

I've been trained by enough horror movies to know that
a "throwback" is a genetic monstrosity sure to kill
almost everyone in the film.

Okay, so Pepsi is releasing "retro" versions of its soft drinks. These drinks will use sugar instead of corn syrup. It's first mentioned in a bevindustries.com link here:

In the middle of April, PBV also will begin distributing Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback, which features those brands formulated with sugar.

There's a very nice write-up on this at bevreview. Smart folks over there. Too bad my "no research" policy prevents me from actually reading their website. This was an okay bit of looking because:

1. It's about something that hasn't actually been released yet.

and

2. Enough people sent me the link that I felt I HAD to look.

Not much else I can add to this. One thing mentioned in the original Bevnet article is that Pepsi has some kind of consumer voting thing for the new Mountain Dew flavors. I'm hoping I can hire some African dictator to come up here and rig the polls so we can get rid of some of those disgusting cartoon flavors they falsely call "Mountain Dew [*]".

It astounds me that companies have people vote for flavors. I've always assumed that this was total crap, even as a kid. As an adult I had it confirmed when I worked on a cereal ad campaign for which the results were determined before the "kids go vote" commercials were even aired. That Bevnet runs an article which states that:

In CSD flavors, PBV will add Mountain Dew Voltage, which was the winning flavor in the brand’s Dewmocracy campaign.

This makes me half wonder if there might not be some legitimacy to the Dewmocracy thing. And if Coke isn't passing bribes to get the worst possible results.

That Pepsi logo looks kind of Mad Maxx, especially with
the dirt on the circle part. I hate the font on
the Mountain Dew "Throwback". I want to put the designer
inside a big inner tube and roll him into a river of lava.