Soda Pop - 1421 Reviews

The power of the moose compels you. The moose compels you to drink a soda flavor that you would normally overlook. The moose is not sure if either black cherry or lemon lime is the worst of the classic soda flavors. The moose doesn't care. It could be any flavor, and if the moose is on the label you drink it. As it turns out the moose is very wise and doesn't appear on just any label. It knew that I couldn't care less about black cherry soda, so it strolled up to that digitally created stream to stand in a picturesque pose, just knowing that it would get my attention. The moose was right; not only that its presence would get me to drink this soda, but also that this is above and beyond a standard black cherry. The main reason is that cherry juice is actually present in this beverage albeit in a concentrated form. It's more than other companies deliver and it gives a normally bland flavor the kick it needs to make it truly enjoyable. It's still tastes like black cherry, but how it should taste and not articifial. Since it's kettle brewed it also has a bit of the standard flavor that goes along with that. It's vaguely smoky and a little metaly.

I was waiting for Mike to get around to reviewing this, but then the moose came to me and told me to partake. When a silhouette of a moose talks to you, you listen.

I don't travel anywhere near as much as Jay. Jay has been to all the continental US states as well as Hawaii. I can't imagine traveling that much, mostly because I don't really go a lot of places. One thing I also don't do is specifically travel. "I'm going to go to London and see the Salford Lads' Club." is nothing that I've done. I like going places with people I know and let them tour guide me. If I set a destination, say, Wyoming and made a point to go to the Grand Teton national park and then bought this, I wouldn't be disappointed, but I would be left with questions like, "Why did I come here again?"

It's not that this is bad but it's very basic. Yes it tastes good and it was made with real sugar and it's sweet but what it isn't is "remarkable." Now I know that it's audacious to expect "remarkable" every time but from me to you, you can get "this" cream soda almost anywhere. Maybe cream soda is one of those flavors that you make once, everyone accepts it and moves onto more important things in life. I'm not complaining. I'm just leaving you some of my mental thoughts while I drink something for the first time that I've drank a hundred times before.

What is wrong with me? Why do I do it? Why do I love sodas that cause me physical pain? Ginger beer is one of my favorites, yet it hurts. Oh how it hurts. I had an overnight drive and instead of downing an energy drink I decided to drink this bottle of ginger beer. Every time I felt a bit sleepy, I took a sip. What better way to stay awake then by giving your throat a nice liquid kick of fire?

Overall this is a pretty standard ginger beer. It's nice and sweet with a decent burn that you feel in your throat as well as your stomach. This is basically the non-alcoholic version of a shot of whiskey. It's not insanely intense, but it's enough and sometimes that is exactly what you're looking for.

If Old Faithful spewed something other than water, it would be more amazing than it already is, right? If it spewed something like pastrami sandwiches, that would be awesome. Legos? Wicked. Pez? Even better. If it spit this out, though...not so fantastic. It would be cool at first but then people would say things like, "What is this? Diet?" to which the manager of the park would say, "No, sir or madame. It is not diet. Sorry for the ambiguity but I can't tell which sex you are with that giant hat on."

This would decrease the attendance at the park since it would be spewing not-fantastic ginger ale. I mean, it's not every day that a geyser spews out something other than water but the argument would always be, "Yeah, but it's not good ginger ale." It's got a decent ginger taste and a light burn which is on the better side of ginger ales but something in it tastes diet-y and that's not good. It was was diet, it would be fine. It's not but it tastes like it is which unfortunately loses points.

Old Faithful, sir, I will see you someday perhaps. When I come, I will let you know that I'm coming so you can prepare your finest Gak or Floam or other 90's Nickelodeon kids product.

When you promise cream soda, you better deliver on some cream soda. Like root beer it is a special flavor, that when you want it, you're body seems to think it needs it to survive. You will feel weird and jittery until your need is satiated. Sadly this bottle of Zuberfizz will leave you with the shakes, as it doesn't taste like cream soda at all. It's a strange thing because the other two cream sodas we've had from this company were quite nice, but the base of this just tastes like generic sweetened soda water.

Do you want to talk about Key Lime? Well this soda has you covered there. It tastes like real key lime, without being overly, intensely sweet. If this were labeled a key lime soda with no mention of cream soda I would think that it was great, but man were my expectations not met. Like Sprecher, it also has that strange flavor that accompanies soda that has been fire brewed in a kettle. It's not unpleasant, but it something that takes a little acclimation.

Zuberfizz, you nailed it with the key lime, but you failed on the cream soda part of the exam. I think that means you have to go to summer school. Give Mark Harmon my love.

Sometimes I hate myself. I currently hold ill will against me because all I can think of while drinking this root beer is a non-existent radio edit of the Sophie B Hawkins song Damn Dang I Wish I Was Your Lover. Actually I don't even know if I hate that song. I don't think I have any opinion about it either way, it simply exists. That is not a feeling I want to have when I drink a root beer and luckily Dang! root beer does not leave me apathetic. It's on the smoother side of most brews and that is something I like from time to time. Luckily, this happens to be one of those times. I'm really enjoying this it's a traditional style brew. Sometimes you're looking for something more than that, something new and exciting, but then you drink a soda like this and you remember why it is the go to for most root beer, it's just great. I don't mean to say that this is a clone of everyday root beer. It's in the same ballpark as that, but it's playing for the majors, not that done AA team.

Now, decide for yourself.

Climbing to the top of the Grand Teton Mountains, you have to remember one thing; bring a basket. You have to earn your keep so on your trip up, you have to pick berries of all shapes and sizes to get juiced. People live atop the mountain. You didn't know that? Yeah. Some people who are scared of heights live up there. They climbed it to try and beat their fear of heights but forgot that climbing is only half the voyage. They got scared, acted resourcefully, and set up a little tiny town. Now, everyone who climbs has to, by law, bring up food and drinks for the people. Trouble is, they're vegetarians so you can forget bringing any meat. For those that forget, you have to strap a basket to yourself and you and everyone around you picks berries on their way up the mountain for the people.

When you bring it up, they've got a little operation of people that juice them and for the thousands of dollars you spend on the trip up, they will make you a bottle of pop with it. It's not bad either. It's a bit fruity but they don't have a lot to work with. Huckleberry, Blueberry and Blackberry together would make a better juice than it does a pop but don't tell them. They work really hard. It's fruity and pretty sweet but it just seems like if you didn't carbonate it and left in some of the pulp from the fruit you could have a really great juice.

Next time you climb, if you do, don't forget a couple of cans and jars of food. They're picky. They also don't like lima beans as a community. They voted on it. It's weird.

When Armageddon finally comes and those of us who survive are hidden away in different pockets of world figuring out how to survive technology will not be our savior. I realize that sounds a bit evangelical, but I don't believe any sort of omnipotent being will save us either. What will keep the survivors alive is reverting to the old ways. Working the earth with our hands and learning how to build things, instead of relying on contractors. If there's something that you want you will have to figure out how to produce it yourself, or barter with someone who does. If you ignore all of the death and the end of civilization as we know it, this actually sounds appealing.

When I'm living in my mountain residence that my friends and I have constructed I hope one of us had good enough sense to learn iron work so that they could forge us a kettle to make our own root beer. This bottle of soda is exactly what I hope/expect our home brew would taste like. It's heavy on the wintergreen and the sassafras, just as any good mountain brew should be. It's a nice herbal root beer that screams of the mountains…€¦and licorice. This is by no means a standard “store brand” root beer. Care was put into brewing this, not just adding flavor syrup to carbonated water.

I wonder how many batches it would take our survivor crew to get our soda to this level. I hope not too many because I the idea of enjoying my own root beer that I brewed in a metal pot over a bonfire is so appealing that it's killing me.

Steve, I know you've been bummed because you are way underwater on your bills and you weren't able to get away on your yearly vacation. I bet buying that $30,000 car that sucks immense amounts of gas doesn't seem like the wisest idea in hindsight, does it? Also, I hate to bring it up, but you bought a $200,000 house. Not only did you're payments go up $600/ month from what you were paying for rent, but at the end of your 30 year mortgage you will have paid over $450,000, but you know in three decades you'll own the house free and clear, just in time to die. All of that makes perfect sense for someone who is a cashier at Walgreens though, right? Okay, I'll ease up on you because I know you've been down lately. I mean you may be a dummy with no spending responsibility, but everyone needs to get out of town from time to time and feel some sunshine on their face.

Here I got you this; it's like a vacation in a bottle. It's an all-natural soda that isn't like the junk you normally drink. It's light, fruity and slightly floral. I know you have a dumb hatred on pomegranate because you think they are too difficult to eat, but this captures the flavor wonderfully without being overly bitter. No, it doesn't taste like an old lady's floral perfume. Hibiscus, is a magical flower that when mixed with a slight bit of cinnamon is one of the best flavors a beverage can have. I wasn't sure what aronia was, but it's apparently a super fruit that is similar to acai. I'm guessing it's what that extra flavor in here is. It blends in perfectly in this soda whatever it is.

Seriously though, crank your heat, turn on all the lights, blast some relaxing music, close your eyes and sip this soda and you'll feel like you were able to get away and are on some tropical island somewhere. It may not be the real thing, but it will give you a little escape from the life of debt you've gotten yourself into. Good luck digging yourself out of that hole.

I didn't realize it until now, but Mountain Holler is the Save-A-Lot store brand, specifically their store brand version of Mountain Dew. This can was given to me by fellow soda enthusiast Dakota Floyd on my last trip down to Atlanta. We always appreciate it when people keep us in the loop of beverage we have not come across/reviewed.

Just looking at this can/name I instantly knew this was going to be their take on Code Red Mountain Dew. It isn't an exact clone of the original, but it is fairly close. The citrus base falls somewhere between a classic Mountain Dew and our long lost favorite (at least when I was in my late teens) Surge. It's as if someone mixed equal parts of those two sodas and then dumped some cherry syrup in for good measure. Perhaps it was too much of a good measure as it has a borderline cough syrup taste.

To be honest I might like this a bit more than Code Red, as it does have that slight Surge-ness to it, but I'm sure I would be called a blasphemer by those loyal to the Church of Dew. On a side note, my friend Tony stated that he can't' drive past a Save-A-Lot without singing it to the tune of “We Care A lot” by Faith No More. I'm right there with him, as I can also only assure are thousands of others.

This is some reverse science at work. You take the common and separate the pieces into something new. I always thought that if you removed lime from the lemon-lime soda equation the result would be carbonated lemonade. This experiment in Crush proved that my hypothesis was wrong. Instead of something that resembles a bubbly summer drink it ended up tasting more like Sprite gone wrong. No, I don't mean that it's bad. I mean that it's like a happy accident. It's as if the machinery that made Sprite misfired and the lime was never added. It has that “major brand” sugar water soda base flavor, that a lot of the little guys just don't capture, but it just doesn't taste like lemonade. The reason for that may be that it contains artificial lemon flavoring. I feel sorry that the Crush corporation is doing so poorly. I mean they must be floundering if they can't afford to use real lemons, you know the cheapest of all fruits.

Lemon Crush is its own thing that fits in perfectly with their other flavors. It's enjoyable in its own way and who can argue with a cool glass bottle like this? I really miss when companies had their own distinct bottle shapes.

Okay folks, I'm stumped. I need to know the secrets of red cream soda, and the internet has been very little help. Most of the digital world claims that the only difference between regular cream soda and the red variety is the inclusion of red dye, and that they taste the same. While that may be true for some bush league companies, the real players don't follow those standards. There is most definitely an additional ingredient that gives it a little something extra. Other sources state that the missing link is grenadine, but that's not what's lurking below the surface of this bottle of Dang! The only thing I can think to compare it to is Kola Champagne, if that flavor actually tasted good and not 100% like liquid bubblegum.

Think about an above average cream soda with a fruity/slightly bubblegum undertaste. Yes, I just made up that word, but you know you can defer what I mean from that. It's a sweet soda, but not in a childish way. It's not just bubbly sugar water; it's just a sweet cream soda. Wisconsin has pulled through again to show its dominance over other states.

Chili oil. Natures gag gift. Oh, is this regular oil? Uh, no. It's chili oil and you just got pranked. Now your mouth is on fire and I'm sitting back laughing. Now, so that everything is out in the open, here I give to you chili oil Ramune. Now you can know what you're getting into. Is it hot like that prank chili oil? Hardly, bro. Hardly. It is a light tickling and, if anything, kind of a refreshing burn similar to one you would get from a light ginger beer but with a fruity pop instead of a...well...ginger. This is a mix between a kids party pop and "I'm an adult and I'm too old for fun and I like to feel pain when I drink" drink. Where are you on the teeter-totter of life. Whatever spectrum you identify with, this has your bases covered. I just wish there was more pain. I guess I know what side I'm on.

Now, listen. You will be happy to know that this is not only a review for a strange and odd drink but it is a milestone. No it's not a sweet sixteen or a sweet sixty. That stuff is for the birds. This review that you are reading right now is, get ready for it. This review is Thirsty Dudes' 4,000th review. That's right. Four thousand. This is not Europe or whatever where they use commas for decimals points and we have reviewed four and no thousandths drinks. This is America and we idiotically use the standard system of measurement and that comma denotes that we have reviewed four thousands drinks. To celebrate we have provided you with a video that we blew our entire marketing budget on. Our marketing budget is, but should not be, zero dollars.



Thank you to all the fans and if you see us, shake our hands. We have done a lot of drinking and it wasn't all for us. It was for you, the people. The fans. The groupies. The dedicated followers of us, the Thirsty Dudes.

If you like pina-col…€¦..wait no, that's not right. There is any colada anywhere to be found in this soda. I kind of doubt that there is any actual pina in here as well. Actually, I'm fairly positive that no pineapples were harmed in the making of this pop. It's just your standard generic pineapple soda. Sure it tastes closer to oranges and cherries than their generic sodas do, but it's still a fake flavor.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that this may be the worst pineapple soda I have ever tasted. It's more plain sugar water than fake pineapple flavor. This is the only soda by the Motor City company that has been less than average. I didn't even make it to the top of the label, before I decided to call it quits. Good for me watching my sugar intake (at least minimally) but bad for Faygo. You can now return to singing your song about potential infidelity.

I enjoy watermelon. I enjoy pineapple. I enjoy a nice fruit salad in the summertime. I enjoy that Big Shot took the time to put two summertime classics together but in typical Big Shot fashion, it's just garbage pop.

Look, New Orleans. Get it together. You've got a lot going for you. Musically you are a wonderful place. Foodically you are a wonderful place. Leave it at that. Drinks can go to someone else. You don't need to have your hands in everything. You're bound to just spread yourself too thin.

This tastes like sharp candy and not like fruit. It tastes like if you had a generic watermelon and generic pineapple mix, said to yourself, "Oh, that would be interesting." and then went ahead and made it. No thought. Just two flavors that sounded good on paper put together and pushed out to the masses. Anyone who can finish this deserves equal part insane asylum invitation and badge of honor. You can't have both because the badge is sharp and you could hurt yourself and we don't want that.

While Sunny D is fine for children to drink, I fully believe that it is completely unacceptable for adults to consume it. I didn't even realize I had that stance until I found this can of Sunny D X and realized that we had never reviewed the original. You know what, I'm fine with that.

I dreaded drinking this. It is the Dread Pirate Roberts of sparkling beverages. I expected it to be as thick as the original but with bubbles. I don't even know how you can carbonate something so thick, and I guess I never will as this is just slightly thicker than a normal pop. Actually everything I anticipated about this beverage was out the window” it wasn't thick, it isn't really an energy drink (it does have B vitamins in it though), and it didn't taste like the sludge I remember this company putting out.

Take a classic lemon lime soda and add a little bit more lime to it. Okay, now put in a little grapefruit for good measure. Actually you might as well throw in some orange and tangerine as well. Somehow the lemon and lime stay at the top and the rest of the fruits mingle in the background. They are just extras in this made for TV movie. Now add some bubbles and the result is shockingly pretty decent. For some reason it almost has a malt taste to it, which I don't understand, but I don't hate. Actually I kind of enjoy it way more than I feel comfortable admitting. I mean I'm still not going to go back and try the fake juice original version, but this is something I would possibly drink again. It's too bad the can looks so budget though. It looks like a beverage you would find at the Dollar Store.

Dublin is famous for many things. Mostly all I care about are bands from there; U2, Thin Lizzy and My Bloody Valentine to name a few. I once played an insane house show in that very Irish city, where kids were literally spilling out of windows. Dublin is also the home of the first bottling of Dr. Pepper. Oh wait, that is a completely different city, in a completely different country. For years when people talked about Dublin Dr. Pepper I really thought that it was made in Ireland. As it turns out it was made in a little town in Texas, until the higher ups at Dr. Pepper shut down production due to breach of contract (I believe). It's a shame because I know a lot of people really loved the cane sugar version in the glass bottle. One such person is Cassandra Peterson (aka Elvira) who wrote a nice eulogy of the soda for us.

To be honest I didn't even know the plant was still in operation. I certainly had no idea that they had their own line of sodas. I figured they were a bottler for Snapple or something. I'm glad they kept going because I am one for tradition and my ladyfriend will sigh and vouch that I am not one for change. This company has been bottling soda since the late 1800s, and that is awesomely ridiculous.

As a nod to the old days this bottle has a nice retro look. I feel dirty for typing those words because most things that are described as retro end up being cheap and not worth anyone's time. This though, this is a nice look for a classic soda flavor. Actually I don't know if Cherry Limeade is in fact a classic flavor, but it always seemed like something that should be available at the soda shoppe. If you're not familiar with the flavor, the name says it all. It's like a sparkling lemonade (made with limes instead of lemons) with cherry syrup mixed in. It's like a Shirley Temple without the lemon in the lemon-lime base. This may not taste like real fruit, but I don't think I would even want it to. There are some flavors of soda that should be straight up sugary sweet and syrupy. This is one of them, and Dublin has done it right.

With a name like Sprizz-O for a beverage that boasts to be “Juice & Seltzer Water” I would expect simplicity. In my head its creation would go something along the lines of putting juice in a glass and adding just a spritz of seltzer water to give it some carbonation. That it's that's all that would go into it, and you know what it would be great. Sure in this instance it would be sour because of the grapefruit juice and a tad bitter because of the seltzer water, but it would be pure and simple. It would be something to embrace. Unfortunately, most of the world would not share in my jubilation for such a beverage, and Sprizz-O knows it. As a result they included sugar into the mix to tame the sour/bitter taste that nature had intended.

I can't blame them. They are a business and I'm sure they will sell way more bottles this way instead of the way I envisioned. To be fair they also only added minimal sugar (9g), and you still get most of the sourness from the grapefruit. They added just enough to take a bit of the edge off. It's not ideal for one such as me, but it's close enough that I can't complain. So ignore everything I wrote previously. This is a great sparkling beverage that more people should replace their normal soda intake with.

Where is the classic bottle? I feel cheated that I am drinking a Pop Shoppe soda that is not in a “stubbie” bottle. Look at our other reviews if you don't know what I'm talking about. Growing up 10 minutes from Canada, Pop Shoppe played a role in my childhood and their iconic bottles were a big part of it. Actually it was more likely College Club from Rochester, NY just using their bottles after Pop Shoppe closed down in '83, but my memories are the same. My friends and I would walk down to the store, pay our quarter each and grab a bottle from the cooler. Inevitably one of us would not open the bottle with the opener at the store, and forget that it didn't have a twist off cap, so far too much time would be devoted to trying to get the bottle open on a curb or something. We were kids, we were dumb…€¦.wait I opened a bottle on a curb just last week. Okay, so I may be an adult now, but I'm still dumb apparently. My point is those bottles were a big part of the Pop Shoppe charm. Their sodas generally fall on the better side of average (read: store brand), but the fact that they come in glass bottles makes them seem more legit.

I'll try to put my bottle envy in check to review this. Flat out, it's a strange root beer. It has a slight medicinal taste to it, and it makes me think that someone mixed a bottle of root beer with a bottle of Moxie. It makes me feel like it would be the kind of root beer that would be sold from the back of wagons in the old west. I don't really think that happened, but in my dreams it did, and you have no jurisdiction over my dreams. It also has a fairly strong wintergreen flavoring to it. Somehow after all of that it is still creamy. I don't hate it. In fact I find it fairly interesting. If all root beers tasted the same this planet would be an even more boring place to live.

Chocolate pop sounds like it would be a good idea right? Well it is rarely good. Having drunk a couple of them in my day, I can say that it's strange first, and "just alright" second. It's not bad but it feels like something that just shouldn't be. This, though. What would you think of if I gave you this? You've got not only chocolate but maple and everyone's clichè favorite food bacon in it. Now look. You've got to be some sort of madman to think this was going to be great. Are you a madman? I did not think so.

You taste the chocolate pop in this. It's not like a chocolate really. If there was, and there probably is, chocolate candy that isn't actually milk or dark chocolate, that is the chocolate that is used. Something about the way real chocolate melts is smooth and nice. This is sharp and sweet. You do not get bacon but you do get a bit of a salty chocolate. I really searched for it when I drank it. Jay did the same as you can see in the video below. It just tastes salty. The maple might be in the tail end of the drink when the salt and "chocolate" calms down.

All in all, it's not fantastic. Seems like a better gag-gift than an actual drink. They probably don't make too many of them so I'm sure they aren't losing their shirts at Real Soda putting everything they have into a really niche drink.

Want to see what Jay and I thought with the "help" of my jerk kid? Welp, here you are, friend: