Soda Pop - 1421 Reviews

I would like to think that a doctor created this after being up in arms with the amount of soda Americans drink on a daily basis. I like the idea of a doctor creating a healthier soda that actually tastes good, but as it turns out this 12oz bottle actually has 45g of sugar in it. This doctor isn't in it for the health, but maybe that's the whole point. Perhaps the dear doctor decided he had had it with medicine, and he decided to go the way of Pepper and Brown. Perhaps the doctor realized that he wasn't good enough of a doctor to be a world renowned surgeon, and thought that he would have a better chance at fame in the soda game. Unfortunately no one will ever really know what was on the doctor's mind when he made his line of sodas. You see poor story telling and uninteresting plot lines tragically killed him. The doctor and this review have much in common.

Let us not wallow in his death, but instead celebrate his soda. In essence this is a cherry soda, which leans a little bit on the medicinal taste. It doesn't cross the line into full-blown cough syrup flavor, but it hints at it. The thing that saves the drink, and in fact makes it great is the slight herbal undertones. They make the cherry flavor seem less medicinal and makes it very interesting. It is very sweet, but sometimes you just crave a soda like that. Today just happened to be one of those days, so things worked out nicely.

The drink has caffeine, guarana and ginseng in it, which make it quasi energy drink. I guess if you would consider Jolt an energy drink, than this would fall in the same category for you.

When I moved back to Buffalo for 10 months, the number one complaint I got from fellow reviewer Jason was that I didn't review more Hotlips soda while I lived in Portland. You'd think I passed up a chance to see a one-off Fugazi reunion by the consistency that he would bring it up. If he were my father, he might have disowned me, or at least cut off my allowance for a couple weeks.

So now I'm back in Portland where Hotlips soda can be found everywhere. For those who are not familiar with it, Hotlips is a Portland, Oregon based chain of pizza shops that also make their own soda. They are available on tap and bottled at various grocery stores around the greater Portland area. The great thing about Hotlips soda is that it's made with real fruit, something I didn't appreciate the first time I had one. It only contains whole ingredients, no gross chemicals or filler. People's biggest complaint with Hotlips is their soda is VERY lightly carbonated, so little that sometimes it seems like it's not at all. While it was off putting at first to me, I've grown to like it. Now don't get me wrong, I love carbonated soda, I just think of this as it's own thing and try not to compare it to traditional soda as far as the carbonation goes.

Now to this flavor, black raspberry. It's one of my favorite fruits so I might be biased, but I think it's delicious. Like most flavors, there are little chunks of berry in it that make the drink. If this weren't so expensive, I would probably drink these all the time.

The year is 1998 and cucumber melon reigns supreme. It's everywhere from lotions to candles...okay that's pretty much the only places that you would find that combo, but I had a candle in my room that smelled like that, and one of my best friends always used the lotion so in my eyes (or nose) the scent was everywhere. Then suddenly it seemed to vanish. I recently found cucumber melon hand soap, but my ladyfriend said she didn't like the way it smelled, so it remained on the store's shelf. Now here I am sitting in the "Golden Girls" hotel in Las Vegas waiting while said ladyfriend packs up her things. I'm just sitting on the bed sipping this wonderful soda. Cucumber and melon are both two of my favorite flavors, so them together is a no brainer. If it were any other flavor I would not have dropped the money on a four pack, but I just couldn't say no to these old friends. I'm glad I couldn't.

This is essentially a Mr Q Cumber soda with some honeydew thrown in the mix. I can guarantee that 99% of the people who try this soda will be surprised by how much it actually tastes like both of it's flavors. It's uncanny. I love it. I know a certain sound engineer in Buffalo who will probably love it even more. He ordered three cases of Mr Q Cumber after I introduced it to him, and I bet he'll order three of these as well.

I used to eat a lot of candy when I was a kid but now I don't eat as much. I don't like candy flavored like fruits I don't like. Why would I? Why would I dislike a product made by a product that I like? That doesn't make sense. Sure, there are people who don't like pickles and love relish or people that don't like guacamole but love avocados. That's poppycock if you ask me. I can't think of anything like that for myself. Peaches are a fruit that I don't really care about in its entirety. Candy peaches, sliced peaches, whole peaches, peach juice are all in my "I'm fine with not eating that" category. I don't know why. The taste isn't too bad. It's not like I don't drink a bunch of peach stuff and rate it objectively, but I just don't really like them. Which brings me to this drink.

This drink was reviewed better by a co-worker than myself very simplistically, "It tastes like melted down peach Dum-Dums." I couldn't agree more. It tastes like candy peaches more than a real peach but even this drink is overly sugar'd. I don't hate peach tea too much because it's inherently light in flavor and sometimes just gives a nice flavor to a regular tea. This is unfinishable in my opinion. Likewise, if you can drink the whole thing, you've got to be kidding me because it's way too much. You drink it and instantly learn a lesson in sweeteners and tooth decay. I'd rather not learn a lesson through some kid pop so I will stop while I am ahead.

I had a lot of little things on my “To-Do” list that involved things I could do, sitting at a computer (color separations for screen printing) or just sitting around (cutting pants into shorts), so I decided to curl up on the couch with Temple of Doom and a nice frosty bottle of Doctor Jones. Now that is a winning pair if I've ever heard of one. Speaking of pairing do you think a high quality Dr Pepper knock off would go better with Snake Surprise, Black Beetles, Eyeball Soup or Chilled Monkey Brains? Yeah, you're probably right, a nice Doctor Jones/Monkey Brain float sounds just wonderful.

Jones really did a great job with this soda. Normally knock offs of this variety have something a little off about them that let's you know that they didn't get the recipe quite right. This on the other hand is so similar to Dublin Dr. Pepper that I don't know if I could taste the difference in a blind taste test. Remember those? Do any companies still do them? If so please get a hold of Mike and I because we would love to participate.

Here's a little insight into my psyche for you. When I was a pre-teen I was obsessed with Indiana Jones. I bought my mom's boyfriend a hat like the one Indy wears without even a thought as to whether or not he liked the movies (of course he did, he's not a communist). I also took a summer archeology class. It wasn't as exciting as I wanted it to be. I think they should have buried bottles of this soda out in a field and had us go dig them up, carefully as to not break the glass. I would have been more pumped about the class then. I'm more of a field agent instead of a classroom snoozer.

One final thought. Two of my biggest heroes (Indiana Jones and Peter Venkman) are both doctors. I really need to sign up for one of those online fake colleges where you can get real degrees that no one takes seriously. That way I can legally get Dr. Jason Draper put on my license. How sweet would that be? I could also carry around a sweet whip and a proton pack. Even sweeter.


ppppps. It would be criminal if I didn't say this. "No time for love Doctor Jones."

Two things:
Thing 1: The review:
When you get a salad in the rare time you get a salad, how stoked are you when you find those delicious treats, the candied walnuts or the candied pecans? Totally stoked? Completely stoked? Absolutely stoked? Probably? I love them. My girlfriend doesn't eat nuts of any shape but when candied, she rants and raves and I have to hear about how "Oh, I don't like nuts but I'll eat candied walnuts or pecans." Do you know how many times I've heard that spiel? Too many. Why do I bring salads into the mix when I talk about bacon pop? This drink tastes like candied Bacos (or bacon crumb alternative). Is that something you want? Probably not.

Thing 2: People's fascination with bacon:
We get it. Bacon is great. I've probably had more bad bacon than good in my day and I don't think I'm the only one. Calm down with the bacon. You're going to give yourself heart problems the way that you love bacon.

Bonus; A video:
We have captured our sentiments for this drink so you can judge for yourself whether or not you want to give this drink a go for yourself.

Yesterday was the 4th of July and to celebrate in style I grilled up far too many veggie dogs/sausage. I suppose that doesn't differ from about half of the days in any given week in the summer. Perhaps I'm just that American all summer long.

Everyone knows that the most proper way to celebrate your country is to stuff your face with a bunch of hot dogs and wash it all down with orange soda (okay I started doing that in Canada, but it was only because I was trying to show how American I was in that foreign land). My dogs were almost done, so I went into the fridge to get my orange soda, only to realize that there was none in there. I had let America down. The closest that I had was with bottle of Elvira's Orange Scream. It's a creamsicle in soda form. It may have not been totally appropriate, but Elvira told me to make do with the situation, and who am I to argue with a woman carrying a chainsaw? She actually looks like she's about to take that chainsaw to an orange the size of a recliner. I hope she puts on proper eyewear before cutting into that, because the citrus mist it would produce would be hell on anyone's retinas.

So there I was midday just pounding veggie dogs with all the fixings (minus sprinkles, as I unfortunately was out of Bacos) and sipping on this soda. While it is still a creamsicle soda, the orange is much heavier than the cream, so that worked out well for me. I'd say that the ratio was at 75% orange soda to 25% cream, if the normal percentages for such soda were 50-50.

The celebration of America came and it went and I didn't light off a single firework. These are sad times. I ended up at some parade before the fireworks display and as old men handed out tiny flags all I would think of was when our alien overlords would run for office and their platform would be, “Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!”

Join me on a rocket ride to Russia! Oh wait this soda is actually made in California. Well that makes things a lot easier. Join me on a regular airplane ride to the west coast so we can stop off in Camarillo for some tasty soda pops.

The apple of the eye of nearly every bar patron who chooses not to imbibe alcohol is a little lady by the name of Shirley Temple. She is generally composed of a lemon-lime soda and grenadine (aka cherry syrup). I can't even tell you the quantity of these bar tenders have prepared for me over the years. The only pre-bottled version I have ever seen before is made by Saranac and it is way, way syrupy. Rocket Fizz didn't make that mistake. Instead of sweetening their soda with HFCS they used straight up sugar, which was a wise decision. It's not nearly as syrupy, which makes it way more enjoyable. It's a light and flavorful cherry-citrus soda. It actually has a vague cherry Twizzler taste to it, which is strange because the Rocket Fizz licorice soda was a big disappointment.

Bartenders everywhere are raising their glasses in salute to this soda for being as good, if not better, than any version they could have concocted.

Drinking this on July 1st may have been a bit of a mistake. It's nearly the furthest one can get away from Christmas, and this is certainly a winter/Christmas soda if ever there was one. It smells and tastes like liquid gingerbread cookies. Actually it tastes like the gingerbread equivalent of vanilla extract. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the essence that came in a little glass bottle that was added to cookies to make them taste like gingerbread. It's a bit much. I did enjoy the taste, but it was so strong that I couldn't get through half of the bottle, and I ended up sharing the rest with everyone.

On a separate note, do you think they got the picture on the label submitted to them before they had the idea for this flavor? Did the picture inspire the flavor? I'd like to think so.

Mom! Come look what Mittens did! It's SODAsgusting!

Billy, what did I tell you about yelling while I'm making crème brulee? Do you want me to burn down the…€¦Goddamnit! Did the damn cat pee on the carpet?

Mom, it's SODAsgusting!

I know Billy go get a rag and we'll clean it up. What are you doing with that straw! Billy, get away from there! Don't drink that! It's disgusting and vile and you are no child of mine!

Mom, chill out it's SODAsgusting!

You're damn right it's disgusting! I can't believe the fruit of my loins would do so a despicable thing as drinking cat pee off of the carpet! With a straw no less! It's like you are starring in the movie Pink Flamingoes! You're grounded mister!

No mom, you've got it all wrong! It's not cat pee it's Kitty Piddle! It's a flavor of the Avery's Soda companies SODAsgusting line! See, here's the bottle! The name is a joke because of the color of the pop. It's actually pineapple and orange in flavor. It has that very specific Avery's flavor. It's a little on the cheap side flavor-wise actually. It doesn't taste like the real fruits, just a knock off. It's not terrible for a kid like me, but I bet you wouldn't like it. I had a bottle on the coffee table and Mittens knocked it over on the carpet.

Well, that is a relief to say the least. You're still grounded though for having a soda before your crème brulee. Now clean that up and get to your room!

Margarittaville? That place is for suckers. Pinacoladaberg? Only if you're looking to get murdered. When I plan my tropical getaways I book a one-way ticket to Organicville. Specifically to the part of the resort called Orangeville. It's a little slice of heaven where they know how to party. Walking around all day with the sun shining down, but it's not overbearingly hot. The ocean, as terrifying as it is, is right there for you to enjoy. To top it all off there are trees bearing citrus fruit everywhere. All you have to do is reach up and pluck what you want from the branches. Now that is living.

On those times when my beverage-drinking schedule keeps me away from my little island paradise I make sure to have plenty of their soda on hand. You see they don't just take orange juice and add a little sugar and bubbles to it and call it a soda. They go the extra mile and add a bit of grapefruit juice to the mix, and what a difference it makes. It makes Orangina look like generic orange soda. It's light, not too sweet and full of citrus power. It has mostly an orange juice flavor, with just a little kick of grapefruit. It's all I could ever ask for in a citrus-based soda.

Now if you'll excuse me, my flight to Belgium is about to depart. I have a lead on some crucial drinks that I need to follow up on. Now that a mythical creature has devoured Mike I really need to step up my game.

For those of you who are wondering like I was Wishniak is Polish for cherry. Some soda companies from around the Philadelphia area started using it to describe their black cheery soda after the creator of Franks soda started using it. See the internet is a useful tool to find interesting information.

As far as black cherry sodas go this is better than most. It's not as dark tasting as your everyday store brand. It's still very distinctly different from plain cherry soda, but it falls somewhere between the two. As someone who is not a huge fan of black cherry, I was pumped when my ladyfriend bought this so I could try it. If black cherry always tasted like this I would choose it out of the herd more often.

It's well known that in the 40's the Manhattan Project was underway to produce the first atomic bomb. The US, UK and Canada all worked together, spending an obscene amount of money to basically devise a weapon that will someday cause the end of the world. Scientists worked long and hard to achieve their goal, even coming up with some cool fission guns using uranium. Nuclear weapons in gun form sound terrifying, yet strangely alluring (note to self: you may indeed grow up to be a super villain).

The men who worked on this project knew that they would get nowhere if they worked constantly. No one ever got anywhere with out a little playtime mixed in. Since they were scientists their playtime of course involved mixing ingredients to create something new. Back in '43 they had a little challenge going on the various project locations to see which team could create the best tasting soda. The team based in Brooklyn, NY ended up winning the competition. Led by Dr. Jonathan Osterman the team had a brief brainstorming session while separating uranium-235, and decided that the only way they could win this little game was to brew their own version of the greatest soda on the planet: sarsaparilla. To say they succeeded is a bit of an understatement. If there were any justice in this world these men would be more famous for their soda than their weapons of mass destruction. What they created is a dark sarsaparilla with a heavy licorice and wintergreen levels in it. Every aspect of it is strong, and I will forgive those men for the future destruction of everything I know. The 10oz bottles that it comes in simply aren't enough. I could drink this all the livelong day and not have had enough. Perhaps the team cheated and used a little bit of that uranium in their recipe. I would risk radiation for this, would you?

It seems that every semi-major city in the United States has it's own regional soda. The thing with these sodas is that they are generally nothing spectacular. Most of the time they are on par with store-brand varieties, but sometimes they are something special like Johnnie Ryan or College Club. Day's, the Eastern Pennsylvanian soda, walks the line between generic and special. I feel like they would fall under the run of the mill category if they didn't make more unusual flavors like they do. For today's installment I'm drinking their pineapple soda. Not many companies make pop of this flavor and I really don't know why. Every pineapple pop I've tried has been more than decent. They all generally tend to taste basically the same as well. You know the candied pineapple flavor that vaguely tastes like the fruit, but you don't really care, because it's a great stand-alone flavor. This tastes like Slice, College Club, or Pop Shoppe's pineapple soda. As far as I know they all use the same recipe because I …€˜m guessing 90% of the people out there couldn't tell the difference in a blind taste test.

Will we someday end up trying every flavor of every regional soda? More than likely no, but we can dream big can't we?

This week my bosses were out taking care of business and kids three out of the five days this week. I've spent a lot of time alone here and to celebrate their return, we decided to go to a new restaurant/club called "Sinful." We joked around that it was a swinger's bar or that it was some satanic sanctuary. They opened for lunch and if Satan himself were selling salads and sandwiches, he's already light years nicer than everyone makes him out to be. One of the jokes is that that would only sell chocolate covered strawberries since it's "erotic" even though it's just messy in real life. Napkins and rocking the sheets should not go hand in hand.

We opened the door and this place could be no less sinful. It was a small restaurant area and an ambitious, cavernous dance space for when the sun goes down, the moon comes out, and the place turns into a nightclub. 10% restaurant and 20% bar and 70% open space ready for bumping and grinding. They only sold the most basic of menu items, though, like they didn't know the name of their own bar. I got a turkey pesto sandwich but other people got stuff like caprice sandwiches, chicken salad sandwiches, and the like. Totally simplistic.

All that talk about chocolate covered strawberries made me require something strawberry ASAP. Unfortunately since strawberries decided to grow like two weeks this year, I had no choice but to drink this Big Shot strawberry pop. Served in a gluttonously large container, this sweet treat should not be drunk by any less than half a dozen children. If you are over the age of twelve, you shouldn't be drinking this. It could not taste any more like those strawberry candies that have the strawberry gel in the middle. Using that logic, how many of those could you possibly eat in one setting? Three? Maybe? Please don't tell me that you could eat more because if you could, you've got to have some sort of dental issues. Strawberry's candy counterpart could not be worse for you. That doesn't make it any less delicious, but it does make it only ingestible in very small doses. A shot or two of this pop would have sufficed for me. I don't know if I drank the recommended single serving of a third of the bottle but either way, I've had enough. Thank you, Big Shot. I've had enough.

Do you want to talk about Batman? I can talk about him and the world of Gotham all G.D. day long. What do you want to talk about: The Killing Joke? Year One? The Long Halloween (aka the best story ever put out in comic form…€¦well excluding Sandman)? Perhaps you'd rather keep things up to date and talk about the Knightfall storyline seeing as that is the basis for a good chunk of the upcoming Christopher Nolan movie The Dark Knight Rises. Spoiler alert: Bane is going to “break the bat” so to speak, and I can't wait. You see for the most part I have a complete disinterest in superheroes. I find them boring. In fact I flat out hate Superman. Oh he can do pretty much everything and anything as long as kryptonite isn't around? What a cop out. Batman will have my support every time. He has no supernatural powers just a dude with conviction and a bunch of fun toys. I love the detective. There I said it. I have a giant bat tattooed on my chest (it's not the bat symbol, but it is in homage). I love science and logic and that is the basis for the bat. With all of my love why do I want to see him get the crap beat out of him by Bane? It humanizes him and makes me love him even more. It's also going to be fun to watch Azrael lose his cool.

To celebrate the release of the movie (and my birthday for those keeping track) Mountain Dew released a limited edition flavor called Dark Berry. In reality it could have just been called berry Mountain Dew, but maybe they were going for the dark, brooding that is Batman, or maybe they were just playing off The Dark Knight…€¦yeah that's probably it. It's one of the better Mountain Dew flavors. It's very sweet, and has a quasi energy drink taste to it, but not too much. It mostly tastes like Bruce Wayne was chilling, bored out of his mind after Bane broke his back and started mixing things together. He had some Pixie Stix, Kool Aid packets and Mountain Dew left over from Tim's stay at the manor so he threw them all together in a glass. He is a detective and a scientist in his own right, so that all makes sense to me.

Remember midnight on July 19th (well the 20th) the movie comes out, so spend all day celebrating my birthday and then end your day with the best movie of the year.

The Canadian government has recently shipped hundreds of koalas into their country. Originally they wanted to give the country a make over. People were getting tired of being associated with moose and beavers. They wanted a cuter image. Unfortunately the koalas tried to wage war on the beavers, and even though they were tired of the image, beavers are still are a sacred creature up north, so they couldn't allow the war to happen. As a result they moved the koalas to warehouse buildings where tropical fruit was grown under unnatural conditions. The koalas were trained to pick the fruit and to prepare it for juicing. This didn't work as well as the officials had hoped since the animals spend a majority of their day sleeping. There was not nearly enough fruit prepared to make a straight up juice, so a brainstorming session took place and it was decided to use the fruit they had to make flavored sparkling water.

Now I certainly would have preferred juice to flavored sparkling water, but I can't blame koalas for doing what comes natural. I can blame them for adding too much sugar and this tasting more like cheap soda than a sparkling water. It does have a guava/raspberry taste, but the added sugar takes away from it and leaves you knowing that if you spilled it all over the place you would have one hell of a sticky mess on your hands. Since this couldn't be juice I wish it had been subtler. As it stands I can't get through more than a couple of sips a sitting.

I don't know a thing about this beverage. The only words I can read on the label are “Fizzy Drink.” From the picture on the front I would assume that “Uzum” means grape, but when I tasted it I wasn't so sure. You see it tastes more like blueberries to me than grapes. I kind of get a little grape, but there's something in there that reminds me of blueberries. Dear folks of Turkey you make strange drinks that are strange, but decent. They are also almost candy like, but yet still like real fruit. I don't get it. I'm not sure I'm supposed to get it, and I'm okay with that. I'll just sit back and enjoy the ride. It's a tiny bottle, but it encapsulates a big flavor.

Pete waited too long to get his daddy something for Father's Day. Way too long, like the day after Father's Day too long. He had to make it up to him. After all, his daddy let him stay at home well into his twenties, fed him, gave him a job, gave him a car, and so much more. He really blew it this year. Last year he bought him a "Make Your Own Tie" kit, which sucked but was at least delivered on time. This year though? Nothing. He had to do something. Pete didn't think about it until he got back from work. He was one block from his house, totally empty-handed. He went to the corner store and grabbed the first thing he saw. Since it was a nothing corner store, they only had big name drinks and no name meats.

He ran home to try and get home before his daddy but it was too late. His daddy was sitting down with a mouth full of meatloaf. Now, not only did he not get him a Father's Day gift, but also he was late for dinner. His dad gave Pete a look and said, "Son, why don't you get me something to drink since you're up?" and that was the perfect time to give him his gift. Pete gave him a Natural Strawberry Kiwi Sierra Mist still cold from the store. His dad looked up at him knowing full well what Pete was doing. His dad took a sip, looked at his son, and said "Thanks, buddy. This is better than last year's Father's Day gift even if it was late." Pete sat down and his dad poured him some Sierra Mist. Pete took a sip and saw how it was redeeming. It was good. Possibly better than regular, original Sierra Mist. The strawberry and kiwi both shined and it was sweet, but not too sweet. They both talked about how they appreciated how it was made with real sugar and actually was the perfect compliment to meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and peas.

The Italian community in Montreal had had enough of the sodas that were available to them. They did not represent their tastes and needs. As a result Brio was born. This is really just the Canadian take on the San Pellegrino drinks. Sure the can lists: Milano, London, New York, Paris an d Tokyo, but the only place I have ever seen this drink on the shelves is in Canada. An internet search comes up with little to no information as well. There is much that we don't know about the Brio company, and by much I mean we pretty much know nothing. For all I know they could have been an extremist movement who used the cans to smuggle contraband. I doubt that, but hey anything is a possibility.

This here is their blood orange flavor. As I said this is basically another version of the San Pellegrino Aranciata Rossa. It's very light tasting, but not dry at all. It's kind of like a nondescript soda with small waves of blood orange flavor. It's nice and it seems like it would be a nice healthy alternative to other sodas. That is until you look at the ingredients and see that there are 42g of sugar in here. I believe that might actually be more sugar than a can of Coke. Well, that was completely unexpected. I like the drink, but I think it could have done with less sugar.