Soda Pop - 1421 Reviews

Mark was a magician. He loved what he did. He went to kid's parties and made kids float, did card tricks, and made birds and bunnies come out of everything. He was pretty good and was always interested in something bigger and better. Sure, he idolized David Copperfield, who didn't in the industry, but he was realistic. David Copperfield is the Michael Jordan of magic. At the end of every kid's party, he always plays 52 Pickup. The kids love it because all the cards are in the air and they yell and they scream. Magic takes a lot out of a man. He's got to clean up all that bird poop, rabbit poop, cards, and smoke powder. After a show, he likes to go to the store and get something to drink. He went to a corner store and grabbed some random cola. He looked at the bottle and smiled because the "Big Shot" guy was chewing on a cigar and he could just hear his voice. He laughed and opened the door and bumped into someone. He looked up to apologize and it was David Blaine. He was speechless. He didn't know what to say. He put his hand out to shake his hand while muttering, "My name is Mark. I'm a magician and a huge fan." David thanked him and asked him for some of his pop because he left his wallet in the RV. Mark gave him the whole, unopened bottle and told him to keep it. David opened it and took a big chug. Then he made a face. He told Mark that it was some of the worst cola he had ever had. It just tasted bland and generic. No body and nothing special. He said he could have bought a Pepsi and been more satisfied. Then he made the bottle disappear with a poof of smoke and went back to the RV.

Mark sat in the car for at least ten minutes just pondering what had just happened. He met David Blaine, but gave him the worst cola he had ever had. He didn't know whether to mark that as an accomplishment or not. Either way, he continued to do magic at kids parties and had one spectacular story to tell people in the Magician's Guild gatherings at Denny's.

When someone says the word crisp oranges would be one of the last things to cross my mind. Cucumbers are crisp. Apples are crisp. Potato chips, or crisps if you're British, are crisp. Oranges are not crisp. They are in fact the opposite of crisp. They are mushy and soft. I know this company makes other flavors (it is the store brand for Save-A-Lot), but really I can't shake this idea of a crisp orange. It would be weird and gross. An orange that would make a cracking noise if you were to break it in half is not an orange I would like to eat.

I suppose you could refer to a nice cold soda as crisp, but I still wouldn't refer to this soda as crisp. It's a pretty standard orange pop, like any store brand. It says it's a naturally flavored soda, but those natural flavors are surely not oranges or orange juice as they are nowhere to be found on the ingredients. It has that fake orange taste that tastes nothing like the fruit.

The only really notable thing about this soda is that it is the only orange pop I have ever had that contains caffeine. Strange times indeed.

Mike and I get nutty over Hansen's sodas. A few years ago he ordered a case and he and editor Dan went on a mini tour with my old band. We drank way more soda than anyone should, but we were stuck in a van for long periods of time, and you get bored, so you drink. The thing is that Mike ordered all of the fruity flavors. They were all great. Even when they were on the verge of boiling from being in the van for days in the middle of August, they still tasted good (albeit extremely weird and corrosive). For as much as I love their other sodas this is the first time that I have tried their root beer, and I am shockingly not impressed. It tastes like the company took a normal everyday root beer like A&W or Dads and just switched out the sweetener for cane sugar. There's nothing really special to the flavor at all. Since it claims to be creamy, I expected there to be a heavy vanilla presence, but it's only slightly more apparent than in “normal” root beers. I can't say that I dislike it at all, but I just expected more from a company who has made other sodas that were so spectacular.

After every successful mission the boys from the A-Team would reconvene at their secret hideout in eastern Pennsylvania. There they would debrief and then relax with their hobbies outside of being solders of fortune.

B.A. Baracus found his inner peace while making sodas. Thinking he was clever he named then A-Treat. He would always try to hand them out to the rest of the boys for a job well done, but none of them really gave him much attention as they thought he was an idiot due to his inarticulate speech. B.A. didn't let that get him down though he just kept plugging away making his soda.

He became enthralled in the sodas of the region, specifically birch beer. He was determined to create the world's greatest version of this drink. He tinkered for weeks with it. He was so pleased when he was done that he ran to the others to try and get them to try it. He was so happy when Hannibal grabbed the bottle and took a swig. He said that it was decent albeit a bit too syrupy for his liking. He said it kind of tasted like it should be birch beer flavored cough medicine, but that strangely didn't make it bad. He also likened it to a birch beer version of root beer barrel candy. Then he handed back the bottle. B.A. was so ecstatic that he didn't even realize that Hannibal had slipped some drugs into the bottle before he handed it back. B.A. finished the bottle and then the next thing he knew he was on a plane off to another mission. Damn Hannibal!

This has been sitting on my shelf for longer than any other drink I have to review. I don't particularly like Big Red. It tastes like bubble gum with a hundred pounds of sugar added to it. After one sip I swear I can feel my teeth rotting. On top of disliking the flavor, I also am not a fan of most diet drinks. That is two strikes going against this drink and it was enough for it to sit in my cupboard for over six months.

I decided I should start working on getting all of these older drinks reviewed before I worry about the newer ones. Basically I was sick of looking at this can every time I opened the cupboard. The company sent us samples and it was a “preview” can that is just a silver can with a sticker on it. I actually like the look a lot, and I wish it were the real label. I looked online and apparently this new diet version of the drink is sweetened with sucralose, Ace-K, and aspartame. That's a whole lot of artificial flavors that I want little to do with. The thing is, I found this to be better than the original version of the drink. It still has that bubblegum flavor, but it kind of masks the flavors of the artificial sweeteners, and it doesn't tastes like you're drinking an entire barrel of sugar. It's sweet, but not cavity sweet, and with only slight fake sugar flavor. I think you may be onto something here Big Red.

Whenever I drink one of these sodas I always think of rap/hip hop. I know that the champagne spells their name differently, but I still always think of it. This also led me to think that there better be a hip hop song that has the line, “Bottles poppin. Booties droppin.” Thanks to a quick Google search I know that the hip-hop community has not let me down. Like they ever would?

You know who else would never let me down? Kristall. Sparkling water, apple juice and sugar make for one great combo, that's a no brainer. Kristall takes things in a slightly different direction by using a different type of apple. I don't know what type of apples are typically used to make apple juice, but there is certainly some standard. Kristall doesn't use that type. I wish I were more of an apple connoisseur so that I could tell you specifically what it is, but my palate is not that refined. I can tell you that it is a dryer apple, and the flavor of the skin is still intact in this drink.

Get yourself a nice “dry” apple and a bottle of sweetened sparkling water. Take a nice huge bite of the apple, chew it for a second and then let your mouth over run with the water. That will give you a homemade version of this beverage and a big wet, sticky mess. Now clean up that mess and yourself, we're in the middle of the grocery store.

The sun is glaring down at you. It's what they like to call "a scorcher" and you don't like it. You're a cool guy, so you never wear shorts and you only wear jeans, a white undershirt, and a denim vest. You're a cool guy, like I said. It's hard to still be so cool when you are drenched in your own sweat. You wish that you could just, for one day, be like everyone else and wear madras shorts, flip flops, and some dumb beer shirt with the sleeves ripped, not cut, off. Then you see your ticket to true coolness.

You open the cooler and pick out an Oogave watermelon cream pop. You would be willing to pay well over the price tag because you just know that this is going to be out of this world. You open the cap on the curb of a sidewalk for two reasons; because you don't have a bottle opener and it's cooler to do that. You've got to keep up your image, after all. You take the first sip and there it is, the epitome of cool. It's a candied watermelon taste that you expected since no one has ever done "real" watermelon correctly. The watermelon flavor lasts a while thanks to the agave but it's a welcomed occurrence. That mixed with the smoothness of cream soda and you've got one killer drink.

Just then, your friends walk by wearing black hoodies, sweating like they have some sort of body disorder that makes you sweat uncontrollably. You tell them to hold on while you get them each a bottle of this pop that you've been enjoying. You hand the bottles over, they break them on sidewalks and lamp posts because it's cool and instantly feel refreshed. They told you that they were about to go to the J. Crew across the street to buy some madras until they got this pop. You told them you understand and won't mention to anyone.

Uludag: a name that strikes fear into the hearts of the common folk. It's the type of name that if this review were an old movie when it was said thunder would crash and lightning would flash. No one knows exactly what sort of evil lies in wait at the center of the Uludag mountains. All that is known if that when men enter the region they never return.

I will let you in on a secret. I know what the heart of the evil is and it goes by the duel names comfort and luxury. You see there is a little town at the summit of one of the mountains, and in that village there is a little shop that sells cans of Uludag cola. The people of the town are so friendly, the view is so exquisite and the cola is so tasty that visitors have no urge to ever return to their old lives. Sometime, early on, someone came up with the idea to start rumors of a monster or demon living in the area to deter people from showing up. No one is a fan of overpopulation; it would just ruin the allure of the town. Whenever a brave young buck ventured forth to vanquish the evil, they would eventually find the town, and be so intrigued by it that they would agree to the terms and stay. The other option would be for them to be publicly hanged, but luckily that option has never even had to be presented. It really is the cola that keeps people in that town. I know all of this because my great uncle lives in said town and once smuggled me out a can. I don't know what it is exactly that makes the cola special, but there is something in it. Unfortunately I could not read the ingredients, or anything on the can for that manner. There is a picture of a telephone, and I am shocked that such a small town in the mountains, that is trying to remain hidden, would advertise a phone number. It is a delicious cola though. At first it tastes like a high quality standard cola, but the more you drink, the more you notice a little something extra that makes it smooth with a little extra taste and it's great.

I just tried to research the language on the can to find out the ingredients, and you know what? My uncle is a big fat liar. There are no rumors of evil in Uludag, it's just a mountain in Turkey where a pop factory is. I feel like an idiot, but at least I know I can score more of this cola.

My friend and business partner Alex Wrekk bought this for me today at a Pizzeria in a section of North Portland called Kenton. The photo is the only label that was there, the actual bottle was a generic brown glass bottle with no markings on it.

I was hesitant to try a drink in an unmarked bottle, but I'm glad I did because this root beer is great! It has a great anise taste (and I love anise). It reminds me a little of Virgil's, but more complex and not as heavy. The only word that comes to mind when trying to describe the aftertaste is "earthy". I hope that doesn't make me sound like a hippie.

If there was one thing that Izze was great at when she was young it was remedial art. Actually it was just the mixing of primary colors that she excelled at. She absolutely loved the concept that mixing two separate colors could result in a completely different color. If she mixed blue in with red, she got purple, blue and yellow got her green, and red and yellow brought her orange. It was simple, it was science and it was wonderful. She would spend her days mixing different proportions to see what shades she would achieve. She never tried mixing more than two colors though. That would just cause unimaginable chaos.

When Izze got older she found herself a part of the soda game. She was sick of the everyday sodas that that no redeeming values other than taste. She watched the world around her grow fat from ingesting far too much of it. She decided to take a stand and offer the world a soda that was mostly fruit juice. She added no sweeteners and let the fruit do its job. Things were going well, but then the bills for the fruit started to add up. She wanted to make some out of the ordinary flavors, but purchasing the fruit to make those juices was expensive. That is when the light bulb of genius lit above Izze's head. She would use her old knowledge of color mixture to simulate the flavors that were too expensive. She would start with the blueberry. After doing a little math in her head, she deduced that the blueberry flavor was simply nothing more than grape and apple juice mixed together. She whipped up a batch and threw in a little bit of actual blueberry juice in the mix, so that she wouldn't feel like so much of a liar to her customers. When she took a sip she instantly realized two things: Apple, grape and blueberry juice mixed together is pretty delicious and also that she was a complete moron for thinking that color theory had anything to do with the flavors of fruit juice. Apple and grape juice mixed together, while tasty, tastes nothing like blueberries. It tasted more like a light grape juice than anything. There was a hint of some sort of berry flavor hidden in it, but you really had to look for it. What Izze should have done at that moment was change the name of the flavor, because it was tasty and she was on to something, but it just wasn't blueberry. Unfortunately she had already ordered all of the bottles for the soda, and there was no way she was going to waste money on new ones. Screw her customers.

Would you call me a hater? Friends and fans, would you call me a hater? Now, granted, I don't exactly know what a hater is, but I wouldn't define myself as a hater. I dislike a lot of things but I would say that is because I'm terribly cynical and apathetic. That is a mixture that will destroy you from the inside out. It's exhausting. I enjoy Stevia and it's subsidiaries. I have not been happy with Zevia. I've got a diabetic friend with great Morrissey hair that loves the stuff but for me, it's bland. Yeah, that's the world. Bland. If you could water Dr. Pepper down with carbonated water and sweeten it with Stevia rather than sucralose or something, you would have this drink. You actually have to search for the flavor. Knowing this was supposed to be Dr. Pepper, I've got to say, this drink is 12% of what Dr. Pepper is. As described by Dan, a copywriter who loves soccer, Dr. Pepper is supposed to be dark. Zack, half of my boss entity who enjoys Dr. Pepper, said that it tastes like cherry Fresca, and that to me sounds like an insult.

Didn't hit the nail on the head with this one, Zevia. It's alright. You'll do better. Stop mocking other drinks though because people have preconceptions and you will not deliver.

Finally I've found a pop that captures the essence of pomegranates. I have drunk dozens of pomegranate and pomegranate + [other fruit] hybrids and something is lost in most of them. Anyone who has ever eaten a real pomegranate knows what I'm talking about. That sweetness mixed with the bitterness mixed with the deliciousness. Sure, you don't get yellow hands from drinking this like you do prepping a real, live pomegranate, but do you really ever miss that? Preparing the pomegranate makes you look like you've been smoking sixteen cartons of cigarettes per day for your entire life.

This is great and I think that it's one of the Hansen's flavors that is available that I can get in my area. If you like pomegranates and are wearing a white shirt and don't want to get juice all over it, this is not only clear, but tastes like what you want. Win, win, win, win. Also, if I may teach you something that I learned; if you put cut a pomegranate in half and whack the back with a wooden spoon, you can get all the little flavor crystals out pretty easily. Just watch how hard you hit it because there is a lot of "loose juice" that can come at you. You're welcome for saving you like ten minutes per fruit.

You've never eaten lunch and wanted to talk to a pretty girl? Why? That would be because you're mouth tastes and smells like Jamaican jerk turkey burger with Cajun mayo. If you were to audaciously walk up to the first pretty girl you saw and kissed her on the lips, she would never reciprocate because it's a stranger with a beard, and she was never a fan of dudes with beards. She would also think that you had horrid breath that tastes like a burger and that's nothing anyone wants to be shocked with. If someone shoved a cookie in your mouth to awaken you, well that's another story. Maybe if someone woke you up by feeding you pudding that would be awesome, too. If you were sleeping and I crammed a highly seasoned burger in your mouth, I would expect no less than a punch square in the mouth. That's where this pop comes into place. Rewind...

You're eating a deliciously highly seasoned burger. You take your last bite and sit back in your chair and are satisfied. That restaurant always has great food and that burger was no different. You ordered a candy cane pop to warsh it all down and wash it down it does. Sure, it's a little strange because who wants to eat a Starlight mint after every bite? It's actually more like if you had carbonated water and marinated a candy cane in it, so for honest, true titling of a product, you would be spot on with this pop.

Your burger is gone and you've taken a nice swig of that pop and here she comes, a beautiful girl. Full figured. Bam and bam. Top and bottom. Bam. You're going to kiss this girl. You wipe your mouth because you don't want to leave her with a spicy mayo aftermath. You're already invading her personal space and might get smacked so you want it to go as best as you can. You've still got a beard but there's nothing you can do in the allotted time. You're going for it. You stand up and walk towards her and kiss her. You kiss her right on the lips. She kisses back. It's amazing because you really expected to get kneed in the groin. You both psychically decided to leave it at that and walk in opposite directions. What a day. What a burger. What a girl. What a kiss. What a pop.

As you most likely know the “band” Insane Clown Posse has a love for Faygo. They and their Juggalo fans spray it all over their shows. It's a pretty safe bet that sine the company began in 1907 sales have never been higher. Something that you might not know is that the Faygo company wants absolutely nothing to do with ICP. They consider themselves a family product and do not wish to be associated with the violence and obscenity that is prevalent in the clown's music. Proposals from the group for the company to produce limited edition sodas (and rumored energy drinks) have all been turned down. That is your history lesson for the day, now on to the important part: the flavor. This is exactly what you think of when you think of grape soda. It doesn't really taste like grapes, but it tastes like everything you associate with grape flavor. Specifically it keeps making me think of grape Bubbalicious gum that I used to chew when I was a kid. Now that was good gum. Normally I would choose a soda that was juice based over a “candy” soda like this one, but I can't argue that it isn't delicious. It's probably the best fake grape soda I've ever tried. I'm sure that has to do with the cane sugar. It's not often that you come across one sweetened that way.

Here's something I don't like: having a non-natural looking tongue or lips. I hate candy that turns my mouth different colors. I don't like blue Freez-e-pops, blue candy, blue drinks. I don't like it. I don't want to look like an eight year old who blatantly just O.D.'d on some awkwardly colored candy.. I know it's happening to me as I drink this but I'm just going to hope that it's not. It's not enough to make it something I would drink regularly, but I will make an exception to my rule today. It's Wednesday.

Aside from my Technicolor tongue, this drink is sa-weet. Anything like this I can feel the child in me scraping at the walls of my poorly constructed adulthood walls, begging to get out and chug this whole bottle and then do something stupid like eat a case of Skittles or make ramps out of scrap wood in the middle of the street. This tastes like candy and smells exactly like how it tastes and tastes exactly how it smells. I guess Crush was bored with orange and just went full party-time and bought into the explosive blue raspberry market, which is a good market for kids but not for adults. That being said, I wouldn't want my kid drinking this because a dentist isn't cheap without dental insurance.

Fourth grade. What a joke that was, right? Homework cuts into all your serious Mortal Kombat time and all you want to do is play with your friends. There are bikes that need to be ridden, tree forts that need to be built, and football that needs to be played. No, your English teacher thinks that Arthur Miller is more important than building friendships and burning wood with a magnifying glass. All you want to do is go outside in the late spring sun and eat Freez-e-pops with your friends and play basketball.

What's that? Your daddy brought you a new bottle of pop that you've never seen with quite a sexy lady on it and gave it to you with a wink. What was he thinking with such an erotic bottle? Lemon Slime? Gross, and awesome. You can't wait to sink your teeth into this. You open up the bottle being careful not to spill any on your homework. You take a sip and love it. It's so sweet and tastes like a green popsicle. You drink half the bottle and continue reading. Your mom comes in to see how you're doing and sees the rather erotic pop that your daddy brought and instantly disapproves, taking the bottle from you. On the way down the stairs, your mom takes a sip and is disgusted. It's so sweet and tastes like a green popsicle. She couldn't possibly drink a whole bottle of this herself, as it is just too much to handle. She dumps it down the drain only to be seen by your daddy who gave that to you as a little "man to man" drink. Alas, it will be a few years before your mom lets you watch anything with Elvira in it.

To be a kid again, right? You can endure all the sugar thrown at you but as you get older, you just can't do it. Don't grow up, theoretical kid. Stay young forever.

Last year we had Avery's bottle some private label birch beer and sarsaparilla for us. We made up some rad Thirsty Dudes labels and Mohawk Place, a rad local bar, sold them. Within a couple of days we were out of all of them. We wanted to order more, but the shipping cost was too high to make it cost effective. We've been searching for a closer bottler since. That's not really important. What is important is that the sarsaparilla we got from them was decent, but nothing to write home about. It was actually fairly light in color, which was a bit odd. I realized we never ended up reviewing one of them for the site, so we ended up picking up a bottle of it at Soda Pop Central. Since we already knew what it tasted like we have been sitting on it for a while. Now the time has come and I have to say that this tastes way better than what they bottled for us. Maybe we got a bum batch or something, but this is very strong. It actually tastes more like a root beer than a sarsaparilla. Actually it tastes like a root beer while a whole mess of licorice in it. It's dark and great. It's a bummer that our batch wasn't their best, but it's good to know that this company can make a really nice soda. I wouldn't pass it up if I saw it in the store, and neither should you. Now someone find us a place to inexpensively bottle some soda with a Thirsty Dude's label.

Nigel is a man with no free time. You see, everyone is always making plans for him. His parents, his boss, his kids, and his wife: all of them always predetermining everything that he does. Nigel wishes he could just sit back in the woods and relax with a nice cold birch beer and just enjoy the scenery. As it turns out he has no time for soda at all. You see his wife had already made plans for him to drink eight large glasses of water a day. Consuming that much water leaves little to no room for him to enjoy a nice frosty soda. It's sad times for Nigel. He remembers a simpler time before everyone told him what to do when he was a child in eastern Pennsylvania. He used to constantly drink Pennsylvania Dutch birch beer. Even now as he is sipping his fifth glass of water for the day he can remember how strong it smelled when he would twist off the top. His nostrils would be instantly greeted by the glorious smell of anise heavy birch beer. Oh man just thinking about that smell lets him pretend that the water he is drinking is actually that self same birch beer. Man, that smell is also apparent in the taste. It's so anise/licorice heavy. Also it had a reddish tint to it, which he always found strange and wondrous. Actually now that he thinks of it that birch beer tasted exactly how he would imagine root beer barrel candy would taste if it was birch been instead of root. Now that's a thought. He could have a batch of candy made to that specification. After all he was the heir to a candy fortune. What better way to spend his company's money and resources? It's not like he worked at British Steel. That would be a horrible life. Instead everyone makes plans for him and tells him what to do, but he will be fine with it, happy even, as soon as he can suck on some birch beer barrel candies while he works.

Flo was a waitress who was always on her feet. From morning to night she worked in that diner serving chicken fried steak and steak fried chicken and delicious cinnamon pie. People would come from all around to get the best possible service from Flo. Problem is that Flo was a bit large. She was the nicest woman in the world, but easily clocked in at over three bills. Reason being is that for the last thirty-odd years she ate at the diner during lunch and dinner and the food there wasn't exactly healthy. Sure they had vegetables, but they had butter on them and came with a side of grits or mashed potatoes. Nothing diet-friendly would enter there. People knew that was why the food was so good. Home cooking at its finest.

When Flo stood on her scale at home before work it made her think that she had to do something or she wasn't ever going to get out of the rut she was in. She would work and have the cook make her a salad with vegetables with no butter and she drank a lot of water. The diner started carrying some Waist Watcher drinks there that she liked. The vanilla cream was her favorite. It tasted more like a vanilla candy rather than a cream soda because it was so sweet. It tasted like a diet pop but that's what Splenda will do to a drink.

Slowly but surely she started dropping pounds and the patrons started to take notice. Her tips started to increase because they knew how hard she was trying and in a couple years with hard work and a lot of diet pop, she got to a regiment that worked for her and lost all the weight that she gained over the past dozen or so years. She felt great thanks to unbuttered, unfried food, exercise, and Waist Watcher.

Max was a strange boy. He was obsessed with all things orange. Not only did he eat the fruit and drink the juice constantly, but he also used orange soap (hand and dish), burned orange scented candles and painted everything in his home the color. As I said there was something off about that Max boy. No one would ever expect this boy to come down with scurvy. A typical meal for him would be oranges to eat, orange juice to drink and for dessert he would put a little sprits of whipped cream on top of an orange slice. One day it dawned on him that he could recreate his dessert in the form of a beverage. He first tried mixing orange juice with whipped cream, but the cream ended up curdling and even though it tasted fine, the idea of it made him want to vom a little. On his second attempt he used orange soda with a little bit of orange juice mixed in and added the whipped cream to that, then mixed it all together into a uniform consistency. The result was subtler than orange cream sodas he had tasted in the past. Since he used whipped cream instead of the traditional vanilla cream, it wasn't as strong and didn't taste like a creamsicle as much. The flavor actually fell in-between that of an orange cream and regular orange soda. He decided to call it orange crème, so he could pretend he was fancy and foreign. As I said, Max was a strange boy. A strange boy whose complexion eventually turned orange, and not from tanning too much.