Big Red - 5 Reviews

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.

When I read the review that Liz Prince wrote for us for Big Red I was kind of shocked. I was almost positive that I had tried this soda before and that I really liked it. I remembered it tasting like Crush's red cream soda. After the review came out the company sent us a couple of bottles of their throwback version that is made with cane sugar. It sat in my cupboard for a while, but I decided to finally drink it tonight. After a single sip I knew I was mistaken and that I had never drank this before. There is no way that I would forget that weird bubble gum/7Up flavor. I certainly am not a fan. I don't normally like bubble gum flavored sodas to begin with, but this was worse than most. It has a very sudden gum flavor that quickly fades away into a lemon lime type of flavor that fades into something that I can only compare to when the ratio of syrup to soda water is off in a fountain machine. All of that plus it's way more sugary than your average soda pop. On top of that it randomly has caffeine in it. I didn't realize that until I forced myself to drink half the bottle. I had already decided I wasn't going to finish it, due to the taste, but that's set in stone now because of the caffeine. It's a little late and I'm a man who likes to actually sleep well in the winter.

I agree with Mrs. Prince; this stuff is garbage. Texas you have done us wrong. Why don't you just stick to making iced tea? You do an outstanding job with that. Leave the soda making to the northerners.

I'm weird because I actually like Big Red. A lot of people give me crap about it, but I don't care. I think it's a decent cream soda. This diet version on the other hand is pretty gross. At first it tasted just like normal Big Red but then has the usual gross diet fake sugar aftertaste. I started to get used to it the more I drank, but it's still not as good as the original.

When I was asked by Derek to do a guest review for Thirsty Dudes, I was totally excited, but incredibly overwhelmed. All of my favorite drinks had already been reviewed, and trying to find a new drink that hadn't been done before was next to impossible. So finally my thoughts turned to drinks I absolutely LOATHE; one shining beacon of disgust stood out among the rest, and when I searched for it on this site, I found that it had yet to be reviewed, and so I give you BIG RED.



My history with BIG RED is not particularly noteworthy: my friends and I saw it in a supermarket in Albuquerque, NM when we were in high school, and bought a six pack because we thought it would be awesome. We all took turns doing spit-takes in the parking lot of the Albertson's we bought it from, declaring that the only way this soda could possibly make any money is from people buying it to see if it's really as bad as they remembered it being (the answer in this scenario would always be an emphatic YES). And then it was written off forever, and if there was ever a discussion about disgusting beverages I would relate my story about BIG RED and get a laugh or two, but since I've moved to the east coast, there are less and less people who have heard of or tried this soda, because it's mostly a southern "delicacy". As such, this bottle I hold in my hands was shipped to me by my dear friend Claire Van, from Austin Texas.

I was totally prepared to trash this soda. I was sure that my memory served me well, and this would be a 1 star review, but as I fearfully opened the bottle and took my first sip, I was surprised to find that I didn't actually HATE the taste, which is exactly like Bazooka Joe bubblegum (the soda itself is supposed to be a red cream soda). It's too sweet for me, but as novelty, what the hell, it's not the worst thing out there, and certainly not as bad as I remembered it being. That is, until you get to the aftertaste, which is overpoweringly chemical, and brings back the distinct memory of getting fluoride treatment in elementary school. I took the bottle outside and let some of my neighbors take a sip: my neighbor Evan was super excited because he had grown up in Texas, and thus BIG RED is a huge source of nostalgia for him, Peter thought it was pretty good, Kate seemed unimpressed, and Maris flat out hated it. I finished the rest of the bottle in their company on the front stoop, and about halfway through began to feel like the taste was starting to overstay its welcome. Indeed, a whole bottle of BIG RED is far too much for me, and I started to remember what it was that I initially disliked about the soda so many years ago: it's just not enjoyable to drink. It's taste, while not being outright offensive, is certainly too overbearing to be a regular addition to my liquid diet, and luckily, since I had to have it imported, I won't see it in the soda aisle and be tempted to buy it just to see if it really is as bad as I remember it being.

Let's take a poll. What do you think the flavor of this drink is going to be? Okay with the exception of Tommy, who insists on being a smart ass and guessed it was beef wellington flavored, every last one of you said berry or blue raspberry. Okay some of you said it was "blue" flavored, but as everyone know blue only counts as a flavor when you're talking about freezie pops. As a result your answers will be marked as blue raspberry, which for the record is what I was expecting. It's a sugary as all hell blue raspberry soda that would hurt my teeth due to it's obscene sweetness. I was very shocked when it ended up being a sugary as all hell cream soda that hurt my teeth due to its obscene sweetness.

I thought it was disgusting after my first sip. I think I believe everything is gross when it tastes completely different than I expect it to, so I pressed on. I ended up liking it. It's so candy cream soda it's ridiculous, but I could handle it in small doses. I couldn't make it through the whole 20oz bottle in one sitting, but I'll come back to it later.