Jones - 48 Reviews

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Chipotle does not need to go into everything. I like a nice smoked pepper taste as much as the next human, and I put chipotle Tabasco sauce on a decent amount of my food, but I 100% do not need, nor want it in beverage form.

This is not horrible. If I tried hard I could probably drink the whole bottle, but something just tastes not right about it, like the time you ran out of milk and decided to pour orange juice on your serial instead. You powered through that bowl, but you did not really enjoy it.

I've had chipotle dusted dried mango before (which again was okay, but not necessary) and due to that I kept expecting this to be mango and not pineapple. Even concentrating on the pineapple flavor I still get a bit of mango somehow. Psychosomatic folks. The pineapple taste isn't as strong as other sodas of that flavor I've had in the past either. This doesn't even taste like chipotle to be honest, it just tastes weird. It has no spice to it, which I would have expected. Well it tastes like spice, but not spicy if you catch my drift. It's certainly not for me and I'm guessing it's not for most of you either.

Oh yeah, it's also sweetened with a mixture of cane sugar, agave syrup and stevia to keep the calories down. While it's better than it would be in full diet form, it's still not doing any favors for the taste.

Anytime there is a soda that is flavored by a berry that isn't one of the big 4 (straw, blue, black, rasp) I will happily drink it. “Rare' berries are almost always tasty, and so are the sodas that are based off of them. This is a diet drink that is sweetened with cane sugar, agave and stevia., but I will say that if it were solely sweetened with cane sugar it would be ridiculously good (as long as Jones didn't go overboard with the sugar, like they seem to like to do). As it is it is still quite an enjoyable beverage, stevia and all. It has a vague off-diet taste, but the flavor of the huckleberry is nice enough to distract your taste buds. It helps that it's a blend of sweeteners and not only stevia. Jones is doing pretty well for itself.

It seems to be a trend these days to be healthier. It may just be the best trend of all time. Everywhere I look healthier food options are popping up, including many drink companies making lower calorie beverages and presenting them in a “cool” way and not labeling them as diet. In the past diet drinks were pretty much marketed towards housewives. Now they are attempting to make them more attractive to the general population. Jones is doing so with their “Stripped “ line. The typeface they use looks as though it should say something along the lines of “extreme.” That's what the kids want I guess.

Another change these days is that in the past a single sweetener, such as sucralose or aspartame, would be used and I'm fairly certain we are all familiar with that diet death taste they would leave behind. A few years ago stevia started to get popular. It was more palatable, but still had a very distinct taste that it added to whatever it sweetened. At some point in the recent history of the world someone realized that no matter how diet drinks were marketed if they tasted more like the sweetener than the flavor of the drink, they weren't going to change many minds. This genius decided that while most people wouldn't drink zero calorie beverages, lower calorie was better than nothing, so they proposed using stevia as well as lower quantities of cane sugar. The result was beverages that I can drink without feeling like I need to run a mile to work off the calories.

The orange and mango flavor in this soda may be on the lighter side of the spectrum, but they are still stronger than whatever diet taste that is barely noticeable. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction. As a nation we embrace sugar far too much. I know I just crave it sometimes, but this is helping move us to a place where we don't need as much of a fix. It's to soda what methadone is to heroin. Junkies, all of us.

Fruity pop in my eyes usually has a place at outside hootenannies but in this case I might welcome it to my other activities because it's awesome. Seriously, it's really fruity but it's melon, man. Melon is a fruity fruit. America, you can't handle the fruitiness. You'd ruin it by putting in corn syrup or blending it with carrot juice. I'd love to give you the credit but let Canada have something. This was picked up by Editor Dan and I after an awesome night dilly-dallying around a 7-11. In two weeks, Jay and I are going back to see Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster. Who knows what hijinks and activities will be had and what cool drinks we will uncover. It's been a while for us to go as a couple. Hopefully some bahn mi and delicious buns will be ingested.

Man, I'm so glad you talked me into going to that baseball game. I mean the game itself was just as boring as I expected it to be, but when that guy you brought got that foul ball to the face, man that made everything worthwhile. I mean I guess I feel bad for laughing so hard, but he really just wouldn't shut up and was being such a know-it-all. It just seemed like it was the universe telling him to shut up, just like everyone around us wanted to.

Oh man, he actually broke his jaw and had to get it wired shut? Now I really feel bad for laughing. You know what he did go on for about 40 minutes about how he loved a perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so let me make him one and you can drop it off. First you lightly toast the bread, then you spread peanut butter one piece and a generous amount of grape jelly on the other. Actually he did say about 20 times how he loves his grape jelly, so I better double up on it. Don't worry that it will be messy, he can't chew anyways so I'll throw it in a blender for him. Hmm, I don't know what would be the appropriate liquid to add to this. I guess grape soda will have to do. Now we blend.

This is actually kind of insane. It tastes like a grape soda, but then you get weird flashes of bread and light hints of peanut butter. The grape soda kept it's carbonation as well. That dude is going to love this if he's really into PB&J as much as he claims. Me, I think it's kind of gross after a sip or two. Oh, don't forget the crazy straw!

Earl loved celebrating…€¦too much. He was the guy at work that would somehow always find a reason for cake whether it be Sheryl in accounting, Sharon in accounts receivable, or Shannon in customer service. Cakes, assorted pies, and trays of cookies always seemed to be in tow when it came to Earl. On Halloween he came in and was very sad. Most of the people in the office were wearing at least some sort of hackneyed cat ears or devil horns. Sheila Larson from the front desk asked what was wrong and he told his sad story.

He was on his way to his car dressed to the nines in a zombie outfit. Full makeup, ripped shirt and shorts, colors contacts, and a well rehearsed limp. He was ten feet from the car and a car drove by and completely splashed him. It totally ruined his getup. His makeup was running, he was cold and wet, and genuinely was not in the mood to have any sort of party.

Lunchtime had come and everyone made their way to the company picnic where the office had decided to have a little Halloween party. Earl walked in and sat down and started to eat his sandwich. Just then, a handful of the women from the office brought him a cupcake with a Jack-o-lantern on it and a tiny can of pop. He looked up and smiled and said thanks. He ate the cupcake and was in a better mood but it wasn't until he drank that pop that he was back to his normal self. The pop they gave him was a Halloween exclusive flavored like a caramel apple. He had never seen anything like it. He loved to bring in candy and caramel apples to the girls at the office throughout fall so this little can was a treat. He took a couple sips and decided it tasted more like non-alcoholic apple cider with some caramel in it. That was close enough for him. He went outside and no one saw him for about ten minutes. Then, he came back in dressed as a janitor. All the ladies thought it was a great costume and wondered where he got it. Just then, Sam the janitor walked in wearing Earl's clothes that he just had on. It was a Halloween that Consolidated Cardboard won't soon forget.

Roberta Smith was new to town. She always dressed in black and her schoolmates used to call her “Wednesday Addams” because she wore black, collared dress almost every day. Her hair also looked like she had always freshly put something into a light socket. She always had her headphones on listening to the blackest of metal. When people would ask her what she was listening to, she would say that she was listening to “blood metal” which is not a real genre, but something to get the point across that it was very dark and often morbid. She had patches on her backpack for bands like Danzig, Type-O Negative, Necrophagist, and Cannibal Corpse and many more.

She came to school one day and say alone to eat lunch. She had a turkey sandwich, apple, Star Crunch, and a small can of pop. One of the bullies in the school came over and took the can from Wednesday. She demanded that he give it back to her. He refused and asked her what it was. She told him it was blood orange. He squealed like pig and practically threw the can back at her thinking it was made with real blood. Fed up with the abuse that she had taken, she chased the kid through the lunchroom and tackled him. She opened up the can of pop and started to pour some into his mouth. A teacher came in and broke up the scuffle and the students went on their way. The bully got up as Wednesday went back to the table with an arm full of sticky pop. He said, “This isn't blood! It just tastes like orange pop and grapefruit pop mixed together! It's actually pretty good. Thanks, Wednesday!” She smiled for the first time in front of her classmates.

After class, some students came up to her and told her that it was cool that she stood up to the bully and asked if she wanted to come over to their houses and play with dolls. She said, “Sure! Do you want to come over to my house, listen to Slayer and pull the wings off butterflies.” When the kids backed up in disgust, she would tell them, “Just kidding. We aren't going to be mean to butterflies but we are still listening to Slayer.”

Dear Trick or Treaters of the world,
When you are traversing the back streets of your town, begging for sugary confections I have on request for you. Actually it's not a request; it's a demand. You can keep all of your chocolates and suckers, your Wonkas and your Hersheys. I must request that you save all of your licorice and send it to me directly at the Thirsty Dudes offices (aka my apartment). I have no need of Sweet Tarts or Tootsie Rolls, I only need the sweet, sweet goodness of licorice. Let me be more specific, red licorice. You can keep any and all black licorice trash for yourself. Bring me your Twizzlers, your Red Vines and your Australian soft eating varieties. Red licorice is the ultimate candy, and when it comes to ingesting it, I have no willpower. I will inhale an entire package before I know what happened.

The folks at Jones certainly had me in mind when they made this soda pop, as it legitimately tastes like licorice. Sure the flavor isn't as overpoweringly strong as I wish it was, but it is more than just a hint. The flavor is more along the lines of Red Vines than anything else, and while it's not my absolute favorite, I can't really complain.

It's lucky for me that these are available for a limited time only, as I don't need this temptation on a yearly basis. Also, anything more than 8oz of this would probably be too much. This candy liquefied and stored in a can with wonderful bubbles soaring through it is as close to a dream come true as any man could ask.

So on November first while you're sorting through your night's haul, dump all of your licorice into a box and mail it to Thirsty Dudes International Headquarters. The postmaster will make sure it gets to where it needs to be.

Ahh, a bottle of vintage. I'll never forget those days, going to the grandparent's farmhouse during the hot summer months. Working with grandpa bailing hay, cutting dozens of acres of lawn, milking cows, and putting shoes on horses. The later was for fun. It wasn't actual horseshoes. It was my sister's shoes that she brought in case there was some sort of ho down at the town square that she needed to get all gussied up for. Imagine a pony wearing mid-sized heels. It's a treat to see. After a nice, moderate ten hour work day with pappy, he and I would go inside and talk about things like Bill Clinton, Atari, segregation in schools, apples, and the like. We would discuss these topical issues over a nice bowl of turkey caramels until it was time to go to sleep. Ahh those caramels. Nothing is quite as refreshing as sugar free turkey caramels. It just hits the spot after you have a nice turkey dinner with mashed potatoes and peas. You know how awful it is to eat a meal and then wash it down with something that doesn't taste like what you just ate. Oh, I hate it. If I just ate a hamburger, I wish there were some sort of hamburger ice cream that I could eat to keep my palate just where it was.



Pappy, if you're reading this, I don't miss those days and although my friends say that I was missing my youth, I thought that there is only one way to have such course, calloused hands and strong work ethic at ten. Those kids that were spending their youth playing football, having sleepovers, listening to pop music; those kids are soft. We, you and I, we are strong independent men who can take care of ourselves with the lay of the land. Animals? I'll milk 'em all of the day. We're men, pappy. All because of our talks and those delicious salty turkey caramel filled nights.

There comes a time when mankind makes something that is not needed/wanted. Jones fulfilled this prophecy by creating this monster of a soda.

*Editors note: in the beginning of the video, Mike thinks I say it's in a can but I was trying to say that it was an exclusive to Canada but I don't know how to talk on video because I get nervous.

Without further adieu, here is a video of us drinking this collection of fries, gravy, and cheese curds in a bottle.



Jones Poutine soda was easily the worst soda I've ever had. It's been hours since I drank it and my stomach still hurts and I still feel like I'm going to throw up. I appreciate that Jones sent this to us, but on the other hand I feel like they played a huge elaborate prank on us.

Blueberry grape? Who has heard of such a thing? Blueberry is always paired with pomegranate and these two just shouldn't blend. Jones, the insane Canadians that they are, decided that they can do whatever they want. They put those guys together in one bottle and came up with...wait for it...a strange drink. It smells good and it invites you in. When you drink it, you get some blueberry and some grape juice but there is something else in there, something that I didn't like. I don't want to say bitter but it had a bit of that acai taste to it even though that wasn't an ingredient. I think it's actually the vegetable juice that they use for color that kind of snuck in some flavor. I've had this before with those drinks that are fruit flavored but have a days worth of vegetable intake in them. I'm fine with that, but know that it also delivers this strange aftertaste. If you know this stuff, you will be fine. I am the informer. Snow and I, we are informers.

Would you look at that face? That is the face of a child who just opened her birthday presents and she is not happy with the results. All she wanted was a classic blonde 1972 Fender Telecaster bass and instead what she got was a brand new knock off that looks like a toy. To add insult to injury it was also fretless…€¦ick. Well at least her parents got her a case of orange and cream soda. Orange cream is her favorite soda flavors and only the sweet, sweet flavor of creamsicle soda will right this evil that has been put upon her. What the hell is this? This one is certainly not her parent's fault. It's labeled orange and cream, but this doesn't taste the way she wants it to. Neither the orange, nor the vanilla cream tastes are right, and together they taste nothing like a melted creamsicle. It's like they took garbage generic orange pop and put in the smallest hint of vanilla that is just not pulling its weight. In fact it tastes more like a generic sweet soda flavor than anything. That's it. She's just turned two and this little girl already knows this is the worst birthday that has and will ever exist. She might as well burn the house down.

I decided I need/want to get into better shape. I'm not going to lie, I'm a chubby dude. I can only blame the beverages from this site so much (seeing as both the other 'dudes' have reviewed much more than me and still weigh much less than me). And no, this is not a "new years resolution" because I joined a gym 2 months before New Years. I just decided today to start getting serious about it.

I did yoga for the first time in a while today and I came to the conclusion that I need something better than pajamas to work out in. So after dinner today, Jenna and I went to Old Navy because I had a gift card from X-mas. I proceeded to purchase 2 different kinds of workout pants and a pair of mesh shorts to workout in.

Did you know Old Navy sells drinks? I've passed by the cooler several times but have never given it more than a half glance. Today they had a decent selection of Jones soda and I had never seen this one so I grabbed it without thinking on the way to the counter. I guess that's how they get you.

Like I expected, this is basically a cream soda with a strong vanilla taste. Even though I'm pretty used to diet soda fake sugars, this has a chemically aftertaste that I don't like. So close Jones, so close.

Black cherry; the most goth of all fruits. You want to meet up with them? They sleep until noon, work at a bookstore that sells nothing but books on murder, cats, and unlicensed Robert Smith biographies, and go to clubs that are in locations you thought were closed down for a decade. They don't get along with people because they feel they are on the outside looking in. Looking in on all the squares, sellouts, poseurs, conformists, and zealots making fools of themselves on a day-to-day basis. Black cherry listens to Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult and scoffs at your record collection regardless of how much you like it. Black cherry is one with the dark arts.

Recently, black cherry has put on a little weight and needs to slim down a bit. Torrid is fine and essential to black cherry but some things are stretching a bit and it's becoming a health issue that your mom is getting concerned about. So you add a little sucralose to the mix. It's alright. Sure, it "diet's" you up a little bit and makes you feel like you are trying to be one of those blonde bimbos that swarm the schools like bees to a hive. There is a big difference between anorexia and teenage obesity. You still taste good, like you are supposed to, but there's just you can just tell that you are trying to lose a little weight and use artificial sweeteners. It's fine. You are beautiful no matter what the "cool kids" say. Now head on over to your black Volkswagon Jetta, pop in that old Bauhaus record, and think about what sweet kick moves you are going to do at the club tonight in front of yourself in the mirrors.

Lemon Lime: The illegitimate child of sodas. Everyone pretends to love it, but in reality it's normally the only soda left over after the family get together. I've never met a single person in my life that had lemon lime as a go to pop. Sure it mixes well with other drinks, alcoholic for some and for others such as myself it works well with cranberry juice, when out at bars. On it's own it's just a bland soda by nature. I mean how can it not when one of its key ingredients is lemon, the most meaningless of all fruit. Lemonade is amazing, but in all other forms I could do without the golden citrus king. I wonder if lime will forever feel cheated in this arrangement. A straight up lime soda aka a Lime Rickey is a thing of beauty. It's just too bad that on most days it's held back by its cousin the lime.

Now that I've expressed in detail the mediocrity of lemon lime pop, I will say that Jones has made a version that is better than most. It's no surprise that the reason for it's spender is that it tastes more of lime than lemon. The use of cane sugar helps a lot as well, but it's the lime that makes this pop worthwhile. If this is what this flavor of soda always tasted like, I feel like there wouldn't be anything left in the coolers at the end of the party and that everyone would finally come to accept and truly love this soda made out of wedlock

You know what's stopping this drink from being a good drink? The fact that it sucks. This drink tastes like sour apple plastic. If you had a book for kids that every page had a different smell and one of the pages smelled like sour apple, and then you ate it, this is what it would taste like: your child's book. Why are you eating your kids books? Why are you making drinks that taste like fruity flavored plastic? Why did this drink make it to production? Not every non-diet pop is still drinkable when you exchange real sugar for artificial sweeteners. Not everything we drink is a gem. This should be more acceptable than it is but surprise! We just found the reason why we found it for seventy cents.

Rumor has it that it's been a rough year for apples. It was a blisteringly hot summer and that's not good for any sort of trees, plants, fruits, vegetables, and everything in-between. I assume the orchards aren't just throwing away bushels of lesser quality apples. I hope that there will be an influx of apple goods like apple cider, apple donuts, apple bread, something. I like apples. I like certain apples more than other but I like them all. Apple juice is good but companies as of late have been really nailing that apple flavor and not just apple flavoring things.

This pop is apple. Red apple. Not apple flavored. It says "natural and artificial flavors" but I'm thinking that's a misprint. It's a really good flavor. It's sweet but it's pop. If you've had Jones before they are a little guilty of over sweetening their pop. It's real sugar though so over sweetening with cane sugar versus artificial sweetener, in my opinion, is way more drinkable. I'm just saying they could cut back a bit.

Autumn, apples, cider, hoodies; it's all happening now, for a limited time. Fall is a short season because you take summer for every day but as soon as snow hits, it's mentally winter. That's the frigidly cold truth. I'm not telling lies over here, just truths.

Margaret had a problem with her neighbor. Well it really wasn't her neighbor that was the problem; she was a sweet old lady. Her problem was that there wasn't a fence between their houses and in her neighbor's backyard there was an old pear tree. Early in the season it was great. It was a lovely looking tree and the air around it always has a soft smell of pears. As late summer (and ultimately fall) set in is when things turned poor. You see the old lady neighbor didn't go out much because of her age and all of the pears would fall to the ground where they would begin to rot. The smell was kind of bad, but even though there was a slight scent of decay, the smell of the pears overwhelmed it. The true problem was that the rotting pears attracted armies of bees. You see Margaret had a small British looking boy that she liked to dress up as Charlie Brown to fulfill some sadistic need. When she would bring him out back to play, as soon as she looked way he always bee-lined (all puns intended) towards the tree. She always caught up to him in time, but she knew one day she wouldn't be fast enough and it would be sting city for her little comic character brought to life.

She knew the neighbor really wasn't fit to do anything about it so Margaret decided to clean up the pears herself this year before they began to rot. She made some pies, canned a few, but there were still mountains left over. Eventually she decided to try and make some pear soda. Since she didn't really know what she was doing to she pleased with the way it turned out, even though it tasted a bit off, and not really like pears. She somehow managed to do to her pear soda what sour green apple candy flavoring has been doing to candy for years. It was sweet, yet slightly sour and only vaguely tasting of pears. It wasn't great, but it was better than expected. She made up a few cases (you seriously can't believe how many pears this tree produced) and saved them up for the holidays. You see her husband ran a soda company and his name was…€¦wait for the reveal…€¦Thomas Ezekiel Jones. DUM DUM DUM

I don't know if I can properly express Mike's disappointment in the Jones Dungeons & Dragons line. It crushed the man. He saw an ad that Jones was releasing this line, and he jumped on it. He ordered us the whole series, and spent a pretty penny doing it. In his mind the new flavors were out of this world and from an older time, some would say a simpler time. Others would say it sucked because you were always worried about dragons or orcs attacking you. One thing that no one would argue about was that the beverages back then were way different. The day finally came when the package arrived. Mike opened it up and said some expletive or another. You see the ad listed the flavors as things such as “Sneak Attack,” “Potion of Healing” and “Eldritch Blast.” What it didn't tell you was that these were just the normal Jones flavors with new wacky names (Cream Soda, Blackberry and Green Apple). Mike was so upset that after we divided the flavors between us it took him nearly six months to review even one, and that was under duress. I feel for him. No one likes disappointment, especially when it comes in the way of sodas you were super stoked on.

What is an Eldritch Blast anyways? I thought it was some sort of creature, as I have no idea what the being on the label is. I Googled it and eldritch just means strange or spooky. I guess that it makes sense as Jones was able to make a green apple soda that actually tastes like pop and not like someone put a handful of Jolly Ranchers in a cup and then microwaved them for two hours. Sure, it's sweet as hell, but underneath the sugar it actually tastes like a nice sour apple and not just candy. This is the first soda I've ever had that has done this properly. I hope that makes up for some of Mike's sadness. I know it won't but a man can dream. Actually if I'm dreaming I should probably be dreaming bigger, like say Mike won a contest when he ordered these lies of soda and he's getting one of those fancy cars that he loves and 25 pachinko machines to annoy his “live in” girlfriend. Now there's a dream.

Remember when Jones came out and you thought to yourself, "Green apple pop?! Woah!" Now, look, they've still got strange, fun flavors, those crazy Canadians, but you've got to pay the bills. Diet cola sells and people love the stuff. Even for a company that prides themselves on using pure cane sugar, they can't do that unless they make a super weak, odd tasting pop. Dry does it, but they're good at it and that's their thing.

This, and you shouldn't be surprised, just tastes like a diet cola. It has an alright cola taste but is still diet. I might say that this is a titch (scientific term) better than diet Pepsi. I'm not hating; just doing a poor comparison. I'm not a hater. I'm cynical, but I'm no hater. 'Nuff respect, Pepsi. Let these guys do what they do.