Towne Club - 8 Reviews

Part of me wants to trash this for being glorified carbonated sugar water and part of me wants to praise it for being a smallish local company (Detroit) that is still putting out soda in glass bottles that is sweetened with cane sugar. The thing is that this is neither terrible nor great. It simply falls in the grey area of life. Towne Club gets some points for making a strawberry melon soda, but the execution could be better. It tastes so sweet that it makes it hard to decipher the different fruit flavors. I was certainly not able to drink even half of this bottle. Saying I drank a third of it is being generous. I'm sure there is someone out there who loves this and swears by it. I can only assume that same person devours Pixie Stix and Sweet Tarts all day long. They also most definitely live in Michigan. No one outside the mitten can have that much love for this soda.

Towne Club started selling soda in the 60's and it was the prime rival to Faygo, decades before it was coopted by the clowns. I did not know that, but Wikipedia just informed me and I always have more respect for such long running companies. Sure, the company has changed hands throughout the years, but it's still bottled in burnt out Detroit. Do people in Detroit get upset when people talk about how their city is falling apart? I've been there many times and it is certainly one of, if not the most, run down cities I have ever been too, and I travel to a lot of garbage places. Oh well, I hope they have pride in their city. The crappiness of Buffalo is what made me love it and I kind of hate that it's starting to become nice, because it's taking away the things I loved about the city. Maybe the denizens of Detroit feel the same way. They can live cheaply, so they can do what they want with their lives and not be tethered to a job struggling to make rent. It could also just be a terrifying place to live. I have no idea.

I will say they have some decent local sodas. As an adult it would be very rare that I would reach for one of these, but in my younger years when I craved all the sugar I could get, I would have loved it. It's slightly fruity cream soda that reminds me of the pink Crush cream soda (soda mousse) in Canada. I loved that as a teenager, so logic follows that I would have loved this as well. This is mostly sugar flavored, but there is enough of a “cream soda” taste that shines through to make it interesting. It's nothing mind blowing, but it's a local soda made with cane sugar with a wide variety of flavors in a classic looking bottle. I can get behind those things.

We've all heard of block clubs. Neighbors get together to discuss ways to prevent crime, improve their neighborhood and throw the annual block party. I must warn you that if you live in a neighborhood that has a block club, and you choose not to participate, you will become an outcast and will be referred to as “the squatters.” Okay to be fair we really were squatting. Our landlord who lived upstairs just disappeared and stopped cashing our checks, so we stopped leaving them. We lived rent-free for about two years before his less than dramatic return. The house needed a paint job, and a new roof, but we took better care of it than if it was left to rot. The grass was cut. We picked up the garbage and were respectful of the neighbors. I wish they had treated us with the same respect. Oh well.

So yeah…€¦block clubs. Did you know that just outside Detroit there's a little town with such a low population that instead of a block club, they have a town club? They serve the same basic purpose as it's smaller counterpart, except on a larger scale. It's a paradise in the middle of a burnt out city. It's actually quite nice an pleasant if you're into the Mayberry scene. In addition to neighborhood watches, cleanups and parties they also run a small soda company called, well…€¦Towne Club. It's the extra “E” that keeps them classy. They produce a line of completely middle of the road sodas, but that's just fine. Someone has to do it, and they do it with love, so there's that.

They decided it was time to add a cherry soda to their line, and why not give it a little taste of home and call it Michigan cherry? I mean their production runs weren't huge, and it was rare that anyone outside of the “mitten state” would get their hands on one of these, but incase they did they wanted them to know where it came from. The 3% juice that it was comprised of did come from their back yards. Why not flaunt it? That little bit of juice really goes a long way in the soda game. This stands out in the cherry soda game. It has a slightly unique flavor that does not taste like couch syrup. Bravo for that Towne Club. Now work on fixing all the potholes in your state.

Johnny was a gamer. Big time. He was a terrible student at the same time. Reason being is because he would always do the minimum he could do just to get it done so that he could play video games. He handed his stuff in on time but it was never very good. He focused all his attention on games. Shooters mostly. He would get home from school, crank through math, science, history, and English, run downstairs and slam a hot pocket and run upstairs to retire to his room where he would have his headphones on with microphone just headshotting left and right. He would always have his Mountain Dew with him, too. Always. He drank a lot of it and loved the way that he could go all night and not get tired. Sure his schoolwork would suffer but he didn't care because he was leveling up.

One day the town he lived in had a pretty brutal snowstorm and the shelves in the supermarket were left barren except for things like rat traps, wooden spoons, and expensive olive oils. The Mountain Dew was gone and he was very distraught. He didn't know what to do so he scoured the shelves for what felt like an eternity until he came across a lone bottle of Towne Club that was left in a bin of dog toys. He thought that it looked like Mountain Dew enough that he had to at least give it a try.

At home, he put in his game, put on his headphones, and started playing. Shortly thereafter, he was thirsty and decided that now was the time to break open his drink. He opened it, took a sip and put it down and continued to game. He didn't think twice about it until the third or fourth sip where he noticed that he really liked it. He thought it tasted like a Mountain Dew but less sweet and with more of a lime or lychee taste. He looked at the scoreboard to his deathmatch and he was actually winning. Johnny found his new secret weapon against the enemy and it wasn't dual pistols with incendiary rounds, it was a tall bottle of Town Club City Rush.

Apparently this town's club is not very selective about it's members. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Everyone is welcome, which results in nothing terrible, but at the same time nothing is stupendous. This is a complete middle of the road cola. It tastes like store brand. Even though it's in a glass bottle, it's still sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. It's not quite Coke, it's not quite Pepsi, but it's that middle ground that you all know and enjoy, at least somewhat.

In the burned out city of Detroit it's good to know they still have a couple of things going for them. Okay, all I can really think of is the Motown museum, and tons of rad abandoned places to explore, if you are in to that sort of thing. I guess they also have this somewhat decent line of sodas that is made right in the 48234. (Oh yeah, they also have Faygo, which to paraphrase 7 Seconds is "Not just clowns fun.")

If this came in a can or plastic bottle it would be nothing but a generic, run of the mill cream soda. There is really nothing remarkable about it at all, but something about it coming in a glass bottle that makes it seem a little more special. It's pretty syrupy and has a fairly strong vanilla flavor, but it's pretty much what you would expect. The picture of a float on the label really makes me wish I had some vanilla ice cream, as I bet this would make one hell of a dessert beverage.

Without a doubt, teeth are shattering everywhere this pop is sold. Dentists live in houses larger than you can ever imagine. Children are bouncing off the walls. Parents are all poor because they spent all their money on their children's cavities. For what? 16 fluid ounces of delicious, fantastic strawberry flavored pop. It almost doesn't taste like pop, but like liquid candy. It's quite exquisite, if you think about it. It's probably important that parents don't let their kids touch this stuff, as it is so good and so sweet that they won't be able to get their sticky little hands off of it. Seriously, if you live where this is sold, don't let your kids come with you to the grocery store because once they see that red bottle, it's over. You're going to have a toothless, fourteen year old kid living with you. Bad news. It's good, though. If you aren't a turd about fake sugar and just want to cut loose for a bit, get some. Editor Dan brought this back from a trip to Detroit and I just finally got around to reviewing it. It was worth the wait. Tell your friends but don't dare tell your children.

Beware cheap beverages with the price tag built into the design of the label. That is one thing I have learned from Thirsty Dudes. The only exception to this rule so far has been Arizona Iced Tea, but even most of them are on the low side of the tea spectrum. For the most part a cheap tea is still fairly decent. That same rule does not apply for soda. Cheap pop is just the pits. Towne Club Grape is a little better than most cheap soda, but not by much. It tastes like a syrupy version of melted grape freezie pops with a butt load of sugar added. I don't know who decided that this is what grapes taste like; because I can assure them they certainly do not.