Cumberland Farms Sparkling Sno Strawberry Kiwi

Things have just gone too far. I don't know who originally started associating zero calorie sparkling beverages with ice and all things frozen, but as good of a marketing plan that was other companies have beaten it to death. Yes they tend to taste crisp and cool, so the original idea makes sense. The thing is that ice is not the first thing that a brain would think of hen drinking these types of beverages without the names being forced upon them. I don't hate these drinks by any means, but for the love of all that is good in the world, please come up with your own ideas and stop copying another companies marketing scheme.

Cumberland Farms happily sent us these samples, so I feel a bit bad for ragging on them, but it drives me crazy. Luckily their beverages aren't that bad. Like all good beverages of this ilk this is crisp and refreshing. They chose to sweeten it with sucralose instead of the stevia blends that a lot of the other companies are using these days. That concerned me at first, but luckily the flavor didn't suffer for that decision. This is clearly a diet drink, but it doesn't have that terrible 80's diet taste that most sucralose drinks force upon the imbiber.

My brain automatically associates the strawberry kiwi flavor with diet beverages. My mom and sister always drank gross zero calorie drinks with that flavor, and I always wanted a real sugar version, because it sounded like a wonderful combination. Once I finally tasted a fully sweetened beverage of that sought after flavor it was far too sweet and seemed to be for children. So diet it remains in my mind. I can't really say that this tastes like those two fruits, but it does taste exactly how I would expect it to, as its predecessors have.

A thing that I should have mentioned earlier is that unlike its contemporaries, Cumberland Farms combined the classic zero calorie sparkling beverage with a Vitamin Water style beverage. They enhanced their recipe with vitamins and antioxidants. So to sum things up, they somehow created a sucralose sweetened drink that doesn't taste like complete poison. They also had the sense to use some fruit juice in it and not artificial flavors. On top of all that they added a bunch of ingredients to make sure people get essential vitamins that might be lacking in their diet. It's certainly not my favorite drink out there, but it's doing okay for itself.