High Fructose Corn Syrup - 485 Reviews

So you've gone and done it. You've made a kid. Actually you made him/her a couple of years ago. The first couple of months were a living hell of crying and pooping. Finally the little tike started to recognize your face. Things were starting to look up. Then they started walking and everything got awesome. You could do all the cool stuff that you always wanted to do with kids and it was fun as all hell. I mean sure the tears came back out when they got tired, but it wasn't anything you couldn't handle. Suddenly that all changed. Around the 2-3 year mark your kid just became a flat out jerk. They became demanding, thinking everything was put on this planet for their amusement. You know, just a brat.

You find yourself at a point where you will do just about anything for a little peace and quiet away from this monster you created. You find yourself thinking back to the part in the Twilight Zone where the kid can do whatever it wants with it's mind, and changes someone into a Jack in the Box, and it dawns on you that the whole thing was a giant metaphor for the turds that kids can be at this age.

You always swore that you wouldn't let TV raise your kids, but you now understand the allure. It's a distraction, and you need all of those that you can get. You only let your child watch educational TV, you still have some standards. The problem is that it doesn't fully captivate them, so you need to give them some snacks as well. Included in that is a "juice box." Kids love juice. It's sweet and delicious, and they think it's a treat even though when done properly it's healthy for them. Like most parents you find yourself buying a box of Carpri Sun. It's juice in a single serving pouch, which is also fun for the kids. You don't realize until you get home that there is no actual juice in the pouches, that instead it is a "flavored water beverage," and it's sweetened with HFCS. There is essentially nothing healthy about this drink, but at this point you decide, "Screw it." You put the straw in the pouch, and hand it and the remote to your toddler. Let them watch what they want, who cares if it's Godzilla or American Horror Story? You just need some downtime for yourself. You drag yourself back into the kitchen, pop a Capri for yourself and notice that even though there is no juice in it, it still tastes strongly like a nice medley berries and it's got a decent sweetness. You go to the bedroom to read a little bit, but you only make it a couple of paragraphs in before you hear something come crashing down and you have to get up to see what your dumb kid has done now.

So you're having a backyard party and you want to make sure that you get the proper beverages for just such an occasion. It's not really your friends coming over; it's mostly family, so there's no need to splurge on any fancy sodas. Everyone knows that all backyard parties must have both orange and grape pop available by law. You recently took a trip up to Canada and brought back some C Plus, so you have the orange pop scene on lockdown. Now you just need to get some grape. Why spend the money on Crush, Faygo, Sunkist or Fanta. Sure they aren't really that much, but with Push available you get to save even more loot, and they all taste the same. Seriously, it has been scientifically proven that all grape soda that comes in a plastic bottle tastes the same. Use the extra money you saved to buy some nicer salsa for the adult table. They will be sure to thank you.

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.

I know. Can you believe it? We haven't done this. We have not reviewed this essential to the drink community. Yeah, I said it. Essential. I don't care. I just said it twice. You know what this tea is. This drink reminds you of different times, or at least it does for me. I used to drink this when I was younger and when I drink it now it reminds me of those good times; skating with friends or playing hockey in the street or all that stuff, always with friends. No social drink is more socially acceptable than "the Tallboy." This tea is good, too. Corn syrup? Who cares? You're a kid. Adults don't really drink this so as a kid, you don't really care what it's made out of. It's one dollar, tastes like a mediocre sweetened tea and threw some crude lemon flavor in there, canned it up, and sold trillions. I would like to love to know the amount of cans of this they sold. For me, it was this second to the green tea. It still isn't bad after all these years and I'm saying that as a man who is one month shy of thirty-one. Not bad at all. Welcome back to childhood everyone. Kids, stay here for as long as you can. Tyler, the Creator, keep spitting about cans of Arizona and skating.

Jimmy was a kid growing up in the 1920's who lived in a one-bedroom basement apartment with his parents and 5 brothers and sisters. Unable to afford anything and unable to get to school, he spent his days roaming the streets looking for something to do. He once came across some kids on a stoop playing marbles. He had never seen marbles before and they intrigued him. He was timid, but he managed to ask them if he could join. They were reluctant, but said he could play with them if he brought his own marbles.

This proved to be a challenge to Jimmy, as he didn't have any money to buy marbles. Just then he stumbled upon an empty bottle of Ramune in the trash. He had seen them many times before while he went looking for cans and bottles to return. The one thing he never noticed was the marble in the neck of it. His face lit up as he rattled the marble around the bottle, but slowly faded as he realized the marble was stuck in there.

His initial thought was to smash it on the ground, but he was afraid of cutting himself, causing a scene, and possibly losing the marble. He then notice that the top of the bottle was plastic so he found a sharp rock and started prying it off. It took some work, but he finally did it and retrieved his first marble. But this was only one marble, how was he going to get enough for a whole collection?

Just then he remembered that the karaoke bar down the street always had a lot of empty Ramune bottles in their dumpster. Sure enough, he was right and he found over 30 bottles he could pry the marbles out of. As he was going through one, he noticed a raspberry bottle still had some soda left in it. He had never had soda, and was afraid of his parents catching him drinking it. He hid behind the dumpster as he took a sip of the fizzy beverage. It tickled his throat, but was much too sweet for him. The most sugar he has ever had was a small piece of cake on his birthday last year. To his family, sugar is "not-essential" so he has learned to live without it.

Within a couple hours he had a couple dozen marbles and returned to the kids on the stoop. They were impressed with his collection and promptly punched him in the face and stole them all.

Moral of the story: don't play marbles with randoms on the street.

The beverage world is clamoring trying to make a healthier soda for the consumers who think that they are too good for diet drinks, who are sexist and think that diet drinks are only for girls, and more than likely those who just think diet drinks taste gross. I myself fall in the last category. I just can't get down with normal zero calorie sweeteners. Sometime I find a stevia sweetened drink refreshing, but even that gets old fast. Dr Pepper Snapple has found a middle ground. They use three sweeteners: aspartame, acesulfame potassium, and high fructose corn syrup that result in a drink with only 10 calories and only 2g of sugar that doesn't have a very strong diet taste to it. I don't understand how they worked it out that HFCS is the second ingredient and kept the sugar amount so low. I can only assume that there are especially low amounts of the other ingredients as well, but it still has a strong flavor. It doesn't just taste like soda water.

This tastes surprising like the real deal Canada Dry. It's by no means a top of the line ginger ale, but it still somewhat tastes like real ginger, which they brag about on the label. You could hold this in your mouth all day long and it wouldn't taste diet one bit. The thing is that once you swallow, you get a bit of the diet in the aftertaste as you take a breath. It's a huge step up from normal diet drinks, but the world has a long way to go before they develop a diet soda that I would drink on the regular.

What is it about soda pop and fruit that just doesn't add up? To be more specific, why is it that when pop companies make a fruit flavored sparkling beverage nine times out of ten it ends up tasting like candy and not like the fruit it is meant to be? These sodas end up being like the actors that are used in true crime shows to recreate the events of a horrific ordeal for the world to see. They are kind of similar to the people who were originally involved, but there is something just not natural about them that is just off. In such shows, pineapple would be one of the better actors. Sure he still doesn't come across as true as a real pineapple, but he's a much stronger actor than banana and his cohorts. He may not play fruit the way we want him too, but I'll be damned if he doesn't take the character in a different direction and make us believe that it is the way things have always been.

Push's pineapple is at the top of his acting game. It's not fruit by any stretch of the imagination, but he pulls off a compelling performance that is as good as any fake pineapple I've ever tasted.

This doesn't suck. It's just candy but it's good. You sniff it and it's watermelon and then at the tail end, it's pineapple. It's probably just half pineapple and half watermelon since I think they make both flavors. It's pretty sweet and is probably instant diabetes if you drink the whole thing but if you share this with some of your friends, you'll be fine.

Someone at the Faygo plant probably wanted to see what it was like so in the company break room and used the seemingly endless fountain drink machine to make it. Rumor has it that if you take a tour of the Faygo plant you can see but not touch the fountain drink machine. It's something like eighty flavors, most of which don't see the light of day: pickle, asparagus, triple cola, chocolate cake, steak and potatoes, and motor oil. It's Detroit. Motor oil runs in their blood. You have to work there to drink out of the fountain machine. If you apply and manage to make it to the interview process, you can fill one eight ounce cup. Other than that, no one can use the machine. Not even family, unless Faygo hires them. They can look but they can't touch it. Faygo will fire you if you try and smuggle out a flask of anything that isn't their regular line.

“And when we hit the twin cities, I didn't know that much about it. I knew Mary Tyler Moore and I knew Profane Existence.”

Dear Craig Finn, You forgot about your beloved Minnesota Twins and their beloved Harmon Killebrew. I mean you even wrote a song about them with The Baseball Project. Man, that must have been awesome to work with Peter Buck. Oh you also forgot about all of the “crust lords” that reign supreme in your city.

Well Mr. Finn I'm here to remind you with this review of Killebrew root beer. Harmon's son makes it and it's a homage to his father. First off, this is the first root beer that I have ever drunk that comes in a resealable aluminum bottle. It's weird, but I like that I can reseal it without having to deal with plastic. The root beer itself is sweetened with “pure Minnesota honey,” which is nice, but for some reason they also use HFCS, which seems unnecessary. The honey gives it a nice taste that you don't get in everyday root beer. There is something about it that tastes slightly medicinal in the way that Moxie does. It's also very dark tasting. I can't help but think that this would taste a lot better in a glass bottle. You know, the way that root beer was meant to be served.

As a final note I would like to point out that this would make a great float if you mixed it with some vanilla ice cream. Maybe that's just because I've consumed way more ice cream in the past two weeks than any human should.

Even though Welchs has a large array of juices on the market, my first thought when I hear their name is always “jelly.” I don't even eat jelly. I mean I have no moral objection to it, I just think that it's unnecessary. I generally eat my bread products dry, and if anything they get a little dab of peanut butter. There is no need to get fruit involved. Still, I hear Welchs and my mind goes to jelly.

This bottle only contains 10% juice. I wonder what percentage of their jelly is actually fruit? 10% is a joke in the juice world. If it's less than 40% juice I say it's not worth my time, and I have a hard time actually calling it juice and not “drink.” So to me this is not a juice, but at least the pittance of juice they used was actually partly mango and passionfruit. It was probably 1% each, with the other 8% going to that generic base, apple juice. So what we have is low levels of juice, which is only concentrate mixed with overly sweetened sugar water, yet somehow it ends up tasting great. I mean really, really good. You can very blatantly taste the mango, passion fruit and apple juice. It's the passion fruit that really shines through though. I had such low expectations for this, and I was pleasantly surprised. Well played Welchs.

Like most teenagers in the 90's who didn't drink I spent many a weekend night at parties downing soda. There was no better way to do that than drinking IBC 40s. Okay they really weren't 40oz, they were only 32, but they had the same look. Many of the drinkers out there thought that we drank them to be “cool” and try to fit in. In reality they simply tasted delicious, and more importantly they did trick the drunkards into thinking you were also drinking, which led to way less questions as to why you weren't drinking, which led to way less taunts, which led to way less altercations. There the secret is out. I drank IBC “40s” so I didn't have to deal with idiots who thought they should give me crap because I chose not to drink alcohol.

As I got older, I started going to fewer parties, and started buying less IBC. It's just as well, as it seems they no longer make the large bottles. The dream died. In fact this is the first time I've had IBC cream soda in 10-15 years. Even though I've become a bit of a soda snob in that time, I can honestly say that this is still pretty great. I don't know if it's just because of nostalgia, but I really loved this. To me this is what cream soda should be. It sweet, and has a nice vanilla flavor without tasting like extract. It's also on the lower end of syrupy for being sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Now I want to go out in the fields with a couple of bottles of this and sit around a small fire watching as kids try very unsuccessfully to hook up with each other. It's the American dream.

There has been a birth in the royal family. The child was created out of wedlock, so the family kept the pregnancy quiet. That was all good and well until the birth occurred and they knew there was no way the secret could be kept, for with gazing upon the can brought nothing but love to the royal family. The union of cola and cherry was complete and cherry cola was born. The family felt to shame so they proudly shared their love with the world (well at least the Midwestern states, as I haven't seen this anywhere else).

While this may not be the world's greatest cherry cola (it is a bit on the syrupy side), it is still better than most. It has a stronger cherry flavor than I had expected. It's more along he lines of cherry Pepsi than it is Coke, which makes it strange that I like it so much, as I have always been on the Coke side of the great cola wars. I would still choose this over its big cola competitors.

I doubt the day will come when the world hears, “The king is dead. Long live the king” as RC Cherry takes over the throne, but as a prince or a duke, it does a fine job.

I just found out that his flavor was introduced in the 80s. How I have never seen it until now is beyond me. I guess that is what I get for living in the northeast.

Lemonade is tough, man. Well, actually. Lemonade is simple. I guess mass amounts of lemonade is tough because not many people get it "right." Some get it close. Some do a fair job. Some bastardize the second easiest drink created next to sweet tea, which is equally hard to mess up and equally hard to find a decent one. I'm not saying this isn't decent but I'm not saying it's anything more. It's certainly tart so they got that right but there is a certain flavor in the back of my throat that is just not common with lemonade. It could be the corn syrup that's allowing it to linger and get worse as it stays there but I'm not really counting that against them too much. Look, it's fine. If you want lemonade in the wintertime, you've done it. If you want lemonade for around a dollar, you've got it. If you want something that you can share with friends while you're skating around an empty parking lot working on your ollies and kickflips, you've got it. If you want something that you want to double down your investment and get it back tenfold, you're far off. This is fine. This is safe. This will sell. This has to exist. See where I'm going with this? It's average and will sell millions of bottles because it's just like what else is out there. It's not breaking any barriers and making anyone think but it's not supposed to. It's right where it wants to be and it's doing a great job being there. That's not where I go, though.

For those of you who do not know, I have a love of melon. I don't know when it started. I don't know what brought it on, but over the past couple of years I've been drawn to anything melon related. I even got a honeydew Swiss cake roll from Chinatown in Toronto. It was mind blowingly good. I tend to stay away from Ramune drinks, as they tend to be far too sweet for my tastes, but how could I turn down a melon one?

We drank this as part of our second visit on the Buffalo Eats podcast. While I was stoked on it, I was afraid it would be too sweet, and I wouldn't want to finish it. I figured this was it would be shared, and perhaps we could capture the sound of the marble being popped in for some live magic. Do those marbles serve any real purpose other than fun? I mean they are fun, but it seems like it's a lot of extraneous bottle design for a little fun, that so many companies have embraced.

This definitely tastes like candied generic melon. I assume it's supposed to be honeydew, due to the green color (no pun intended). It was pointed out in the podcast that it tastes like a Jolly Rancher if they made a melon flavor. I can see where they thought that, but the flavor doesn't have the intensity that those candies do. Perhaps it tastes like a watered down, overly sugared version of that. Yeah…€¦let's stick with that.

Detroit, what?! Danny Brown, you are a lucky guy to be from a place that makes this. Yes, I'm talking to you, Danny Brown. I saw you when you played Buffalo and you turned me around. I like you, man. I watched your Nardwuar interview and you were totally likable. You get to get candy apple whenever you want now because of this drink. Sure, you're on the streets touring and you can't drink it every day but if you ever cross paths with ICP, I'm sure they've got some that you can borrow.

Danny, man to man, not all Faygo is bad and this is as artificial as they come. I'll admit it. This tastes like a melted candy apple. Although that might not exist, it's imaginable and not far from that. It's way too big for me and I've shared this with five other people and they all agree; this isn't too bad at all.

Danny, keep it up. Seriously, you do good work. Good collaborations and good solo stuff. I await your new record and XXX was good.

It's been some time since I've had an “everyday” root beer. That kind of hurts my head, since in the past I used to consume it by the bucket. Oh man, I wish there was a place that served root beer in buckets. You know, like those bars that serve drinks out of fish bowls or whatever weird receptacle they have. Anyway, when I've had a root beer in recent times it's been something more on the fancy side of the root.

With the first couple sips I thought to myself, “Self, I really miss this. It's simple, but it tastes great. It's a classic.” Then about halfway through the bottle I started to realize how thick the soda was, due to the HFCS sweetener. In fact I started to get in my head that the whole thing tastes like carbonated syrup. I still enjoyed it, but not with as much vigor as I had the first half. In my mind there is nothing wrong with Mug. Chances are that when you think of root beer it's more of this variety than a microbrewed one or anything fancy like that. It's a completely average root beer, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

People are still doing this, huh? This is every energy drink that I've ever had. It's the same taste, aftertaste, smell, can size, and so on. Why would you waste you money starting a company that makes a drink that tastes like twenty other company's drinks to a "T?" Seems like you could take that money and resources and, I don't know, put a fruit in it or something? Literally do anything to set it apart from the masses. There is nothing here that I can tell you that is any different than every popular energy drink out there. I've handed it to my energy drink guys here and they say that it's a sweeter, tarter, more candy version of Red Bull. There you have it. Who cares?

You're walking down a city street. Can't you see and feel it now? The trees, the buildings, the never ending smell of old urine from each and every alley. There you are minding your own business, sipping on a bottle of Pepsi and someone runs up behind you and pushes you into an alley. “Oh great” you think, “I'm about to fall into a ginormous puddle of hobo piss” when you just keep falling, until your feet lightly touch the ground. The city looks the same, but everything is slightly off, but off in a way that is kind of appealing. The trees are a little bit greener and fuller. The shapes of the buildings are just a little more interesting. The alleys now smell of cinnamon sticks, and not like the toilet of some dive bar at 4am. You look down and in your hand is no longer the familiar red, white and blue bottle. In its place now sits a black and green bottle that reads Push. You untwist the cap and take a sip. True to form with the rest of this alternate dimension the pop contained within tastes just a little bit better. It's nothing that you would stand on the street corner and rant about to every passer by, but it tastes better than the Pepsi you normally drink. It tastes crisp and dark, with a classic cola taste. It's better than Pepsi, but it doesn't taste exactly like Coke or store brand either. It's its own cola that has its own unique subtleties. It's much better than the label led you to believe. You take the last sip and toss the bottle in a recycling bin on the corner. When you look up you realize that you're a block from your work, and everything looks normal again. Strange times indeed.

I hate myself for spending money on this. I knew I hated it. I've known for as long as I can remember that Tahitian Treat is pure sugar swill. Thirsty Dudes must march on though, and we have yet to review this, so I suppose I should get to it.

Think of a fruit punch that lies somewhere in the middle ground between generic and Hawiian Punch. Take that overly sweetened garbage that is in no way shape or form juice and add some tiny bubbles to it. There you have what is in this bottle. If that sounds appealing to you, well…€¦good for you. To me, it sounds like an instant stomach ache and tooth decay.

I wrote that review before I even opened this up. After taking two sips I can say that it's pretty accurate, but I think that if I tried I could get this whole bottle down. I don't want to, nor am I going to, but if I chose to, I could. For that fact and that fact only I will give this two bottles, instead of one. You're welcome Tahitian Treat. While we're at it, I would like to wager that the indigenous people of Tahiti are disgusted that they are being associated with this. If I'm wrong, let me know where to send the money, and I will avoid Tahiti for the rest of my life.

On a closing note, I'd like to point out that Canadians love this stuff for some reason. The last time we went up to Soda Pop Central in Ontario they had us bring up more cases that I was comfortable purchasing. I don't want the cashiers in the stores around here thinking I have terrible taste. How could they ever take this site seriously?

Ha. I just went to the Soda Pop Central Website and on the front page it says, “Tahitian Treat is out of stock until further notice, sorry.” I know your body Canada.

If there is one thing I've learned in my 33 years on this planet it is that Brisk is the bastardization of tea. It doesn't even particularly taste like tea. It's more of flavored sugar water. One might think that with that being the way the world is perhaps Brisk would be able to make a decent sweet tea, since it also entails a butt load of sugar. One would be wrong, so very wrong. Not only does this not taste like any tea that you would brew (which sometimes is an okay thing, it's just a different flavor), but they also used high fructose corn syrup instead of real sugar. In my world, and the world's of a majority of the people in this country it's not sweet tea unless there is real sugar involved. It's the taste of the sugar that makes it a sweet tea. So they got the tea aspect wrong, and the sweetener. The only real thing this has going for it is that kids aren't very familiar with the taste of proper tea and they love super sweet drinks, so they will probably drink this by the gallon. Luckily for them this comes in a one liter bottle, which is supposed to contain 4 servings, but you know most of the slobs that would buy this would drink it all in a sitting.

Note to our readers: I drank less than a quarter of this. As a grown ass man I don't need this garbage in my life.