Author: kfan

Thums-Up Cola is marketed in India as a manly drink, (i.e. right up my alley) and they got off on the good foot with me before I even had one taste. Here’s what I liked about the bottle:

• Bottle cap was NOT a twist-off, so it required extreme manliness and/or bottle opener to pry off;
• The bottles themselves were all scratched up and chafed, like they fell off a cargo boat in the middle of the Atlantic and judo-chopped every fish they encountered on their long swim to my local grocer’s refrigerator.

As for the taste, well, even a hunk of man such as myself cannot resist the charms of a refreshing soda. I felt like Thums-Up is overall very similar to Coke, starting off with a very strong cola bite. But it has a finish that’s heavy on the caramel, which made me want to fell every tree in a forest, leaving it denuded and fearful of its life. And also in there were some slightly nutty and gingery notes, such as might put a manly gent in the mood for some impregnation. Wait that doesn’t sound right.

But would I even notice the differences from Coke in a blind taste test? Well of course. But would an ordinary human? Man I have no idea. Why even ask me that. Like I interact with ordinary humans.

I could see myself drinking this while I was on the run from the law, or maybe as a pause for refreshment during an all-night orgy of gross sexual perversion. Whatever it is us real men do to fill up the hours each day.

In conclusion I would just like to note that Thums-Up Cola gets minus one half star on account of high fructose corn syrup, and I will KEEP ON minusing half stars until the beverage industry gets the message! I am serious.

Finally.

Do you even want me to finish this review? As soon as you saw the words “with sac” you were running for your car, tongue a-waggle, wallet in hand. Admit it.

It’s not like you think though.

This is a Korean drink comprised basically of just orange juice with extra sugar. The “sac” refers to the orange pulp sacks with are heavily-laden herein. This is a drink that involves having a lot of little soft things floating around in your mouth, and you are trying to chase them down and chew them. It’s what we in the biz call a “novelty beverage.” Sadly the novelty wears off long before you’re done picking sac from your teeth.

Also it caused my tongue to have that electric acid buzz going for a good 30 minutes after I’d finish the drink. Frankly that’s a hassle I don’t need. I have enough trouble finding things to do with my tongue, like I need to be taken completely out of the game like that? Forget it.

So although I’m not a person who will usually turn down an offer of lots of sac, lots of pulp is a completely separate thing. Pass.

The Switch. Sounds delightfully naughty, doesn’t it? Finally, a carbonated juice for ponyboys and other assorted submissives. I jest, of course.
dot dot dot or do I?

I got black cherry because you said it’s your favorite and I wanted you to notice me for once. But really, black cherry? For me it’s one of those flavor concepts that has no bearing on its real-life counterpart, like “grape.”

Even so, I placed myself in The Switch’s strong, gnarled hands. It says “NO MYSTERY INGREDIENTS” on the label, which is the kind of no-nonsense marketing I can trust and get behind. Or get behind me, as the situation dictates. I opened my mouth and let The Switch in. AND I LIKED IT. I did not even have to use my safe word. (“Spaz.”)

Unlike tea, this drink isn’t afraid to be sweet, which is to say that it’s not completely boring as hell. But because it’s not soda, you get the sense that it’s somewhat more healthy. Or at least not as bad. There’s a section of their website that shows how it has less sugar but more actual juice than many of your garden variety sodas and juices. What’s not to like. Even if they’re lying, they’re at least telling me what I want to hear.

And even though it’s still not my favorite flavor, I found the black cherry had a delicious sting to it, not unlike the cat o’ nine tails.
This first, brief taste was but a tease and has made me curious for more. Fetch The Switch, you dirty little pig.

I feel like this drink was purposefully trying to make me crabby. Firstly the shit cost $3 a pop, which I guess is par for the course, given that the entire POM product line seems geared towards the kind of people who have very specific ideas about how much quilting they need on their toilet paper. EVEN SO, the tea is sold in an actual glass, and the language on the label invites you to keep and reuse this glass, like it’s some kind of awesome door prize or lovely parting gift, just totally sweetening the whole deal. But no offense I already own a glass so what am I paying for here exactly.

And then there’s the opening mechanism on the lid, which was very awkward, and when all was said and done I had $0.85 worth of lychee-infused tea all over my fingers and desk. And if you don’t know, I do not like for my fingers and work space to be sticky. I have Certain Rules about general cleanliness.

Yes OK but aside from all that how was it. Eh. Adequate I guess? Good lychee flavor. I don’t care for pomegranate juice, so whatever was happening here to surpress it was a good thing. But between the other flavors I didn’t get much of a sense of the green tea, except that it left the usual mossy coating on the inside of my mouth, like I had brushed my teeth with a koala. I forget the scientific term for that.

So if you are a person who feels like you are not paying enough money for your not terrible but also not particularly inspiring fruity tea then guess what have I got a product for you! Comes with a glass!

The Lebanese beverage industry is not a sector of the global economy you hear an awful lot about these days. Is it even legal for me to be drinking something imported from Beirut, is basically my main question. If not then I guess consider this my protest against the current administration and their war on freedom, or whatever it is they currently don’t want everyone to have.

Anyways: LEMON SODA FROM THE MIDDLE EAST, can you beat it? Turns out: no! Dang it is tasty. We are definitely in the Sprite/7Up ballpark here, but with the flavor zing of real lemons. Almost like a lemon orangina, if such a thing exists. A lemongina. (Your sister’s nickname in college, no offense.)

It actually hit me halfway through that this tastes very much like Smirnoff Triple Black Ice, and I had a mild freak-out. Holy moly please let me not be drinking an alcoholic beverage at 9 am, at work. The ingredients seem to check out, but who knows. I am not a man of science.

Either way, what a ride! I feel like I could drink this all summer long, or at least for as long as the current political detente between Lebanon and the U.S. remains at its current alert level, whatever that might be.

Thumbs up, Beirut! You’re doing something right.

I can’t front, they got a hot bottle. All glass, with the raised lettering? Retro fontification on the painted label? If a pretty dame saw you drinking this out on the street she you would mentally put you in the “classy” category, maybe give you some elevator eyes. The kind that go all the way up and then all the way back down, pausing briefly at the mezzanine. I am serious.

Boylan’s Sugar Cane Cola starts off OK. It’s not as completely wimpy as some small-brew colas I’ve had, but the carbonation is a bit light, and it doesn’t have that real strong cola bite, the tearing at your mouth-innards that makes cola fun. Still, it’s passable. But then however at the end of the first few sips there was a strong, chemical-y aftertaste, which I did not see the humor in. And it got me all worried, because Boylan’s SCC is as all-natural as it gets. So what if years of over-exposure to HFCS and various chemical preservatives has my brain conditioned to interpret things that are all-natural as actually gross? Now I am worried that this is going to happen to me. If it hasn’t already. Sort of a job-related hazard, I guess.

But the aftertaste went away after a few sips, and a thing that I learned about myself while drinking this is that I don’t really care if a beverage has a weird aftertaste at first, as long as it goes away, or I get used to it, or whatever. I mean it’s not exactly science, I’m just saying. By the end it was easy sailing.

Overall not mind-blowing, but not bad. I have a suspicion that the cola is of a certain mellowness that would go perfectly with a light rum, food for thought as you plan the next of your patented 6-day benders. I can’t figure out what that weird aftertaste was, so maybe it was a fluke? Something I ate beforehand? I don’t know.

Either way, Boylan’s has a wide variety of other products, so I figure they’re worth further consideration, and I will endeavor to dive deeper at some point. Not saying when. Later-ish.

So in my last review I tagged the product in question as both water and juice and although I am perfectly comfortable with the duality of existence, I feel like this has come up a few times recently so I want to discuss it with you, fella to fella.

Do you or anyone else know if there is a legal definition of juice, such as FDA-mandated or something? I’m Googling and Wikipedia-ing like crazy but to not much avail.

Personally, I feel like water + fruit flavor + sugar = juice. Well actually if you want to get serious, I think water + sugar = juice. And the sugar in question could be sucrose or fructose or any kind of artificial sweetener, whether its aspartame, sucralose or neotame. So that means Vitamin Water, Propel Fitness Water, Aquafina Flavor Splash, and anything else of that ilk all qualifies as juice, to me. I mean, they taste more like juice than water, don’t they? (Spoiler: yes.)

So at this point you’re no doubt completely rolling your eyes and yelling Who cares/Why does it even matter/I rue the day I ever let you post here. Well I guess it probably doesn’t matter, and I’ll drink whatever either way. But I don’t like stupid marketing ploys and as a general rule I like to actually know what I’m buying, and I’m sort of hopeful that there’s someone else wondering the same things. I mean just because the bottle says water in the title does not make it all filled with nature’s goodness. Am I right or am I right. What say ye.

When we relaunched K4T a friend of mine emailed to say I had to try Vitamin Water, it’s like her favorite OMG. So the other day at the supermarket I saw them and there’s like 90 flavors, so I just picked this one. Then I emailed her the next day and said I got the orange one, anything I need to know before I try it, aren’t you glad I took your suggestion, etc. And she said Ew gross that kind sucks, and actually most of them are pretty bad except for X and X. Hey thanks for the tip, friend!

McDonald’s-brand Orange Drink, circa 1982, but with a more retarded title. Like I give a shit that it has calcium in it; what am I, your mom?

Allow me a brief trip down sense-memory lane: I’m told that at one point when I was very young my dad worked loading trucks at the Pequot Soda company in Connecticut. The upshot was that we always had a lot of soda on hand, and I guess this was back before the idea of recycling caught fire, as there were always cases and cases of empty glass bottles in our garage. My brother and I used to go down there and check the bottles to see if any still had some soda remnants in them that we could scavenge. Ah, misspent high-class youth. But the thing I remember about those bottles is that they all had this really excellent (to young me) scent of flat, lost-its-carbonation cola. Anyways this smells exactly like that, is why I mention it. FYI and FWIW.

My first sip of Natural Brew Ginseng Cola started with a nice cola bark, and ended with what felt like a quick lick of the drawer where we keep the spices. That’s the ginseng finish, and it caught me off guard at first.

So I guess here’s the question: do you want a cola that just lays back and thinks of England, or do you want a cola whose hips rise to meet yours?

You know me, I like to get down, so I tore the t-shirt from my well-oiled abs and shouted Hunker down, Harriet! Josh I don’t know if you’ve ever been with a woman, but the general concensus is that extra care and attention on the object of one’s desire will cause your own pleasure to greatly increase. That was pretty much my experience here exactly: I dug in and quickly started enjoying myself. The ginseng is actually not a bad kick, and it makes the beverage stand out from the crowd, like so many SSC’s. The ginseng crashes nicely against the very strong vanilla notes, and is there ever a cola that has enough vanilla in it? I’m asking.

I think one of the major things we like about Coke is that it drags its fingernails across the insides of your mouth, so I say kudos to this company, for coming up with a different–yet similarly interesting–experience.

I for one am definitely down for another round. I just need, like 5 minutes. OK an hour.

My World Tour of Sodas Of That Are More Popular Than Coke In Certain Countries makes its second (and final) stop today, with Scotland’s IRN-BRU. I was looking forward to this because it’s got a punchy, bad-ass name, and the can declaims “ORIGINAL AND BEST,” which is the sort of no-nonsense, declarative hyperbolization I respond best to.

The smell immediately reminded me of Inca Kola, so maybe I’m completely losing it, or maybe there’s actual science at play here, I don’t know. But anyways don’t worry because the taste is nothing like Inca. Unfortunately the taste is somewhat flummoxing, and thanks to the limits of the English language, you’re not going to like how I describe it. It’s basically a plain, sugary flavor, with like a light, cumulative orange melody playing somewhere in the background. Imagine if you will a watered-down orange soda, without the water-y taste. Or a lightly-carbonated version of the orange drink you got a soccer games in elementary school. You never scored one goal, did you. I’m sorry.

In summation, Irn-Bru is original and curiously engaging without actually being good, and I’m hard-pressed to figure out why the good people of Scotland prefer it to Coke. [Gonzalo, please insert a joke about haggis here.]

I’m sure we can now look forward to a flurry of outraged comments from the kind of blindly-devoted groupthinker this sort of “kooky” off-brand drink is likely to engender. Welcome Juggalos, and readers of McSweeney’s.