Quick Review: Japanese Green Apple Marble Pop

If you would like to read a more thorough review, please go here.
If you don't know what Marble Pop means, please check out this video.

I'm not sure the name of this soda because it is in Japanese. I got in an Asian food market in Boston, so you could look there I suppose. This soda is absolutely fantastic. The marble gimmick is super fun to play with and as a standalone soda it is absolutely wonderful. The flavor is very subtle and mostly defined by the citric acid. It's also healthy to boot! It has only 10 grams of sugar, 4 milligrams of sodium and 60 calories. I personally think it would go amazingly with a lunch, especially one featuring fruits.
If you happen upon this soda buy it on sight, it is really great although it will be pretty difficult to find.

Review: Japanese Green Apple Marble Pop

If you would like to see a shorter review, please go here.
To see what it looks like to use this "marble pop" gimmick check out this video.

Before Drinking

Background: During this past school year I went on a trip to the Boston Aquarium. It was purely for fun and after we finished up at the Aquarium we were allowed to wander the city as we pleased. My friends and I decided to just walk around and go down any street that looked interesting. We looked down a long street and saw a giant Asian gate. It looked cool so we went in and found ourselves suddenly plunged in to China Town. We went in to an Asian food market and I found all sorts of neat sodas. I got this one for $1.39 and I have no idea where you could find it or what its name is. So let's continue our streak of extremely legit foreign sodas!

Neat ribs

Bottling: The bottling is of course really cool. The whole marble pop gimmick is really fun and makes for a nice piece to put on a shelf after you are done. The interesting bits of this bottling is that for one it has some cool ribbing in the skinny part of the bottle. Very different from the other variations I have seen. The other awesome part is that absolutely everything is written in Japanese! It makes this a really unique find, I would definitely have trouble getting this anywhere but an Asian food market. Even the nutrition facts had to have an English sticker put over it to meet FDA requirements.

This makes it kind of hard for me to judge the font and logo. It's just really super Japanesey. It obviously has Japanese written all over it but it also has cute Anime-esque green apples will adorable little faces. One part of the writing that I quite like is the cool symbol put at the lip of the bottle.

Cool symbol in question

Nutrition facts are pretty interesting, only 10 grams of sugar! Most sodas are in the 35-40 range so this is going to not be very sweet at all. Additionally it has only 4mg of sodium and 60 calories. It's really quite healthy for you! I'm guessing almost all of the flavor will be coming from the citric acid. The other ingredients are pretty odd as well. It uses sugar and glucose to sweeten it, I don't think I've ever encountered glucose before in a soda so this should be pretty interesting.

During drinking

Soda everywhere

Got on my beloved keyboard

I popped the marble in and immediately tragedy struck. The soda really just exploded everywhere, it got all over my keyboard and basically made my entire desk a sticky mess. I had to pour water all over my $115 mechanical keyboard to save it from being a sticky mess and now it needs a day or so to dry out. So I'm typing this from a crappy Dell keyboard, with my keyboard wrapped in a towel behind me. Be strong, buddy!

The only difference I did this time was use the fleshy part of my thumb to push the marble in. I think this made it hit with greater force than the it created a seal on the top. This created a ton of pressure to build up in an extremely short amount of time, causing the explosion. I highly recommend you use the end of your thumb when pushing the marble in and do it over something you don't care about, like a sink or a counter top.

But the review must go on! I won't be judging the carbonation too harshly because the soda has been sitting out for a while now.

Nutrition facts laid over Japanese writing

Oh how utterly delightful! Wow, this is an absolutely amazingly subtle yet present flavor. It really does taste like green apple but it is not over powering at all. This is honestly one of the best flavors I have had in a very long time. It is so perfectly fruity without being over the top. The problem that most fruit sodas run in to is they start tasting like liquefied lollipops. This has very little sugar so the sweetness is not over powering and it really lets the appley flavor come through. It really does taste genuinely like taking a bite right in to a green apple.

Carbonation is not bad at all, the faster you chug the more carbonation you get because of the way the marble creates carbonation. The spout is a bit awkward to drink from, it's just really small so it feels strange to not fully wrap my lips around it. I also don't like the fact that the lip is made of plastic. I can understand why it has to be that way though. The carbonation is definitely much stronger than on the Americanized version that I had last time. This is definitely a good thing.

The amazing subtlety and simplicity of this flavor is awesome. It reminds me a lot of Cas Cal in that it is a nice, calm flavor that would go great with a fruit salad or really a lunch of any kind. I think the way that the sweetened it and the fact that it is high on Citric acid is what really made it so amazingly subtle.

The marble, fizzing away

One big downside is that there is not much liquid in here. I have taken maybe 4 or 5 sips and it's basically all gone already. I would love to see some bigger bottles of this, though that is most likely just due to me being an American and being used to the hugely gigantic cans we get over here. Ohhh the weird indentations on one side of the bottle make sense now. When you are low on soda tipping the bottle up can make the marble fall in to the cap, causing the cap to get blocked and stopping the flow of soda in to your mouth. The indentations hold the marble in place and stop this. Very clever!

After drinking

Almost no sugar and very little calories!

Overall, this is just a really nice tasting soda. The flavor is very well done and it is not overpowering at all. If you somehow happen to get a chance to try this out you definitely should. It tastes great and it's not bad for you. I would recommend this as a gimmick to hand around at a party, or to be had with an afternoon meal or even just to be hand on its own. It's just simply an awesome soda, I highly recommend it.

Soda Review: Sidral Mundet Apple Soda

Well this is my first review so it might be a bit spongy. Bear with me, criticisms welcome.

Background

Sidral Mundet is an imported soda from Mexico. It is available quite widely in states. I purchased my 2 bottles locally, I believe from a "World Market" store for 89 cents a bottle. Obtaining it online is also not too difficult, you could try here. It has a pretty big following online because of its somewhat exotic nature. Definitely a large draw to hipsters. I definitely went into this one with a fair bit of skepticism.

Review

Well my first thought was "how the hell and I supposed to get the top of". At first I was twisting and twisting, I actually ended up hurting my hand a little bit but then it turned out it was a pop off. Damning all old fashioned purists, I proceeded to go upstairs and scour for a bottle opener. I actually didn't find one oddly enough, seems like it should be something in every kitchen. I found out my can opener had a handy little thing that let me open it up. It made a nice little pop and I brought it back downstairs.

I gave it a whiff and it had a definite appley smell but it was very subtle. I started to like it right there, I go like a subtle soda. The coloring is quite attractive as well, looks like a deep apple juice but not quite as dark as a cider. Of course, natural sugar in this one. High Fructose Corn Syrup is not something you'll usually find in a glass bottle of soda. Speaking of bottling, this is one of the most attractive bottles I've ever seen. It's just a simple glass bottle with no real paint on it and a label. Simple, classic and wonderful.

I decided to drink it chilled straight from the bottle, no ice. The first taste was an overwhelming "meh". I tasted the apples and I liked it, don't get me wrong but it was like the whole taste was an aftertaste. I actually found myself not taking sips and thinking I was basically just downing it because once the liquid is off the tongue, the flavor almost disappears. It is also absolutely nothing like sparkling apple juice. It is much less powerful than any apple juice I've had or any sparkling apple juice. I would recommend it for a drink with dinner, not as a soda that you have on its own as a treat.

The carbonation was really really good, not overwhelming not underpowering. Fine bubbles that tickle the mouth and you feel them but they aren't overbearing. This is definitely the one very strong suit of this soda. This let you take multiple sips or take huge mouthfuls without encountering major issues. Taking multiple sips like that where I guess it's more on the side of "chugging" is way, way more satisfying than sipping. Definitely the way I recommend to drink this soda.

There is a slight lip to the top of the bottle that makes it hug nicely to the contours of my lips. This makes the soda wash nicely over my tongue. Really not a huge deal but it's the small things that make you realize when you're having a soda with some thought put into it.

The reason that this doesn't hit as hard could be due to the "natural sugar" versus the Corn Syrup. It really doesn't punch you in the face at all, it just sort of lightly taps you with a nice, sincere apple flavor. I sometimes really like the natural sugar but for this particular soda, I would have liked more sweetness.

Overall it's a pretty decent soda but it's just so, so middle of the road. It's not too flavorful, not too carbonated not too sweet not too anything. It's just sorta there as a side thought. For this reason I don't recommend it as a treat, I would recommend it with a meal to be used to wash down something else. I think it would go very well with any fruit dish or perhaps even with some meat.