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.

Review: Fentimans Curiosity Cola

If you want to read a shorter review of this soda, you can check out the Quick Review of it here.

Before Drinking

Background: This is one that I am quite excited about, I have heard good things about it online and I have had it sitting in my collection for about a year now! Perhaps it will have a nice aged flavor to it. I got it at World Market for $1.79. I highly recommend stopping by World Market if you want some nice bottled sodas. 5 or 6 of the sodas in my collection are from there.

The bubbling is more apparent live

Very unique neck shaping!

Most unique bottling I have seen, bar none. The neck has a really interesting shape to it and the bottom is flat with a slight bubble going around it. Very interesting, I don't see it as really conveying any particular image. With a Boylan's bottle it is obvious that they are trying to have a strong, bold feel to their soda. Fentimans seems to go for the "Curiosity" part of their name, just making their bottle a little bit strange. It doesn't feel heavy or slender or average, it's just different. Very unique and really drives the branding.

Captures the early 1900s well

The logo is nice, the illustration of the dog has a very old-timey feel to it. I adore the font, totally feels like the old sodas of the past. The font makes it seem like the sort of soda that you would pick up from the apothecary for a nickel. It also boasts about being "Botanically Brewed" which is probably more a marketing term than anything else. All that seems to mean is that they include ginger and herbs in the soda. I am quite looking forward to that, very strange combination of cola, herbs and ginger that I haven't seen before. The cap is also completely blank of any ink. I sort of like that, a nice simple look though it isn't anything terribly special.

It is also a bit darker of a cola than most. Even a bright light only shines through the neck of the bottle, the body is all pure dark.

Very dark coloring

Amount of sugar and calories are perfectly average. The ingredients are definitely odd though, the first ingredient is water followed by carbonated water. Every other soda I have ever had was carbonated water only as the top ingredient. This means that it will probably not be as bubbly as most sodas I am used to. It also lists ginger and caffeine as ingredients. I am really interested to see what ginger in cola tastes like, never had that before. I am also very glad that they included caffeine on their list of ingredients. Very often a soda will have caffeine in it but not list it anywhere on the can. When I was a kid this annoyed me greatly because I wasn't allowed to have soda with caffeine in it. It is also made with real sugar, but that is completely unsurprising. Basically par for the course with sodas I am interested in.

During Drinking

Twist top which I am glad for, makes a nice "pop!" when I take the cap off. The ginger is really quite apparent and lends an extremely unique flavor. The bottle is also not as filled as most are so it takes longer than expected to get the first taste. The lip is wider than usual as well which gives a very different feel to is. The glass is also quite thin right at the lip, which I enjoy. It matches the character of the soda.

Water, Carbonated Water. How curious!

Very good level of carbonation, exactly on par with what it should be. I would say it is a little bit heavier on the carbonation than a Coca Cola but a bit lighter than a Henry Weinhard Root Beer.

As far as flavor goes I would describe it as nothing more than the best cola flavor you've ever had, with ginger mixed in to it. When I had my first taste the ginger was quite powerful, the most noticeable part of the soda but now that I am about a quarter done it is much more mild and nothing more than a wonderful hint layered on top of an amazing cola flavor.

I am having trouble picking out the other herbs used. I suspect there is a bit of vanilla extract, because the soda is quite smooth.

Getting lots of good burps out of it too. The carbonation isn't too much that it feels uncomfortable in the stomach but there is enough of it that it leads to good quality burps.

Tongue goes a bit numb from the ginger, a little bit of a weird feeling but totally to be expected.

After Drinking

This soda is just flat out really good. I initially thought that it would be a novelty but it is just simply a new flavor that hasn't been done before but which is really quite amazing. The ginger doesn't take anything away from the Cola flavor, it merely adds on a new layer of complexity that is very yummy. I think this is one of the few sodas I have had where I want to get a 6-pack of it. This is the sort of soda that if you served it at a party you would want to point out the uniqueness of it to guests and everyone would appreciate it. Everyone loves Cola, everyone has had a Coca Cola and this would be a cool way to introduce them to something new, unique and utterly delicious.


I'm not sure I would like having this with a meal though. It is a complex enough flavor on its own that I think it would distract from a meal rather than add to it. Unless you considered it as being a side-dish to the meal instead of just a liquid to wash the meal down with.


Overall, I highly recommend it to anyone who likes soda at all. It is a new twist on a classic flavor that is completely unique to anything I have had before and it tastes amazing.