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.

Quick Review: Waialua Pineapple Soda

If you want a more thorough review please go here.

Waialua Pineapple Soda is a soda with great intentions that built up to be pretty good but fell flat in a lot of respects. First off, before you even open the bottle you can see that the bottle itself is completely generic. The labeling is equally bland, the fonts are pretty uninteresting and the logo is just generically Hawaiian. The soda itself is pretty boring too. The flavor isn't that strong but the carbonation is good. It includes Maui White Cane Sugar in its ingredients which is cool but the flavor is just not nearly strong enough. The company is actually based in Hawaii as well which is sorta cool. These minor coolnesses just don't make up for a low quality soda though. Don't go out of your way for this one.

Review: Waialua Pineapple Soda

For a summary of this review please go here.

Before Drinking

Background:
I got this soda from World Market for $1.49. It is also available online. I am quite excited for this soda because I have never had Pineapple soda before and it sounds really yummy. I have had plenty of pineapple before though, in fact once I had so much pineapple in a week that the acid made my mouth raw. Very uncomfortable, partly because of the pain of eating any salty but mostly because then I couldn't eat anymore pineapple for a month!

Generic, especially the fonts

Bottling: The bottle shape is quite standard, I think that they probably just buy something generic. There is a little bit less of a transition from the body to the neck than I am used to, but it isn't bad. Just really boring and kind of bleh, doesn't show at all what the soda will be like. The labeling is okay, font wasn't chosen very carefully and although it isn't ugly it isn't anything special. It doesn't feel like terrible professional labeling, the fonts are pretty normal and outlined for no particular reason. No clue why they put the logo in red besides it matching with the blue background. It's neat that they did the blue for the sky and the yellow circle for the sun. The logo is pretty cool, gives the Hawaiian feel for sure. I am also quite fond of the cap, it is simple and to the point.

Despite the pretty lame branding I am excited because this soda is so legit. When things have generic themes like "Hawaiian" it is often a concern that they are just doing it for marketing purposes. A lot of tourist traps do cheesy stuff like this. This soda is not messing around at all though. Not only is the company actually in Waialua Hawaii but the ingredients are even Hawaiian. The sugar used is a mix of generic cane sugar and Maui White Cane Sugar. That's awesome and it's probably going to lend a very unique flavor.

Ingredients are normal besides that. I wish that I saw some pineapple juice in the ingredients though. The nutrition facts are similarly normal. No sodium is a bit out of the ordinary and there is maybe 6 or 7 less grams of sugar than is usual, so nothing terribly exciting.

During Drinking

Popping the top made a nice sound and my nose is immediately filled with the flavor of pineapple. I can tell already this is going to taste amazing. There is no visible carbonation when I opened it which is a bit discouraging. First taste and the flavor isn't over whelming. Really a fairly subtle pineapple taste. Carbonation is a little bit stronger than most fruity sodas, but that's the way I like it. The lip of the bottle is fairly thin, which I really like the feel of. I feel like the flavor is just sort of underwhelming. Just last night I had a pineapple freeze pop (I'm a kid at heart) and it had a much stronger flavor. I think that probably the cane sugar is what is not doing this soda justice. Yes, I know that it is heresy but I think that pineapples as sticky and sweet. Sodas with high fructose corn syrup just simply have a lasting effect in your mouth, a sort of sticky sweetness that cane sugar does not offer. Cane sugar is a very clean flavor that gets washed down easily and that isn't something I associated with pineapples. I appreciate that they used the Maui Cane Sugar but I will always choose quality over pride.

After Drinking

I think that ultimately this soda falls flat in a lot of areas. It has a boring bottle, boring flavor, generic logo and dull fonts. I am still enjoying it because it is sugary and sweet, but I feel this soda could be so much more than it is. Pineapple is a flavor that could be so wonderful but they don't seem to let be as strong as it should be. The only thing I am thoroughly pleased with is the level of carbonation, that is really spot on. I feel this might just be an unfortunate tourist trap. Just marketing "Hawaiian soda!" without caring too much about the quality of their product.

Overall, I would say that if you happen across it you might as well give it a shot just so you can say you've had pineapple soda. I wouldn't recommend that you go out of your way for it though. Not a party soda, not a meal soda, not a gourmet soda. This doesn't really fill a niche other than people going "Ooo pineapple soda, I think I'll have to try that!"

I hate doing negative reviews. You can notice that the during section is always really short when I don't have things to gush over.

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.

Review: Blenheim Ginger Ale

Sorry for my absence, school takes precedence over this. I'm out of school now though so it's time for a lovely summer of soda! I'm excited to do plenty of reviews in these coming 2 months.

Before Drinking

Background: This soda is quite dear to my heart. Over this previous Winter Break I picked up a seasonal job at a mail order company. The company was really super awesome and when I went in to pick up my last pay check, there was a $25 gift card to a local restaurant. I didn't get to use the coupon because I had to go back to school, but when my parents used it they picked up this soda for me. I've never heard of Blenheim so this is quite exciting for me to get a really nice soda for free out of the blue! This is also the only Ginger Ale I have ever had besides Vernor's. I'm looking forward to seeing what a true Ginger Ale is like and seeing if it has that same nose-burning quality that Vernor's has.

Red bottle cap, this means business

I did some research on Bleinheim and they pride themselves on being old fashioned. The bottling company was founded in 1903, so this seems totally legitimate. They also say they bottle in 3 "flavors", they indicate these flavors only by the color of the cap which is pretty cool. Red means strong, Gold means mild and White means diet. I got Red, which I quite like as it will be a true Ginger Ale!


Bottling is really quite standard. It sort of reminds me of a Boylan's but not as thick and strong. It has a somewhat slender feeling overall which is pretty appropriate for a Ginger Ale. I suppose I have trouble placing exactly what a Ginger Ale bottle should look like. For a Root Beer it makes total sense to be all dense and heavy, for Cas Cal it made perfect sense to be all whispy and elegant. Ginger Ale doesn't have a specific "feel" to it though, so I suppose that is why they went for generic.

No refills!

Very nifty logo

The logo is super cool but also quite confusing. It has the same patriotic bird that appears on the seal of the United States. It has the arrows in one talon and ivy in the other. Instead of having E. Pluribus Unum though it has "Original Ginger Ale". Very odd, but I like it just for the design, ignoring all the other connotations. I quite like the font, it is clearly indicating that the soda is pretty old and venerable which makes sense from their other marketing. The "G" of Ginger Ale is pretty hard to read so that should probably be changed, but besides that the typography is nice. I really like how "from pure water" is hollow lettering, it really lends a pure feeling to the text. It also says "No Refills" which I find pretty cute, like a little throw back to the days of old when you could go to the pharmacy and get one bottle refilled.

Nutrition Facts

Ingredients

Ingredients are totally what one would expect. Not too many of them, but probably all the interesting bits are hidden in whatever "Natural Flavorings" is. Nutrition facts are also as expected. 170 calories, 41 grams of sugar. Maybe a little bit sugar heavy, but not ridiculous by any means.

Sediment! True brewed!

Lastly, we have sediment! Yes, the one true mark of a genuine soda that is legitimately not just syrup+carbonated water. This is almost certainly a byproduct of their old fashioned creation process. The only other time I have had this was the Cas Cal and that did not disappoint.

During Drinking

Pop top! I've said it in the past but I think these are pretty unneeded. They don't keep a better seal and they are just inconvenient since you need a tool to get the top off. Nice little psssssst as it came off, not much of a pop.

First sip and I liked it at first but after a bit it becomes so strong! I still have a burn in my mouth. This stuff is not messing around at all. I really can't emphasize enough that this is overpowering. Hopefully by the bottom I'll be more used to it and more able to judge the flavor. Took a much smaller sip and it was a lot better. Unless you are a ginger fanatic and love the punch to the face you should take this slowly. Tons of carbonation makes me feel it in my nose. It seems Ginger Ales really like to have a lot of carbonation. Just had a really super long and drawn out burp, that was awesome.

Okay I am quite a bit more used to it, that initial "punch you straight in the mouth and throat" feeling is mostly gone. I am really conflicted on this soda. I must admit that I flat out don't like it but that is not at all because it is a bad soda or because it is poorly made, it is entirely my own preferences. I just simply don't like ginger enough to want to drink what is basically liquefied ginger.

The soda leaves a persisting burn in your throat. It's not terrible, just kind of uncomfortable.
Okay now that it has thoroughly burned my taste buds off it is pretty sweet. I'm about 1/3 of the way through and it now is tasting much more like just a soda with a ginger flavor. Now the only part I don't like are the burps, they burn pretty badly.

Just gave a sip of it to my sister after warning her it was strong, she made a funny face and then put it quite well "That was weird and really strong but I think I might want more. It's sort of like eating spicy food, when you have it you're like 'waaah' but then you kind of want to keep going." I really do think that puts it perfectly, it's super overpowering at first but as you get used to it you can actually get the flavor and it's really nice. I just don't like ginger that much and she does so she was more interested in drinking more than me.
Usually with every tasting of a soda I always do a chug of it where I'll take 2-3 gulps in a row, but with this I think I will pass. It would just burn too much.

As I go through the remainder it is more of the same. The flavor is just a very strong ginger flavor with a lot of initial sweetness. When you first introduce it in to your mouth it is always sweet then the ginger punches you immediately after that.

After Drinking

This is bar-none the most interesting soda I have ever had. It has me more conflicted than anything. First off, this is not a party soda at all, this is a soda that you would get as a single and drink as a novelty, sharing it with others so they can see how weird it is. I would never get a 6 pack of these and then drink it with a meal.
This is quite simply a soda made for the curious and made for the ginger lovers of the world. If you have had ginger ale in the past and really loved it, this would be super awesome to try out and it would give you a whole new perspective. If you just want a weird soda to show off and maybe share around with people, this is awesome for that as well. This really, really does not fit in with the categories of any soda I have ever had before. I am really glad I got to try this, as it truly is a new discovery for me and that is a cool thing to have.

Overall, buy a single, try it out, share it with others just for the experience. This isn't a soda to drink, this is a soda to experience.

I also gave it to my parents, my dad who usually does really well with strong flavors took a sip, made a face and started fanning his tongue. My mom had a similar reaction to my sister, didn't say much then flatly said "It's hot, but I like it. You could add club soda!" Definitely a great novelty for sharing!

DizzyFrinks.com - Social Soda Reviewing Site

What if you could join a worldwide community of soda lovers like you? What if by joining that community you could help to document sodas, helping history by saving these sodas forever, helping others to decide what they want to try(or not!) by giving your opinions on the sodas you drink and love. What if you could even  trade sodas with anyone in the world to give the gift of your favorite soda and receive an exotic new sodas? What if all of this was totally free to do on a not for profit website? Then Dizzy Frinks is there for you.

A website where you can review sodas already on the site, submit sodas that aren't there already or just browse and get new ideas for what to try out. I know that I am personally having fun going through the "most popular" sodas and seeing which ones I have tried and getting ideas for how to get every other one that I haven't. I'm definitely going to be participating in the soda trading as well soon enough. I imagine there are some really cool sodas over in other continents that I would otherwise not have a chance at getting.

I definitely highly recommend this site if you are any sort of soda fan! Hope to see all of your reviews showing up there soon!

The link is http://dizzyfrinks.com/ for those that didn't catch it in that intro paragraph.

Review: Jone's Soda Root Beer

Before

Background: I bought this from the Starbuck's at my school for $1.39. Jone's Soda is not hard to come by at all, this is probably the most mainstream soda I have reviewed with the possible exception of the Izze I did a few weeks back. I have Jones before and I have a good opinion of it. Even back in middle school when I had this my friends advertised that it had real sugar and said that it really tasted better because of that. At least back when I had it then I liked it quite a bit.

I despise this marketing. They are selling this stuff as hipster juice. I mean really, check out the text that they use as their marketing blurb.

Hipster Rhetoric! Yay!

Text from the bottle:

"Independent since '96

If you're like us, you think for yourself. Come on...do they really believe we'll fall for flashy ad campaigns that cost more than a solid fold private jet? Don't expect to find any of that here - we let what we do speak for itself. At Jones we';re just regular people who make good soda. While we can't promise you more popularity or better hair, if we like your photo, we'll put it on a bottle. Jones Soda, independent since 1996. Your photo. Your soda. Your brand."

"If you're like us, you think for yourself." I just really hate that line and how they are implying that they are somehow not a corporation. The fact of the matter is that the Jones Soda Company had $17.625 million in revenue in 2010. That is serious money. Perhaps they are not making solid gold jets but to try to look down on other soda companies for having money is just plain stupid. Compared to something like Boylan's which only makes about $5 million in revenue they are massive.

Inverted Cane Sugar - sorry for picture quality

Okay, so complaining aside there is a whole ton that is right about this bottling. The font of the logo is fantastic. Bold and readable, sticks out and is not annoying to read at all. The photos on the bottle are indeed made by fans.  That's pretty cool, you can even see the name of the person who submitted the photo and where they are from. The main qualm I have with doing that though is that it lends itself to just completely random and off topic things as the main focus of the label. This bottle in particular has two people holding hands. What this has to do with root beer is beyond me. It is a nice picture but it just feels very out of context to me.

I really like this bottle because of an extreme subtlety that really makes the bottle unique and good. The neck is actually very very slightly bulged. This makes it so that your fingers wrap around the area right above the main body of the bottle perfectly. It's like there is a very subtle lip there that holds the bottle ever so slightly on your finger. They did something very similar with the strong curve which transitions from the body of the bottle to the neck. It bulges out slightly from the body so that when you hold the bottle from the body. I actually checked my other bottles and I noticed that this bulge is present in every bottle. I suspect it is an artifact from the bottle making process. I will definitely look in to this more and do an article on it soon. I'm really interested in why that bulge occurs.

Overall, the bottling is a bit boring. I like that the coloring of the label is custom to each flavor so that it matches the color of the liquid inside. Just a good little touch.

During

Open opening there are the perfect amount of bubbles. Just like 3 layers find their way up to the neck as the great little "pssh" sound escapes in to the air. I absolutely love that the cap is resealable. The cap also off perfectly easily. I usually don't notice this too much but this is definitely a beautifully done cap. There is a message under every cap. Mine was "turn off your cell phone." That's actually a really really cool thing to put. First off, we are way too connected to our phones lately and second off it really just says "sit down for a moment and enjoy this soda, forget about anything else like your emails or your texts." I'll follow the direction! Bottle holds fantastically, it has a perfect weighting distribution to have presence in your hand but not be too awkward. Sometimes a bottle will be too awkward and it will feel too heavy in the hand or be too slender and you can barely feel anything because the weight is so distributed.
First sip, it has a nice somewhat mild root beer flavor. The after taste is almost stronger than when it goes down. I notice this for a lot of root beers and sodas in general. I could be that once it gets aerated it hits the nose and the taste is stronger then. I really love the carbonation levels. It has a full body when its in your mouth, giving nice good burps that aren't total belches. If I chugged they would be though! Flavor is a bit mild but I burnt my tongue pretty recently so that might be it. That actually has me very worried. I think I might not be giving the flavor of this soda justice because of my tongue. Darn. Chugging really fills the belly quickly but then the burps didn't come, wuh oh. Not recommended. This just leaves me feeling bloated and the flavor isn't much stronger when I chug. Some sodas are really powerful when chugged but this one not so much. Now I'm slowly burping it up so it's not as bad but still, sip this one down.
It doesn't have HFCS which makes it naturally quite a bit thinner than something which does have the syrup. The cane sugar doesn't have the body that syrup does. To make up for this lack of body they put in more carbonation which I think is really brilliant. I often find that the sodas that lack HFCS also lack body in general. This doesn't have the "hit you in the face" total full body that a Boylan's has but it is still pretty good.
The only failing of this I think is the somewhat weak flavor. Carbonation really pulls this together and makes it a good soda, but without that carbonation it would be pretty weak because the flavor isn't great. I've just had root beers that are so much stronger than this, and they didn't have to go for the HFCS either.
Overall, I think that the marketing is terrible, the flavor is not as strong or as complex as it could be but the brilliant carbonation and overal goodness of everything else ties it together and makes it a good soda.

Same soda, different environment!

After

The cap goes on nice and tight which is fantastic for my collection purposes. I've been keeping the empties of every bottled soda I drink as of late. Most of the caps for these sodas go back on but loosely at best. I like having the cap because then I keep the logo that they use for the cap, which tend to be a nicely made and simple logo. Overall, I would recommend this not as a party soda, this is a soda either to be drank on its own or to wash down a good American meal. Burger, fries, and a Jone's Root Beer sounds like a damned good time. Bottling leaves a bit to be desired but it has the best carbonation and cap of any soda I have encountered.

Izze Sparkling Clementine Review

Excuse the photo quality, I had to use my phone

Background:
Izze is a soda that I have been drinking for years, most notably their Pomegranate soda. I remember early on that was one of my first "weird" sodas that I tried out. This particular soda was bought by me from the Starbucks at my college. I got to use my monopoly money to buy it too so it was basically free!

Pre-Drinking

Bottling is utterly boring. There is a minor bulging from where it transitions from being a perfect cylinder for labeling and the neck. Neck is fairly broad and very straight. Very sharp turn on the neck implies that it is trying to be a straightforward soda. Not a thin tall neck for something fancy and not a broad neck for something bold like a strong root beer. Just in between. It appeals to mass market well (this is Izze after all) but I don’t like it too much to be honest.

Labeling is of course amazing. Their logo is simply, colorful and invokes the idea of fruitiness well. They have a whole marketing term and graphic artists and stuff to figure this all out so I’m not surprised at all. The coloring is absolutely perfect too. This is awesome but I am not surprised again, this is a well-funded soda, not some tiny indie thing. The red and orange perfectly complements the coloring of the soda itself and the white border gives a nice clean look to the overall logo. For a fruit soda this is great, very clean, very colorful, invokes the idea of the soda perfectly.

Simply and cute logo

Apple and White grape juice come out above Clementine on the ingredients. This is actually a really geat idea and something I have seen before. Apple juice is so mild and cheap that it adds a nice little sweet flavor while being filler. White grape juice is similar, it is a nice and simple flavor that won’t get in the way of the clementine and should accentuate it in all reality. Sparkling water is fourth on the list, which is really cool; this is going to taste much more like a sparkling fruit juice than a fruity flavored soda. That was also the point of the apple and grape juices make it a juice instead of just a sugary soda. Really a great recipe, this strays far away from something like a Faygo grape soda, which I love.

Again, sorry if you can't read it

Their little marketing blurb backs up all what I wrote. “We stay true to the fruit. Izze is all natural. No refined sugars. No caffeine. No preservatives. It’s 70% pure fruit juice. With a splash of sparkling water.”

After seeing the ingredients I believe it too, very cool to see this in the world of HFCS taking over.

Strong marketing because this is from
a major company

Sugar count is really low as one would expect, only 27g. It is common to see upwards of 40g in something like a faygo soda of comparable size. Calories are on par with what I expect at 120. Somewhat low, but because the sugar is so low it makes sense. This is certainly going to be a much more healthy alternative to a standard sort of ultra sugary soda.

Drinking:

Twist off of course, I like that they label it so I know. With things like the Jarrito’s I had I expect a twist off and was wrong which was sort of frustrating but also I enjoyed it. I do prefer twist off to pop off. Nice simply pop and the scent is wafting, very very strong smell on this I love it. Not much carbonation on opening, as expected. This is a juice, not as much a soda.

That flavor is fantastic and reminds me thoroughly of the Cas Cal. It is much more citrusy than the Cas Cal but that sort of mixture of fruit juices with apple juice as a base all has a fairly similar flavor. Carbonation is fairly non-existent. I don’t even notice it chugging and putting the bottle on the table fairly hard really results in not much more than a small flurry of bubbles popping up to the surface.

Lack of HFCS is perfect. I wouldn’t want this sticking in my mouth and it lends a very clean flavor that washes down nicely. The very slight bite of the citrus acid is fantastic to remind you of the soda without being over bearing. It is a little bit thinner than I would like. It doesn’t have HFCS to thicken it and since they are essentially watering down juice it comes out a bit more thin than a fruit juice would. This gives it very little presence as it is in your mouth and as it goes down. I think this might be a situational soda.

Post-drink

The flavor is so good. This really is a soda that is done very very right. The only complaint I could think is that I wish it did have more presence. However I feel like that might be more of a stylistic choice than anything else. The fact that it is thinner than say a bold root beer or a pure fruit juice makes it so that it is absolutely perfect for washing down food. I imagine this soda is intended to go with meals and for that purpose it is absolutely perfect. My recommendation then would be to not have this soda on its own, the flavor is good but I got used to it quickly. With some sodas like the Jarrito’s or the Cas Cal the flavor was subtle enough and washed out of my mouth quickly enough that I kept wanting to drink more to get a handle on what the flavor actually was like. This has less of that since I know what it tastes like pretty much after the first 2 or 3 gulps. Fantastic soda nonetheless, my hat goes off to Izze. They have chosen to use their money and success well to create a better product rather than just copping out and going for a HFCS lame fruity soda. I am going to look into the history of the company a bit as well. I imagine they started out as a small independent bottling company and their initial ideas behind the soda were held true even through the company’s massive success. 

Marble Pop Original Flavor Review

Background

I actually have a bit of a history with Marble Pop. When I was in middle school there was a spot downtown called Digital Ops and I would go there with friends all the time to play games on their computers. Naturally we would want food and drink and there was an Anime store next to it that sold all sorts of Japanese stuff like Marble Pop and Pocky. I would get Marble Pops and play games a lot so it has some fond memories for me.
Marble Pop is also the Americanized version, this was originally a Japanese treat by the name of Ramune. Ramune was introduced back in 1876 and has had many different versions. In modern times Ramune is seen as a symbol of summer time and is a popular drink. Here's the full Wikipedia article if you are interested. I can't remember where I bought this but my dad bought me a bag of 4 or 5 various flavored Marble Pops so plan to see some more of those fairly soon!

Review

Here's a short video explaining why Marble Pop is so unique:

You push down on this bit

I really do like the mechanism a whole lot. Of course it is a gimmick but it is a really cool one and something that is completely unseen in other sodas. I like it as it adds a certain level of interactivity with what you are drinking. It really does take a lot of effort to pop the marble in, much more than I expected which is why I needed a second take when making the video above.

It is very pretty!

I absolutely adore the bottle design. It is called a "Codd-Neck" bottle because it was named after the inventor Hiram Codd. It was designed for the specific purpose of holding a marble and rubber top. Interestingly enough they don't have to use any machine to force the marble into the cap, the bottles are filled upside down and then the pressure of the gas forces the marble into the cap, making a tight seal. The bottle design is also strangely humanoid, it has 2 indentations that look sort of like eyes and I like it, it's so different.
The labeling is interesting from a marketing standpoint. It uses a robot which is sort of rounded and bubbly looking which is obviously trying to emphasize that this is futuristic in the way it does bubbles. There are also some bubbles come off of him and an eye in the O of Pop. I quite like the lettering on Pop but all the other typography is pretty dull, then again what can you really ask for?

All the frilly bits of this soda are very good, but unfortunately it falls very flat when it comes to the actual soda inside of the bottle. Upon first tasting it I could not place the flavor at all, it honestly just tasted sort of sugary and then the after taste was somewhat like Cotton Candy. I really like Cotton Candy but it is not what I was expecting. It's definitely very sweet and I think that the HFCS is well placed because otherwise this would taste so bland. At the moment the flavor is sort of not there besides just sweetness. It also isn't very thick which makes me want to drink it quickly and also indicates there isn't much flavorings in it. I also really don't like that the top is plastic. When you are drinking from a glass bottle it feels weird to have this plasticy feeling against your lips. Glass bottles just have much more of a presence than this did. Also the opening was strangely placed. I didn't know whether to put my lips all the way around or drink it like a normal soda with more of a waterfalling action.
The carbonation is lackluster. It is a cool gimmicky way to deliver the carbonation but it ends up being pretty weak overall. It had me burping at the start but that was at it's peak and now that I am halfway down it really has almost no carbonation at all. The thing is it gets bubbly as it washed over the marble and the marble just simply can't do all that much. It has carbonation in it but it just simply doesn't get bubbly.
It is only 90 calories unsurprisingly, it also only has 19g of sugar so my ideas are confirmed. This is just a weak soda. There's some Iron in there as well which is sort of perplexing. I hate that they can list "Artificial Flavorings" as an ingredient, I understand that they have to keep their recipe secret but it still sucks from a reviewer and consumer standpoint. There is no artificial coloring at all which I quite like, I am scared of a lot of those extremely vibrant sodas. There is also very little liquid in the bottle. I was drinking away while I was thinking of what to type next and I ended up downing half the bottle. It has only 6.76 fluid ounces which is significantly less than the typical 12 ounce soda can. I suppose this is just meant to be a quick treat and not a drink, which I quite honestly became the norm for sodas.
I also took the time to chill this one more, I usually drink it at the temperature of my basement which is pretty cool. I figure that soda is usually drunk colder so I tried this out, it ended up not really making a huge difference so I'm going to ignore it for now.

Overall, I fell like it's underwhelming as far as a soda go, the bottling is cool, the gimmick is really really awesome but the actual soda is so meh. This is a great soda to show your friends because of the way that the marble works out but if you are just alone and want a solid soda I'd pass. I think just having it once to try out the gimmick and have some fun is great but I would not recommend this as a drink with a meal or to buy like it were other sodas. This really is a candy treat much more than any other soda I have encountered, which I really like conceptually it's just that the flavor isn't enough like candy to justify it.

Real costs of soda and The Soda Tax

     A few days ago it was my father's birthday and as a celebration my family went out to a dinner at Seva's, I ordered a Taco Salad with a bottle of Sprecher's Root Beer. The meal was fantastic with the exception of the cost of the soda. The restaurant charge $3.65 for just a nothin' fancy bottle of Sprecher's! I know that for a restaurant to make money they have to raise the price on things and to the layman Sprecher's is a real fancy independent sort of Root Beer, one that most haven't heard of and such.


     This got me thinking about what is the actual cost of a soda. I've heard before that in a Fast Food place the cup is more expensive than the soda in the cup. I did some research and frankly, I am shocked.


     According to "Eddie on Everything", the cost of making 50,000 cokes worth of concentrate costs the Coca-Cola company $2.60. 2 dollars and 60 cents. For 50,000 cokes. That's $0.000052 a cup. Of course, that's only for the syrup. When you take into consideration everything else in that cup, it ends up at about 13 cents a cup. The sizes used sold for 2.29 or, a 1,761% markup. That is the equivalent of going to the dollar store where everything costs the store 25-75 cents to buy and having the price they sell it at as being in the hundreds. Another example is the new 7.5 tinier cokes that have started to spring up. If you bought a gallon of coke in 7.5 ounce cans, it would cost $8.50. Imagine paying $8.50 for gas!


     The real question is, why is the concentrate so cheap? Well, during the depression farmers were having trouble financially supporting themselves. Obviously, we needed farmers so that we wouldn't all die of famine so what FDR did was start offering farmers money to either not farm some of their fields for a bit, which lowered supply increasing the prices or the government would flat out pay you to farm certain things. Corn is one of those things and one of the things that currently gets the most backing from government. This means that taking corn and making into High Fructose Corn Syrup for sweeting any product made in the USA is way, way more efficient than using Cane sugar or any other type of sweetener. The US Government hands out 50 billion dollars yearly in Corn Subsidies.


    There are different varieties of HFCS, those varieties do not have to be labeled but they range from HFCS-90 to HFCS-42. The number is the percentage of fructose, the extra percent that would add up to 100 is the Glucose. For example, HFCS-90 is 90% fructose, 10% glucose. The higher the fructose, the sweeter. HFCS-55 is as sweet as sugar.
For additional information on this subject, this is a great article.


    Even though it hurts the flavor of their sodas most companies use High Fructose Corn Syrup as opposed to sugar in it's various forms because of the cost.

The Soda Tax

     Recently, Congress has been seriously considering a tax of one cent per ounce of soda sold. The soda companies are, of course, up in arms as are many restaurants. I'm guessing that it won't pass because when people like McDonald's are opposing a bill, it's chances of success are pretty low. However, after reading how much profit is on each ounce of soda I have to say that I am totally for the taxes. It may make the 1,761% profit dip down to only a 1,000% profit. Oh no! Frankly, it's not that much money. I'm drinking a 20 oz. Faygo Root Beer as I type this(don't expect a review on that one, it's just too boring to get one) which would mean 20 cents more for this soda. Soda is also a luxury which can always be replaced by water. The fact that is serve no nutritional value makes me say that the tax should be welcomed as well.

     So, next time you're spending a bunch on a bottle of water and syrup think of just how few ingredients are in there and how cheap each one must be and consider it. For me, it'll always be the real sugar and small, independent bottling companies!

Amazing Video on the World's Best Soda Shop

     Just a quickie since I already posted today. This is a short documentary(13 minutes) about a man who is extremely passionate about soda. He owns the world's largest collection of soda. He said that for him work is just play, he comes in and plays all day. I thought it was an absolutely wonderful video. It was a large part of why this blog exists. Here it is, embedded for your pleasure.



Credit to Joe for the video.