Given all the unique ways people propose to other people, having this as one of the default messages on Taco Bell’s sauce packets is a pretty risky game. So this is either some drama waiting to happen, some very advanced trolling by Taco Bell, or both.
I can never tell if I like the regular-sized Robin Eggs or the Mini-sized more. I think regular.
Also, despite eating approximately eleven tons of these in my lifetime, I always thought they were called “Robin’s Eggs”, not “Robin”. A small part of my world is shattered.
Society, for whatever reason, continues to push the concept that soda is a shameful beverage to drink in the morning. Iced coffee with two tablespoons of flavored syrup in it? TOTALLY ACCEPTABLE. But somehow a different kind of cold beverage with sugar / artificial sweetener and caffeine is insanity.
Even Red Bull has achieved some semblance of being allowed in the morning. It gives off that vibe of, “I didn’t get much sleep last night… if you know what I mean!” Although usually what they mean was that they were playing Dead Space 3 until four in the morning.
But if I come into an office, or anywhere in the morning, even if I go with the tried and true “I’m tired” route of keeping my eyes closed and exhaling a loud “hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” sound, my can of soda still gets me regarded as a weirdo.
Thankfully, Mountain Dew has come to the rescue of those people who like caffeine, but don’t like coffee or the taste of those “Sup Broseph?” energy drinks like Monster.
Mountain Dew’s latest offering, which almost definitely won’t be around in four months, is Kickstart. It is a combination juice / soda beverage. Using juice in that context is giving this a little too much credit. It has 5% juice, which is mostly white grape juice concentrate with some orange juice concentrate in there, as well.
Orange juice concentrate isn’t too impressive, as even the normal Mountain Dew has that, but you don’t see them bragging about it.
What makes me question why normal soda is strange in the morning but Kickstart is meant to be okay is the flavor assortment. I get Orange Citrus, since that’s just going along with the logic of, “Hey, you know orange juice? This is similar!” But Fruit Punch? If fruit punch is okay to drink first thing in the morning, than so is Diet Coke. That’s the way it has to work, society.
The can designs are pretty nice, but nothing special. The sideways logo and vague lightning shapes give it a “giant AA battery” look.
Both cans sport the phase, “Energizing (flavor) with just the right amount of KICK”. The way “kick” is used, how it looks like an actual logo, makes it sound like “KICK” is a product tie-in. Unfortunately, “KICK” doesn’t provide the methed-out energy of old Stacker 2s or anything – it’s just caffeine.
Kickstart does, however, contain “glycerol ester of rosin”, so I guess you can feel like a baseball player?
I started with Fruit Punch, since I was less interested in it. Fruit Punch is almost always a flavor that is never my most or least favorite – it’s just usually pretty good. Fruit Punch Kickstarter is no exception.
You know what fruit punch tastes like? Imagine that, maybe just a tad thicker, and lightly carbonated. Boom – Fruit Punch Kickstarter.
It’s not a memorable flavor, but it is certainly enjoyable. Mountain Dew hedged their bets with the sugar. They knew some people absolutely won’t ingest high fructose corn syrup, and some people absolutely won’t ingest artificial sweeteners. So Mountain Dew said, “Put them both in there!” At least the artificial sweetener is sucralose, a relatively safe one.
For 80 calories, you get 16 ounces of good-tasting fruit punch, and a solid 92 mg of caffeine. It’s probably one of the best tasting ways to get that much caffeine at once. I didn’t notice any of that bitter flavor that can come with such a large dose of caffeine.
Orange Citrus was the flavor I was looking forward to more, since that flavor is more in my taste buds’ wheelhouse.
I was pleased after pouring it, since it smelled like Tang cut with some other citrus flavors. I was even happier with the taste. Its taste is very similar to a thicker, more soda-ish Orangina, which is a great thing.
If you hear the name Orangina, you probably think, “Oh yeah… that stuff.” Which is understandable, since it’s not the most exciting beverage in the world. But did you know they ran a big ad campaign in the UK, featuring what almost boils down to animal porn? It wasn’t as disgusting as that sounds, but it was definitely creepy. Check out the Google Images results for Orangina’s sexy animals campaign.
Getting back to a less arousing topic, Orange Citrus Kickstarter is really good. Like Fruit Punch, it hides the caffeine completely, but has what I think is the superior taste.
Like I already mentioned, this seems like a beverage assortment that won’t stand the test of time. Especially given Mountain Dew’s tendency to just throw stuff out there, then yank it away shortly after. But while they are available, Kickstarter is an great way to ingest sugar and caffeine during the morning. Or any time, I guess. That’s up to you. NOT SOCIETY! It will be easy to ignore everyone else’s look of scorn and disgust – you get used to it after a while.
I know Scooby-Doo is still around in some capacity, whether it is just in reruns of the cartoon, or more sequels to the live action movies that I am just assuming are still being made.
Even though everyone knows who he is, it seems weird that there is a new Scooby-Doo cereal being made. What is weirder is that it is being made by Kellogg’s, who I would assume could score a better license for a cereal.
One bright spot, literally, for the cereal is the packaging. In a sea of boxes in the cereal aisle, this one instantly jumps out. Which isn’t to say the packaging is especially good looking, just very bright green. It’s actually a pretty unattractive and dull box.
Unfortunately, everything about Scooby-Doo! seems cheap. Cheap packaging, cheap-looking cereal, and (at least this is a good thing) cheap price. This is an odd offering from a major cereal company who isn’t trying to get in on the sad “Good Morenings” line.
Lessening my desire to eat it was the description – “Vanilla Flavored Cereal”. Vanilla is okay for a few things, but as a cereal flavor it sounds creepy. So there was absolutely nothing that would entice me to buy Scooby-Doo!, except for my strong journalistic integrity.
If you are one of those weird people who eat cereal early in the morning, for breakfast, do not attempt to follow along with the back of the box. I ate this during normal cereal hours, approximately 2 AM, and found this game confusing as hell. I didn’t win. I didn’t even know how to win.
The cereal itself looks awful. It is shaped like dog bones, but really cheap ones. They don’t have the structural integrity of those dog bone-shaped candies they sell in the machines by supermarket exits. The cereal pieces looked like they were pleasant little dog bone shapes, then went through an unfortunate growth spurt.
When taking the first bite, I was extremely confused. The cereal tasted like nothing. No taste, save for a very faint “cereal grain” flavor. Then all of a sudden I got hit with this second wave of vanilla. Not vanilla like ice cream, or a flavored syrup, more like a marshmallow flavor. More accurately, and more importantly, it was almost the exact same taste as Rice Krispies Treats Cereal.
It’s like when you get a flavored seltzer water, or even sometimes iced tea, and it tastes like nothing at first, and you go, “Oh yeah, it tastes like orange now.” Scooby-Doo! is the marshmallow equivalent of mandarin orange seltzer. Or something like that, anyway. It even managed to make the milk taste like Treats milk.
I know that being able to say “lightly sweetened” or “less sugar” is a nice thing to be able to put on a box of kid’s cereal. Even still, this aggressively less-sweet concept is an odd sell for a cartoon cereal.
Despite not caring about the license, and finding the cereal itself rather ugly, I wound up really liking this. It’s got a decent nutritional breakdown, so you get a sweetened cereal feel without the downside.
Granted, I’d still rather just eat Rice Krispies Treats Cereal, but considering what an uphill battle this cereal had, I was surprised by how enjoyable it is.
[insert seal of approval here]
Despite the fact that I eat it all the time, I guess I don’t pay attention to the current lineup of Lucky Charms marshmallows. This explains why, when I saw their limited edition “Green Clovers” version, I thought, “I thought it already had Green Clovers? It’s in the song!”
Then I compared it to a current box, where the marshmallows are all rainbows, or something. And even the standard marshmallow lineup doesn’t have clovers anymore – it has hats with clovers on them. Just bring back the original lineup and stop screwing around, Lucky. Your cereal is awesome enough without all the gimmicky marshmallows.
This was one of those rare back of the cereal boxes that simply looked too boring to even bother with.
As for the taste – come on, it’s Lucky Charms. You don’t need a description. Although I didn’t think the Green Clovers edition tasted any more green than usual.
It did do a nice job dying the milk green, though.
[insert seal of approval here]
Normally, I tend to not bother reviewing things that fall more into the “National News” category. I figure that thousands of other people will do it better and more professionally than I will. But then I was thinking, “Hey, I haven’t updated in a few weeks… you know what would make a good update? Anything.“
And I am aware that is somewhat ridiculous to classify a new Taco Bell item as national news. But hey, I’m not the one who declared it was – the nation declared it. Check yahoo.com, or any news page, and this will surely be on the first page. Unless it is not, in which case come back at some other point when it is.
Don’t let my saying that I think reviewing Taco Bell food is sort of pointless make you think I don’t like Taco Bell. I love it to borderline socially-unacceptable levels. When they officially took the Triple Layer Nachos off the menu, it was a day of mourning.
When Taco Bell introduced the Doritos Locos taco back in… some point in the past, it was a dream come true for many. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for me, because I hate regular Doritos.
I thought Cool Ranch could work, but wasn’t sure. Granted, I love Cool Ranch, but I am always wary of “ranch” as a flavor. Mostly because I associate it with the vile habit people have of putting it on sandwiches. Ranch is awesome as a vegetable dip and a seasoning for most chips. It even manages to fail at its primary objective – being a good salad dressing.
Ranch salad dressing, like many other creamy dressings, bothers me. It’s not the flavor, but that thick, heavy consistency weighing down the lettuce. It feels like if you made a nice, airy soufflé and said, “You know what I should put on top of this? One of those dental blankets they put on you when you get x-rays!”
So I wasn’t sure how “ranch” would work as a taco shell flavor. You know what Doritos flavor would be guaranteed to be amazing? Salse Verde. Come on, Taco Bell – make that happen.
The Doritos Locos Cool Ranch taco is officially being released on March 7, but they told their fans that if we ask for it specifically, we can get one on the 6th. At first, this seemed cool, like we were in on this taco speakeasy. I also wondered if the allure of that situation would be lessened, should there be signs hanging up saying, “ASK FOR IT TODAY AND WE WILL GIVE IT TO YOU! WE MEAN ANYONE, NOT EVEN SUPER FANS! JUST PAY US MONEY AND WE WILL GIVE YOU A TACO!”
Then I saw that if you Google “cool ranch taco”, the first nine hundred results are basically telling you it’s available on the 6th. Oh well.
Preserving some of the intense exclusivity, there weren’t any actual signs up when I went.
My excitement was somewhat diminished by the fact that I didn’t get a Cool Ranch sleeve, instead getting the existing Nacho design. Shortly thereafter, I realized I was an idiot, and that the wrapper was double-sided.
My taco-eating experience was already off to a dramatic start, with that exciting double-sided reveal. Will the actual taste match up?
Ah, there it is: the glorious powder.
I decided for maximum journalistic integrity, I should try one with Fire and one with Verde. I didn’t bother with Mild or Hot because, well, they’re pointless. And I didn’t try one plain because that’s weird. Skipping to the end of that story, neither made any significant difference to the flavor.
One tasted like the Cool Ranch taco with Fire, the other with Verde. I’ll leave you to decide which was which.
Upon the first bite, my immediate reaction was something similar to, “jhlgkjhlkgjhfldhlshgkd!” This thing is ridiculously salty.
Yes, I know Taco Bell isn’t known for their delicate sprinklings of sea salt. But this is next-level saltiness. I can only assume it’s coming from the Cool Ranch powder. The shell itself isn’t a shell-shaped Dorito. It seems to be just a normal taco shell with Cool Ranch flavoring sprinkled on it. And not evenly, either. All of the seasoning is along the top inch, with the bottom part of the shell left naked and sad.
Once you ride the initial wave of saltiness, it settles down. Your best bet is to try to get a bite of the top part, with the powder, along with some of the bottom of the shell. This will balance out the salt bonanza.
I was hoping that the Doritos Locos Cool Ranch would either be amazing or disgusting, since both extremes are more interesting to review. Instead, it lands somewhere in “pretty good” territory. It doesn’t have a strong Cool Ranch flavor, especially because the saltiness overwhelms any chance the powder might have had. But it is a nice variation on the standard taco.
My next visit to Taco Bell may include one of these, or it may not. This definitely isn’t a must-have for every order. Especially if they aren’t going to give you one of the cool blue wrappers. I’m still heartbroken about that.
Fiber One has done a solid job of shedding its “Old people love us!” stigma. Their granola-esque bars are genuinely good, and they now offer a lot of cereal that have a good balance of tasting good and being nutritious.
That said, it is still somewhat difficult to actually get excited about a new variety of Fiber One cereal. Although in fairness, making it chocolate does help.
I enjoy the simplicity of Fiber One’s naming scheme. They don’t have a new, catchy or quirky name emblazoned at the top of the box. The name is “Fiber One”, you can find the flavor at the bottom. It’s not “Chocolate Delight”, or anything like that. It’s just, “Chocolate”.
As far as nutrition goes, it seems to cover all the bases – low calorie, low sugar, high fiber. However, when a cereal leaves “old people” territory, and enters “sweetened flavor beloved by all” territory, simply being nutritious isn’t good enough. It now has to actually taste good.
If you are planning on sticking to the 80 calories they mention on the box, do not add raspberries. As you can see, or maybe not – I may have shrunk the picture too much, the box mentions that “Raspberries add 20 calories.” I’m assuming they are including the ones that fell out of the bowl. I’m not eating those; they’re probably filthy now. So now you can assume the three left in the bowl add ten calories.
I’ve seen plenty of boxes of cereal dress up the bowl with some extra fruit, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen the extra fruit accounted for, calorie-wise. Well done, Fiber One, on the honesty front.
The back of the box reads like some cereal yearbook, with random quotes sprinkled around. It’s not interesting.
One of these days, I will figure out how to use the flash without it landing right in the center of whatever it is I’m taking pictures of. I’m tempted to write a review for the Galaxy S3, although I’m not too sure my catchy headline of, “Takes terrible pictures of cereal boxes!” will deter too many potential buyers.
The cereal pieces look sort of like bloated Golden Grahams, as if you left them out to die in the sun. Also, they are much darker, obviously. But I don’t actually know if skin can burn after it’s dead, so I didn’t know how much more I could tie into that “left to die in the sun” metaphor. Also, I don’t know how well a “left to die in the sun” metaphor goes over in a cereal review.
The chocolate taste of the cereal is very good. It is much less sweet than most other chocolate cereals, which isn’t surprising given the lower sugar. But unlike a lot of other cereals, this one actually comes close to actually tasting like real chocolate.
Unfortunately, the cereal doesn’t permeate the milk very well, leaving you with a very diluted chocolate milk.
I would recommend mixing this with Peanut Butter Toast Crunch, as you will then have one of the strongest PB & chocolate cereal mixes available.
[insert seal of approval here]
Since releasing approximately seven hundred flavor varieties in the past few years, it seems Mini Wheats have no more ideas on how to create a new Mini Wheat flavor.
Wait, is Mini Wheats hyphenated? I can’t tell if that’s meant to be a hyphen, or just a stalk of wheat. One sec…
Okay yes, apparently they are meant to be hyphenated. I’m not going to go back and correct those, though.
After running out of ideas for a new variety of Mini-Wheats, Kellogg’s apparently decided that the public still needed more varieties! Frosted Mini-Wheats Crunch removes the thick layer of frosting (boooo!), and gets rid of the “little bale of hay” shape. Which results in a cereal that looks like one that already exists.
When I saw the box, the first thing I thought was that it looked identical to Quaker Oatmeal Squares, right down to the same “Brown Sugar” flavor. Then again, there are lots of cereals that seem similar, so maybe this would taste very different.
The back of the box doesn’t portray the cereal in a very positive light. Going off the biology of the Frosted person, it seems that the Crunch body is mutated. Since their grains are going in opposite directions, it is clear that something is dreadfully wrong with Crunch’s body.
Regular Frosted guy asking you to “take our relationship to the next level on Facebook” is a very unsettling proposition.
The cereal starts off with a somewhat off-putting sweetness. It’s not overly sweet, it’s just a very direct sweetness. You get more used to it as you go along, but it still lingers the entire time you’re eating.
The texture is sort of strange as well, it’s got a bit of a crispy shell from the frosting, which leads into more crunch from the cereal itself. But at the same time, it’s not actually crunchy – just resistant.
The milk you are left with just tastes like simple syrup.
Overall, it’s definitely not a bad cereal. Just one that I have no real desire to buy again. I’ll stick to Quaker Oatmeal Squares, or the more normal Frosted Mini-Wheats.
[no seal of approval]
This probably won’t be a very shocking revelation, but I go through a lot of cereal. These years of experience have provided me with the knowledge necessary to properly divide a box into even serving amounts.
I’m not talking about that nonsense “Serving Size”, where they say that a “bowl” of cereal is the equivalent of those tiny boxes of cereal you get at a hotel continental breakfast. I mean “serving” in the correct usage, where it means “a bowl filled with an amount of cereal that you are satisfied with… possibly a little more.”
Despite this experience, occasionally something goes awry, and I am left with possibly the worst thing to happen to a cereal eater short of not having milk – not having enough left in the box for a proper bowl of cereal.
At this point, you have a few options – have a sad half-bowl of cereal, throw the rest out, or mix it with another cereal. The last option is usually what I wind up doing, to drastically mixed results. Crunch Berries and Kix? Sure, that works. Honeycomb and Cocoa Krispies? Not so much.
Some of these cross-bred cereals wind up getting together to make a super-powered cereal baby. Chocolate Cheerios mixed with Peanut Butter Cheerios? Ridiculous. That makes Reese’s Puff look like a rank amateur.
Unfortunately, most of these cereal bastardizations are the result of desperation, not planning. As a result, most of them are awkward. General Mills must have known this was a common occurrence, and assumed that cereal eaters prefer this method. Hence, Honey Nut Cheerios Medley Crunch.
Two things immediately jumped out at me when seeing this. The first thing was that it’s a pre-packaged desperation cereal. The second thing was, when did Buzz Bee start wearing Chuck Taylors?
Looking at the cereal itself, it presents some problems. When making a desperation cereal, certain rules should be adhered to: flakes go with flakes, puffs go with puffs, and other pieces (like Lucky Charms) go with another piece-based cereal. So Medley Crunch mixing flakes, Cheerios, and granola seemed like an abomination.
While eating, my expected issues did come true – bites have an uneven texture and size. This might be good for your jaw, kind of like how running barefoot strengthens your supporting muscles due to the uneven terrain. Although I will assume this was not General Mills’s intent.
Despite a really weird assortment of textures and shapes, the cereal is by no means bad. In fact, it’s really good. Honey Nut Cheerios are awesome, and the the flakes and granola basically just taste like “Honey Nut Flakes / Granola”. The one misstep in the taste is the weird almond extract flavor. You only get it once in a while, so it doesn’t overpower the taste, but once in a while you’ll get a bite filled with creepy almondness.
Thankfully, that doesn’t seep into the milk, and you are left with the usual honey-nut-sugar flavor.
While eating Medley Crunch, I highly advise you pay strict attention to the bowls you are eating. You need to leave yourself one last proper bowlful. Because if you mix this pre-packaged desperation cereal with the remainder of another cereal, I’m pretty sure the bowl will burst into flames.
[insert seal of approval here]
Despite the presence of the word “NEW” in size seventy font on the box, when I saw Peanut Butter Toast Crunch on the shelves, I first assumed it had been around for a while. I have no idea why.
With that thrilling anecdote out of the way…
For some reason, I don’t like the box. It’s “brown, brown everywhere!” 70’s vibe makes sense with the peanut butter theme, but it’s just sort of ugly.
I also don’t like that Wendell is doing that thing with the peanut butter that people do in photos, where they point at the person they are standing next to. Although I understand why he’d be smug, having gotten away with murdering the other two bakers he used to work with.
The back of the box reveals the disastrous conditions the cereal is made in. Having gigantic piles of cereal pieces sitting on a factory floor seems incredibly unsanitary. As does the fact that every single cereal piece gets touched by Wendell’s bare hands. Lip-licking creep.
Despite the fact that it is covered in hand germs and has been sitting on a factory floor, the cereal itself is quite good. I didn’t know if it would have a lot of that weird, thick coating that some peanut butter cereals have. It has a slight coating, but nothing off-putting.
What Peanut Butter Toast Crunch does well is balance the peanut butter flavor with the sweetness. It doesn’t taste as sweet as Cinnamon Toast Crunch – it seems a bit more dialed back.
While they claim it is made with “real” peanut butter, I was still expecting a more fake flavor, like in Peanut Butter Cups. The Crunch’s flavor is halfway between Reese’s fake flavor and real peanut butter. The taste it most closely resembles is the crackers in those peanut butter sandwich crackers.
The milk takes on a bit of the peanut butter flavor, which was nice. Even though, as I write that, I realize “peanut butter flavored milk” doesn’t actually sound like a positive thing.
[insert seal of approval here]
Boy, this stuff is disgusting.
Have you ever wished for a refreshing soda that tasted like that pink amoxicillin you had to keep in the fridge? Well you’re in luck!
I don’t know the science behind it, but it seems whenever a diet soda specifies the number of calories it has in its name, it tastes better.
Pepsi One was better than Diet Pepsi. Coke Zero tastes better than Diet Coke. Dr. Pepper Ten tastes better than Diet Dr. Pepper.
Unfortunately, Dr. Pepper 10 has one of the worst ad campaigns in recent memory. Their “It’s not for women” seems to arbitrarily focus on men, for no apparent reason. Marketing like this can be taken anywhere from a silly throwback to boys versus girls of childhood to flat out misogyny. I’d find it more offensive if it weren’t so absolutely stupid.
I assume this has something to do with attempting to shake the stigma that men are too ashamed to drink diet sodas – something that probably hasn’t been true for decades (if it ever was). Even if they wanted to pursue this line of thinking, they didn’t need to follow the questionable path laid out by Axe.
Since the target market for a campaign like this is obviously stupid people, there are myriad ways of getting their attention that don’t involve a bad campaign like this. “Hey you know when you’re at the bar with your bros slamming Jager Bombs and Flaming Dr. Peppers? Look on the label right above this! It says Dr. Pepper! Buy this!” would be more effective.
Hopefully, Dr. Pepper doesn’t continue down this slippery slope of advertising. We don’t need to have the introduction of Dr. Pepper 5, with it’s catchy “It’s only for the gays!” slogan. Seriously, though, Dr. Pepper – this is a really stupid ad campaign. You’ve always been one of the coolest sodas – you’re too good for this.
Dr. Pepper seems to be throwing its budget in only two directions: attracting the Bro demographic, and fans of The League. Which is worrisome, since I like The League. Although I can never tell if I find their clumsy product placement funny or just sad.
All this would be a moot point if Dr. Pepper 10 wasn’t so good. It is a significant improvement. I can’t be bothered with the specifics, but basically the concept is just using a little sugar / fake sugar is all you need to cover up that “diet” taste. This is a much better calorie balance than things like Pepsi Next, which involve a much more significant calorie commitment.
For the longest time, I assumed Dr. Pepper was made by Coca-Cola. This long-standing theory is solely due to the fact that they were usually on sale at the same time. At almost every supermarket I’ve ever been to, it’s the same schedule: Pepsi on sale one week, Coke on sale the next – repeat. Dr. Pepper was on sale with Coke, so I figured they were all part of the same team.
But apparently, Dr. Pepper is part of the Cadburry Schweppes family, and is just distributed by Coca Cola sometimes. Or something like that, anyway. Point being, Dr. Pepper being part of its own family is the reason for the seemingly random assortment of new Ten sodas.
The new lineup of Tens consists of Dr. Pepper, Sunkist Orange, 7-Up, A&W Root Beer, and Canada Dry Ginger Ale. I have also read that RC Cola will be part of this, but I have yet to see this in stores.
I question some of the logic of this roll out, mostly because these sodas seem too small to need a second diet option. Dr. Pepper itself is pretty big, so I get that. But are there enough people drinking Diet Sunkist who need an alternative?
Those decisions, for some reason, were left up to people who study the market intensely and get paid to decide these things, not me. So they went with, “Yes.”
Speaking of Sunkist, let’s start with that.
Based on all five of the labels, it seems that the theme of the Ten line is “grey”. All of the labels are either entirely grey, or have it heavily integrated into the design. I don’t know if there’s a deeper “this is the shade of grey between diet and sugared soda” thing going on. If that wasn’t intended, then I am taking credit for it!
Even though a “grey” theme sounds at best boring and at worst depressing, it actually works quite well. Maybe we can call it “silver”, instead. That sounds less sad.
Sunkist Ten’s flavor is a nice improvement. It has a good “orange Popsicle” flavor to it. And the hint of high fructose corn syrup (yum!) is just enough to hide almost all of the diet aftertaste.
The flavor is really good, the one downfall is the soda has an odd consistency. There is definitely carbonation, but there’s also this thick, syrupy wave that comes along with it. Somehow it feels like it is half carbonated soda and half syrup, just not mixed together. It has a strange feeling on the roof of your mouth.
I finished the soda before it got flat, but I have a feeling this could get really peculiar to drink once it loses what carbonation it starts with.
Strange consistency aside, the flavor is there. I don’t think it’s as big a flavor improvement as Dr. Pepper 10 is over Diet Dr. Pepper, but it could carve out its own place.
Before moving off the subject of fruit sodas – can a major soda company please put a diet grape soda into wide distribution? Thanks.
Like when I reviewed Pepsi Next, I’m not going to address if there is a sustainable audience for the soda, I’m just going to discuss the taste. Otherwise, I’d really question whether a ginger ale needs another format. But no – I will not ask that!
I go into any ginger ale with a strong prejudice. This is because, 95% of the time, the only reason I drink it is if I have a stomach virus. So on the odd occasion where I do have it, it reminds me of having a stomach virus. That’s not exactly one of those “remember all the great times you had with our product” moments that companies strive for.
It could be because I don’t drink it too often, but I don’t remember ginger ale having such a bite. It could be due to the “real ginger” Canada Dry says they use. Of course, “ginger” isn’t specified in the ingredients – it falls under “natural flavors”.
I’ve never understood how “natural flavors” is allowed to suffice in the ingredients list. It seems like the next step is just to specify soda’s ingredients as, “Carbonated Water, other stuff, miscellaneous, and so on.” Or, for even less nutritious foods, simply have the ingredients list broken out as – ;)
At this point, I will assume Canada Dry’s bite is due to ginger. It gives it almost a tonic water flavor – where it’s sweet, but has something different to offset the sweetness. Honestly, the ginger bite put me off at first; it tasted odd to me. But after a few sips, I really grew to appreciate it.
I don’t think I have actually had regular 7-Up since I was about seven years old. I’ve had the diet variety since then, although not too often. Lemon-lime sodas are never very interesting to me. However, I will forever be a fan of 7-Up, for them sending me a Diet 7-Up Taste Test Kit a while back. That is still one of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten in the mail. I don’t know if that is sad or not.
Due to the inherent boringness of lemon-lime sodas, I was very surprised to find out that I really liked 7-Up Ten. It doesn’t break any new ground in the world of limon-ness, but it does its job well. Out of all four of the new Tens, this may have hid the diet taste the best.
The final member of the class of Ten is A&W. A&W has always been my favorite of the major root beers. Barq’s can piss off with its “bite”. And Mug is pointless.
A&W Ten does upholds the good name of A&W. It seems to have less of that weird syrup and carbonation not getting along texture. The taste itself is fantastic. I atrocious at describing tastes, because usually my thought process is, “… it’s good.” But this is one of those rare instances where I can notice a pretty significant flavor profile.
A&W Ten has all the root beer hit up front, but right after swallowing you get a good wave of vanilla on the back of your tongue. A&W insists this is “Aged Vanilla”, but I can’t say for sure. And any jokes that could be made about that veer into a creepy direction really fast, so I will just move right along.
Some minor missteps with the texture aside, the new Ten line is a solid addition to the world of sodas. Will they all be successful? Probably not. But they are definitely good, so I think at least a couple of these varieties will find a loyal audience.
Then again, I was a loyal fan of Pepsi One, and they took that away from me, so what do I know?
Why?
Diet Coke-Babies 