High Fructose Corn Syrup (409 reviews)
Faygo Gold Bubbly Sweet Ginger Soda
Detroit is one hell of a town, and by that I mean it’s kind of hell. It’s a burnt out city (not unlike Buffalo), but it doesn’t have the nature side to it that my hometown does. It’s just endless neighborhoods that look like they should appear at the end of some apocalypse movie. I’m not one to generally feel unsafe in my surroundings, but I’m always looking for an escape route in any given situation in that city. On top of that it has the most torn up highway that I have ever experienced, but I guess that’s most of Michigan and not just Detroit-centric.
A shining light through the dreariness that is the Motor City is that it is the home to Faygo. Now I know this company gets a lot of bad press outside of Michigan, because of the culture that has co-opted it, but let me tell you there are certainly some gems in their lineup ad Faygo Gold is one of them.
The company has a long running ginger ale in their repertoire, and it is not that bad. It’s a general ginger ale like you would find in any generic brand. This though, this is something different. They don’t even call it ginger ale. Instead it is “bubbly sweet ginger soda,” and I can think of no better description. It’s not exactly a ginger ale, it has more of an actually ginger taste to it. It’s also not a ginger beer because it’s not intense. It has a subtle burn that it greatly appreciated, but it also has a very specific sweetness, that just does it for me. This is way sweeter than I normally like my soda, but something about the little bit of burn and the amount of sugar works perfectly. Faygo has done well in giving hope to the citizens of Detroit. Now we just need Robocop to clean up the city so civilization can begin anew.
- Website
- http://www.faygo.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper 1 week ago
- Comments
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Dad's Old Fashioned Orange Cream Soda
Sometimes you find a really great pop from a popular brand and you are surprised. "What is this company doing making that other crud when they clearly have the ability to make stuff like this?" you ask yourself when you find it. Well? This could not be further from that scenario.
This tastes like perfume cream soda and is pretty downright revolting. Normally "orange cream soda" tastes like a creamsicle but this tastes like a bottom of the barrel orange pop that's just kind of weak and flavorless.
It's a shame that this is such a large bottle and 70% after sharing will meet its demise with the kitchen sink. Sorry starving African kids I think of every time I put food in the garbage or drink in the sink, but not even you would enjoy this gross drink.
- Website
- http://www.dadsrootbeer.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Categories
- Soda Pop
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman 1 week, 6 days ago
- Comments
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Arizona Lemon Lime Rickey
You've got Grapeheads, Lemonheads, Cherryheads formerly known as the racist Cherry Chan, and Melonheads and Appleheads, which I have never seen and Orangeheads. This drink, as you could probably guess, tasted like Lemonheads if you dipped them in limejuice. It was almost hard to convince myself this wasn't just 7-Up or other comparable lemon-lime drink. It's not bad and it might be more real lemon and lime flavored than "those other guys."
If you like your Sierra Mist, 7-Up, Sprite, and the like, this is a nice, cleaner tallboy of that group that you might like to sink your teeth into. That's figuratively speaking. Please don't bite into this can. Just the thought of you doing that makes me cringe. Who bites cans? What are you? A goat?
- Website
- http://drinkarizona.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman 2 weeks, 1 day ago
- Comments
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Bawls Guarana Cherry
Okay class, let’s get the giggling out of the way. Yes, this drink is called Bawls, but you are in seventh grade, and you should be mature enough to be able to handle this lecture as well as the one on V-Blast that I have planned for this afternoon. It’s 2013, you all lost your virginity at 11 right? Ugh, that’s a gross thought. Kids, the internet is ruining your childhoods. Go outside. Explore. Cause some mischief. If you do those things you’ll have a much happier life. Don’t be in such a hurry to be an adult. Look at your parents and your friend’s parents; do any of them look happy? Of course not, being an adult sucks. Responsibilities suck. Stay a kid, the things you have to worry about are nothing compared to what you’ll have to deal with when you’re older.
Okay back to the lesson. In the beginning there was Jolt. It was cola with excessive amounts of caffeine in it, so that kids like you could stay up late, sneak out and cause trouble. It was something, but it was nothing compared to the Red Bull craze of the 2000s. In between the two Bawls rose to modest fame. It was/is an energy drink that is powered by guarana and caffeine. More important than what the drink was is the fact that it came in these rad glass bottles with little nubs on them. They feel interesting in your hand, and it’s just fun. Eventually they expanded their line. One of the flavors they expanded with was cherry.
Most guarana flavored sodas have a bubble gum style flavor like kola champagne. Luckily with Bawls that is not the case. The flavor is there a hint, but it’s not overly sweet and overpowering. This tastes like someone made a Shirley Temple with an the original Bawls instead of ginger ale. It has a more maraschino cherry flavor than a cherry soda flavor. The result of it all is that it is wonderful and will give you a little energy boost without all of the weird chemicals that most modern energy drinks have in them.
There’s the bell. I will see you all after lunch when we will continue our history of beverages section of the curriculum.
- Website
- http://www.bawls.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Categories
- Energy Drink, Soda Pop
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper 2 weeks, 6 days ago
- Comments
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Arizona Sparkling Soda Chocolate Fudge Float
I am in Jersey for a wedding. I was just at an Italian restaurant for three hours. Do you know how long that is? It's a long time. It's a long time to sit there. Three courses. That's an hour per course. One hour dedicated to a Caesar salad. One hour dedicated to a small amount of pasta. The food was fine at best but the dessert was a wonderful chocolate mousse cake. Don't tell anyone, but I ate some of the cake from the girl that sat next to me because she wasn't as crazy about it as I was. She got up and left and I ate some of her cake. I talked to her. She's in the wedding party. It's fine. Well, the girl who sat across from me needed some medicine so I walked out to a 7-11 and got some. Being who I am, I also stopped at the drink cooler and checked it out and was pleasantly surprised with what I saw and basically had to buy.
I had to wait for another hour and a half to drink this, and I offered it to a nice girl in the elevator who politely declined, but here I am, sitting on my hotel bed watching an awesome episode of Seinfeld, drinking this rather awkward drink. Awkward? Yes. I said awkward. It's got chocolate, that for truth. Bosco, another Seinfeld reference, is chocolate syrup they used. The fudge I think they might be grouping into the chocolate. I don't know if there is an additional ingredient. The float? There might be an element of cream in there. It's got an almost sparkling chocolate seltzer taste to it. It's not bad.
I like that this is another Brooklyn treat and I am so close to enjoy it. Now if only that nice elevator girl would have enjoyed it, too. She missed out. Not on much, but she missed out regardless. I take a little offense that people don't drink my drinks when I offer them up. Don't you people know who I am?
- Website
- http://drinkarizona.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman 3 weeks, 4 days ago
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment
Arizona Mango Lime Rickey
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have been wrong for far too long. As we have recently learned the song should actually go, “You put the lime in the mango and you drink it all up.” You see mangos and limes go together far better than coconut could ever dream. We have sent a cease and desist to the Harry Nilsson estate and we have been assured that with the magic of technology his song will be digitally altered so that he sings mango instead of coconut at every instance. It’s was really shocking how quickly the executar of his estate agreed to it. I guess she must be a huge mango supporter, but who wouldn’t be?
To celebrate the change in the song Arizona has released this version of their Rickey line. It is some version of mango and lime juice mixed together and injected into carbonated water. In any world this is really just an interesting flavor of soda that comes in an oversized can, but we’ll play the game and refer to it as a sparkling beverage.
Mangos and limes work so well together that I can’t believe it’s not a more common experience. This actually tastes more of lime than mango, and that might be the secret right there. Lime is normally a secondary character in the beverage world, but it has a co-starring role with Arizona, and the reviews all say that it performed amazingly. Now if only it came in smaller cans and with less sugar it and I could be BFFs.
- Website
- http://drinkarizona.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Categories
- Sparkling
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper 3 weeks, 5 days ago
- Comments
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Mistic Mango Mania
There was a point in my life where I thought that Mistic would eclipse the rest of the beverage world. It was nicely carbonated, it tasted completely amazing and exotic to my ten year old taste buds in the late 80’s. Best of all they looked like wine coolers, so being the dumb kids we were we could act like adults (or older teenage girls of the time) after a long day of skating. Then they all just disappeared without a trace. I was dumbfounded as to what could have happened to my beloved drink. I pounded them whenever I could, so obviously the rest of the world was doing the same. Something must have been amiss. Perhaps it was a government conspiracy.
Probably a decade later Mistic reentered my world. The bottles looked similar, but they were no longer carbonated. My heart was broken. It just wasn’t the same. It still had a great fruit flavor, but without it’s bubbles, it sank into the scenery as companies like Sobe took center stage.
Now more than another decade has passed and I’ve encountered the beast again. The bottle has changed, and perhaps that is for the better. The old bottle always left me hoping in vain that it would be sparkling. With the new bottles my former dreams have been decimated, so I can enjoy it for the fake juice that it is.
What we have here is a “juice drink” that only has 3% juice in it, yet it really tastes like mango...strongly. It’s ridiculously sweet and not very good for you with 56g of sugar in this 16 oz bottle, but what it lacks in health is surely there in flavor. Let’s face it mango juice is not readily available in a lot of areas. Especially in the more inner city bodegas, which are the only places I ever seem to find Mistic drinks. Sometimes you just crave the mango taste, and this is a decent tasting substitute for when the real juice is not at hand.
I would now like to take the time to plead with the Mistic folks (who seem to have no internet presence) to please bring back your sparkling line, and make it exactly as you did when I was a child. I will buy a truckload. Actually how about you send me a truckload for free, for making you millions by reminding you how awesome you once were.
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Categories
- Juice
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper 4 weeks, 1 day ago
- Comments
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Push Orange
Friggin' hot dogs, man. I love those guys. Jay and I used to have fantastic barbecues that would fill our entire front yard with punk kids who just wanted to have a good time. We lived in a nice, family neighborhood and these kids that were with us did not blend in. Nicest kids in the world, but not something you would expect to see in that place.
At the barbecue we would have hamburgers, hot dogs, veggie and non and an array of drinks. This is pre-Thirsty Dude so we didn't have the greatest stuff. Usually boxes of Gregory's, the straight edge box wine. One thing we did was get orange pop. Hot dogs are properly washed down with orange pop. I don't know what it is. It's probably the same thing that makes Papaya King make so much sense. This would have been a fantastic accoutrement to those parties because it's a good orange. It's a standard orange but it's pretty crisp and not too sweet.
I would love to ask the new residents of that apartment if we could have a little cookout for old-time sake but I don't think they would like all those bikes in the front yard and Depeche Mode blaring on the stereo. I would though, brother. I would.
- Website
- www.http://pushbeverages.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Categories
- Soda Pop
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman on 5/17/2013
- Comments
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Arizona Grape Lime Rickey
Follow this path of information. Arizona is from Long Island, and they are co-opting a beverage from Brooklyn. Okay, that wasn’t too bad was it? They started at the end of last summer when they released their Cherry Lime Rickey, which I believe was their first trek into the world of carbonation. It was a drink I enjoyed. It was pretty crazy, and ridiculously sweet, but on a nice hot day, it was enjoyable. Recently they have released three new flavors into their Rickey line, and they are what they are.
While it may only constitute 10% of the beverage these Rickeys are flavored with real juice. I don’t believe there was ever a time in nature when grapes and limes commingled. They certainly are a strange pair when put together, but it’s kind of enjoyable. I started drinking this last night at band practice, and it was a bit much to handle. Upon taking one sip I knew there was no way I was going to drink this entire can in one sitting. The label says it’s three servings, but Arizona knows as well as we do that we are a country of gluttons and 99% of their customers drink them don’t divvy up the portions. They separated the sweetener into HFCS and sucralose to keep the calories down, but it still makes it way sweeter than it needs to be. It is also harshly carbonated, so be aware of that when you go into one of these. Sometimes I really like that kind of carbonation, but last night was not one of them. The grape lime flavor was very interesting though, so it helped me get through half the can. The rest I put in my fridge so that I could review it later.
Here I am, the next afternoon, and now the beverage is lightly carbonated. Without the harsh bubbles, the flavor shines through a lot more. You can definitely taste the grape and lime juices, of course it’s through a haze of sweetener, but that is what the majority of the Arizona customer base wants. Unless the temperature is over 85 degrees I probably will not purchase another one of these, but I am still excited to try the other two new flavors.
- Website
- http://drinkarizona.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Categories
- Sparkling
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 5/16/2013
- Comments
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Dr. Wells
What higher educational institutions do you think all of the doctors in the soda world got their degrees from? I mean there can’t be that many colleges that offer programs in the carbonated arts. I wonder if they just paid for some bogus online degree, just so they could legally get the word “Doctor” on their driver’s license. In full disclosure I have seriously thought about doing so, and went so far as to see if there were any of those “colleges” that would allow me to get a doctorate in parapsychology, so that I could be in the company of Venkman, Stantz and Spengler. If you’re thinking of doing the same, don’t waste your time; none of them would give such a degree.
While they may have gone the internet route I am willing to bet that our DR. Wells here spent a few years up in Olympia, WA at Evergreen State College. At this mysterious educational center students can name their own majors. I’m pretty sure more than a few hippies for degrees in hacky sack.
As I imagine it Dr Wells has been around since the 30s, but in 1987 the Monarch Beverage Company (the home of Dad’s root beer) purchased him. They were none too pleased that Senior Wells was going around claiming to be a doctor when in fact he had no degree. So the ole’ Monarch shipped him off to Washington and Wells was put smack dab in the middle of the whole twee/riot grrrl scene there. By day he studied flavoring and carbonation like a true scientist, but at night he hung out at K Records, and he was always at Calvin Johnson’s parties. He was a big hit in a scene that wasn’t all to huge on alcohol.
At his classes he learned that he and the other Dr sodas (you know like the Pepper and Thunder) are actually known as spicy cherry pop. He never thought that name really fit, but was he to argue with his educators. By the time he graduated he had learned a whole lot about himself and the soda pop world. He realized that he was basically just a clone of Dr Pepper, and with some help of a school counselor he came to terms with that. He also saw a ton of rad bands that no-one ever believes an old geezer like him would have watched. Damn kids!
- Website
- http://www.dadsrootbeer.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Categories
- Soda Pop
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 5/15/2013
- Comments
- View and Leave A Comment