I came across this gem at an Asian market. With a name like "Gettin' Cool! Strawberry Soda", how can you not give it a try? I can just imagine the Japanese television commercial for this. Sadly I could not find a commercial for it, but I'm sure it would be amazing.

This is the same company that makes Ramune, so it's no surprise that the bottle is unique. Unlike most bottles, which are made of plastic or glass, this is aluminum. I wonder if two R&D people at Sangaria sat in a boardroom for hours arguing the pros and cons of cans vs. bottles. Then around hour number five, the new guy comes up with the idea of an aluminum bottle to make both of them happy. They rejoice, shake his hand, and give the design team a call.

As far as taste goes, this was the first strawberry soda I've ever had. It was okay. It was sweet and smooth, with a decent strawberry taste. I probably wouldn't pick it up again because it wasn't that amazing.

Once again, my theory has been proven true. Burritos + Jarritos= perfect combination. This one was enjoyed at Don Pancho Taquería with a delicious veggie burrito. I love how flavorful this soda was. When they say mango flavor, they mean it! It was definitely the best mango soda I've ever had. It was sweet and refreshing. What more could you ask for a drink with a burrito?

Before I started reviewing drinks for Thirsty Dudes, I probably would have thought this was one of the best root beers. Now that I've tasted a lot more root beers, I might be a little jaded. Don't get me wrong, this is a good root beer, just not the best I've had. It has a strong vanilla taste and goes down really smooth. The carbonation is also really light, which is nice. There is honey in it, but I didn't really notice much. It's not as prominent as the honey in Thomas Kemper is.

A couple of years ago there was all the hoopla around fasting diets/cleanses. The one that I heard the most about was the Master Cleanse. It was basically people drinking nothing but lemon juice and maple syrup for a week. Everyone I knew who did it said that it was completely horrible. They felt like hell, their skin broke out and they suffered from bouts of diahaha (which is what my one friend calls diarrhea, because she claims poop is hysterical). The Master Cleanse did not seem appealing at all. This drink is like an updated version of it. It's lemon juice, maple syrup and a few other added ingredients for vitamins and taste. They should have spent more time on the taste. The vague strawberry flavor is hidden behind a wave of lemon juice. It's kind of gross. Not even in a artificial sweetener kind of grossness, just not good.

The instructions on the bottle say to drink four of these a day for a week. That's right, four. You're not supposed to consume anything else except water and tiny amounts of fresh fruit. That's 28 bottles of this with little else to upset the flavor. I can barely get through one. I didn't but into it originally, and I'm not going to now. I say good day to you Simplifast.

You know what? This is really good tea. If you don't like sweetened tea, this is a gateway to sweetened tea. If you don't like unsweetened tea, this is a gateway to unsweetened tea. It's right there, in tea purgatory, but a good purgatory. Think of this tea like a waiting room for kids. When you go to the tea doctor, and you have to wait in the waiting room, they've got video games, first edition books in mint condition, your favorite movies in HD with a giant LED TV. We're talking 72 inches of viewing pleasure. Also, a sub tray. I love when I got to parties and they have sub trays. Also, they have an endless bowl of guacamole and chips. Like Chi Chi's salsa but with guacamole instead. They will also have an endless array of Numi teas so that you can train yourself to like either full sweetened or full unsweetened tea. When you are satisfied, you get your parking validated and you can leave.

This is my first go with agave and I've got to say, I like it. It's a very soft, fruity flavor. Everything is subtle, but after a while the fruit get stronger and just makes you smile because it's good. Mango and passion fruit are good friends in this drink and although I'm no teaman, that's a Jewish tea maker, I think they should be combined more often.

These come in the tiniest bottles ever. 4oz= awesome for reviews. This is 100% juice, and 100% awesome. Okay so I lied, I wish it were bigger because it's pretty great. I am a sucker for orange mango juice.

Yang-mei is the official name for yum-berry. This is my first adventure in a straight up yum-berry beverage, and I have to tell you I'm not that impressed. It tastes like a foreign fruit punch. Does that make sense? Is that racist somehow? I don't know and I don't really care. It's insanely sweet. I can't even drink this entire 17oz bottle in one sitting. This is my third attempt at it. I think I'm looking at two more. I even had to check to make sure it wasn't a concentrate. It's not, just tons of sugar was involved with it's creation.

When I was growing up I loved spending time at my grandfathers house. There was a pool table, a barn with tons of sweet tools that we would use to make rad stuff, not one, but two incredible tire swings, and most importantly there was tons of fruit growing all over his property. There were gardens full of strawberries and raspberries, an apple orchard, and my possible favorite a giant cherry tree. I would wait all year for those cherries to be ripe. Then I would fill up bushels of cherries, hide somewhere and eat them until I got sick. Let me tell you fruit gut rot is no joking manner. This soda is made with organic cherry juice, and it reminds me of those days in late summer, sitting on top of the chicken coup listening to EMF on my Walkman and pounding cherries. It's not overly sweet or overly carbonated. It's pretty great. That cherry tree fell down a few years ago in a storm, but since then bats infested the barn. Then an owl chased them out and it lives there now. So that's pretty sweet.

This is pretty darn great. It's a nice, spicy ginger ale. It's about 75% of the way to a ginger beer. That honey though...woo! It's kicking for a little bit, like the second wind of a soccer player, but then cools down because of the honey, like the fat, out of shape dad of said second winded soccer player.

It's amazing what honey does to a beverage. I also like how Thomas Kemper doesn't give a rip about the "bee shortage" and uses it to sweet/mellow out their pop. I feel like I taste a bit of cinnamon and maybe nutmeg in there, too, but since it's just "spices and herbs" on the bottle, only Mr. Kemper knows for sure.

This is a really good and really different drink and I encourage no one to pass it by and not get it if they haven't had it before. This honey aftertaste is something special, a force to be reckoned with, indeed.

I'm the only one in the office. It's a lonely day here. It was supposed to be a snow day of massive proportions but, once again, the outcome was overstated to say the least. It was honestly no worse than a typical snowy day. Perhaps it was a little more slippery. So what do I do? Jump right on that bus, earlier than usual, and ride in to work. No one is here. Everyone anticipated a disaster. So here I am, listening to an array of different new jams including, but not limited to, Everything But The Girl, Prick, and now an old Battles EP.

Even though the storm of apocalyptic scale was nothing more than an icy dusting, it's still cold. What better way to warm up than with a cold bottle of sweet tea? Yeah, I know, cold on cold. It doesn't matter. You drink sweet tea when it's hot so I'm in my own little paradise and it tastes great. I don't know how it could taste otherwise with these ingredients: water, cane sugar, and black tea. That's it. No preservatives. No artificial sweeteners. No anchovies. Nothing. Due to this, and the fact that True Brew is from Texas, means that this is one phenomenal sweet tea. Potentially some of the best sweet tea I've ever had. This is what sweet tea should taste like. It's not too sweet, but it is very sweet. I'm not complaining and I've got no complaints with this gem of an iced tea.

I'm not being kind with this 5-bottle review because this is the model. I don't know if it can go up from here. They took something great and left it alone and for that, I reward them.

This Battles record makes me want to learn how to play drums.

It smells like a cola. It starts to taste like a cola but then it, like so many cars in James Bond films, drives right off the side of a cliff and explodes leaving nothing but the burnt shell of a car that once was. It starts to get that strange acai flavor and then, right when you thought it was over, the Stevia kicks in for the kidney kick that wasn't needed or warranted in any way. The initial cola is kind of like a diet Pepsi and then the rest of it is like...kissing a girl who at night seems like she could be attractive but then you see her in the daylight and she's upwards of the grossest girl you've ever seen. Been there? Me too. Now twice.

Dry soda is such a strange thing. It's almost like seltzer water without the horrible aftertaste. This has such a great vanilla scent. It smells like the afterthought of when you take a big wiff of a bottle of vanilla extract. For how strong the smell is, the taste is surprisingly tame. It's definitely there, but it's not over the top. It's right up front. With each sip you are greeted with a pleasant mild vanilla, and then it's suddenly gone.

This is most definitely a soda for adults. If you ever gave this to a kid they would give you the "you gotta be kidding me" look. If they were young enough, it might even bring on some tears. If they were old enough your home would more than likely get TP'ed just like the old fogy's house that gave you popcorn balls for Halloween when you were a kid. If anyone in this world deserved the "you gotta be kidding me" look it was surely him.

They've done it again! Eleven for eleven! It's quality white tea, nicely sweetened and a wonderful melon flavor. This bottle contains the two distinct waves of flavor. First the honeydew washes over you until it's cleared out of the way for the slight bitterness of the tea. I do believe this company is infallible.

Macintosh Apple and cherry sounds like a good combination to me? What do you say? Yes? Si? Some of us at Thirsty Dudes can pretend to be bilingual. Remember that review that I did where I counted in Korean? Trilingual. Seriously, I took a couple years of Spanish in high school and some in college. I am awful at it now. I wish I were better. I live in a heavily Puerto Rican populated neighborhood and sometimes I wish I could talk to them in their native tongue.

This drink has a half candy, half alcohol smell to it. You think that it's going to burn when you drink it, but it's fairly calm to the taste. You get a little bit of apple but I would say the cherry is more prominent. It's not a bad diet taste, either. It is sweetened with Erythitol but doesn't have that gnarly uber-sweet taste. I think this might be one of the better Lifewaters I have tried.

Oh Alo the wonderful drinks you make. To begin with, you are the only aloe beverage company that I have had that uses actual fruit juice instead of artificial flavor. That alone makes you stand out. The fact that your aloe chunks are about 5x bigger than your competitors also adds to your charm. After my recent adventure in the world of mangosteen, I can say this definitely tastes like the fruit. I just found out that a health food store in Buffalo now carries these, so I'm pretty excited that I'll be able to get them on the regular.

This is a pretty cherry flavored cola. It's strange to think that companies put out drinks and food in general that is cherry flavored but doesn't actually taste like cherry. It's the same thing with grape. Poor grape. I think that I feel more sorry for grape than cherry but we are talking about cherry here, so I digress. This tastes like when your one friend's mom sprung for a basket of fresh picked cherries and you eat your weight in cherries like your friend's garage was Ground Round.

The cola taste is left in the theoretical dust because your taste buds are too focused on the other flavors. The cola taste is not bad, I should add.

I'm happy that this doesn't taste like eating a ginger flavored barrel and that it's actually pretty awesome.

Shit Sandwich.

Mary Anna definitely took her time when developing her tea. She's made a very nice sweet tea here. It's not as sweet as traditional southern sweet tea, but it has its place. I don't think the lemon juice was necessary, but hey some people love their lemon tea. The bottle pictures a pretty rad old car and two ladies with a surfboard at the beach. I wish I were at the beach. Even more I wish I knew how to surf. Very few things are cooler than surfing. Seriously, has Keanu Reeves ever been as cool as he was in Point Break? Picture Keanu jumping out of a plane after Mr. Swayze, gun drawn. While in free fall they pull back their dead presidents masks, give each other a nod and start chugging down their Mary Anna's Summer Sweet Tea. I mean if the FBI and bank robbers can't put their differences aside in order to enjoy some tea, then there is no hope for this world.

Dear Rat Bastard Root Beer, you have a really stupid name. I mean come on Skeleteens, you have a quality line of sodas, but you just try to hard to be "alternative" and "in your face" with your titles. When I was a young teenager I thought it was funny, but now as a grown ass man, it just seems childish. Yes, yes I know I'm a 31 year old that reviews soda pop, and that is pretty childish in it's own rite. Like a disappointed mother I think you're better than that.

Even though this has most of the same ingredients as all of the Skeleteens' sodas, it doesn't have a huge bite to it. It's pretty straightforward for a root beer. It has jasmine and clove in it, but I didn't really notice them too much until the last sip. Even then it wasn't very strong. I really expected it to be a unique root beer, but it would fit right in with the rest of the gang. Now remember Skeleteens, you don't need to resort to cheap promotional tactics. Let your soda speak for itself. It can do it. I have faith in you and I love you. Now wash up. Dinner is almost ready.

Who doesn't love a refreshing water to cap a long afternoon of shoveling snow? I'm pretty sure that I can speak for the entirety of the North East United States when I say, "Us!" To put a feather in the fake cap of water, we will put a touch of cherry to sweeten and flavor it up and a touch of mint to cool it down. Together, we have the hard to find Cherry mint Metromint water. This was the hardest to find and for that reason, the flavor that I looked forward to the most. Sadly, yes sadly, I shouldn't have. First sip is strange. You know what it's going to taste like because you've been down Metromint Boulevard before. It still doesn't prepare you for what's to come. Water, cool refreshing water, followed by cherry "essence" (which is fine with me) and mint. Do you know what mint and cherry tastes like? Luden's. Yep. You know when you're sick and you've got that scratch in your throat and you want to take care of it in a flash? Luden's to the rescue! Cherry to mask the clearly medicinal taste of the Mentholatum which in itself tastes like cool mint.

So, because of the relevance of this drink to medicine, and the fact that it's just not quite what I wanted since I'm not sick. I am forced to say that this is my least favorite Metromint water. I do not regret the quest for the holy grail that I put myself through, but I wish that I had liked it more than I did. Sorry Metromint, you can't win all the time. We'll always have chocolate mint.