Soft Drinks

In the last year I’ve made a concerted effort to wean myself off carbonated beverages, and have started to drink green tea – in addition to water.  But I haven’t been able to completely abandon them altogether.  Just as we used to joke that Roy Rogers’ was my “temple”, we also joked that I loved Coke so much I needed a “Coke IV” (intravenous).  Here’s my review of the various sodas out there these days.

 Coca-Cola.  Established in Atlanta, Georgia in 1886.  The cocaine is long gone – since 1903.  Variants have included Diet Coke, Coke C2 (which I liked – half the calories but 99% of the taste), Coke Zero, Coke Lemon, Coke Vanilla, Cherry Coke, and even – for a short, controversial period – New Coke.  This is by far my favorite soft drink.  I even like the Diet varieties, especially the Lemon, Lime, Cherry and Vanilla variants, anything to change the monotony of the flavor-challenged diet soda.  Clearly Coke is by far the most popular, world-wide.

 Pepsi-Cola.  Dating from 1893, from New Bern, North Carolina – also made by a pharmacist.  They hit it big in the Great Depression by fighting Coca-Cola on price (12 oz for 5 cents vs. Coke’s 6 oz. for the same price), and by marketing to blacks.  Pepsi Challenge of 1975?  Sorry, I can tell the difference with my eyes closed – and I prefer Coke.  I’ll also take Diet Coke over Diet Pepsi any day – the latter tastes like salt water.  However, regular Pepsi is close enough in taste to Coke that I won’t be offended if I’m offered it as a substitute for Coke.  Despite Pepsi’s marketing, I don’t see it as any more “youth oriented” than Coke; to me soda, per se, is a youth thing, whether it be Coke, Pepsi, or Mountain Dew.

 Royal Crown (RC) Cola.  The company dates from 1905, but the cola itself was first made in 1934.  To me it tastes like the “generic” sodas you get at Giant or Safeway.  Not bad, and an adequate substitute for Coke or Pepsi, but I can tell the difference in taste.  To me the RC Cola crowd is the cola equivalent of AMC drivers.

 Dr. Pepper.  Not to be confused with “Sgt. Pepper”.  First served in 1885 in Waco, Texas, but not marketed nationally until 1904.  Yet again, concocted by a pharmacist (today’s pharmacists are doing what – filling prescriptions?  What’s the deal?).  I don’t like the taste, but it is definitely different than Coke or Pepsi. 

            Adam Corolla asked, “I see all these prime time TV ads for collect calls, but don’t know anyone who actually makes collect calls.  Who is making collect calls?”  I have to ask a similar question about Dr. Pepper.  I’ve seen the drink around and ads for it in prime time for as long as I can remember – and it’s obviously been nationally marketed far longer than I’ve been alive.  But for all this time, 40 years, I’ve never known a single person who drinks this.  So who’s drinking all this Dr. Pepper?

 Root Beer.  Made from sassafras; “root beer” as a drink has no more than .4% alcohol, about a tenth of the content of a regular beer.  I associate root beer with kids wanting to drink it because it’s sweet and it has “beer” in the name, even though it tastes nothing like regular beer and any buzz is due to caffeine and sugar and not alcohol.  Likewise, I don’t see any adults drinking this stuff. 

 Tab.  The original “Diet Coke”, introduced by Coke in 1963.  Like Fresca (see below) this used to be flavored with saccharin until they changed the formula in the 80s.  I never really liked the taste of this, but it would suffice is nothing better was available.

 7-UP.  Originally put out in 1929, shortly before the Crash.  At that time, lemon-lime drinks were very popular, but this one managed to survive the Depression.  I’m not a big fan of lemon-lime drinks, but I’ll take them every now and then.

 Sprite.  Introduced by Coca-Cola in 1961 to compete with 7-Up.  I think it’s certainly tarter and peppier than 7-UP.  Diet Sprite was one of my favorite diet drinks, as it tasted most like its non-diet variety.

 Fresca.  This originally came out in 1963, made by Coca-Cola.  The saccharin was replaced by Nutrasweet in 1985.  It’s supposed to be low-calorie, grapefruit flavor.  According to legend, this was President Lyndon Johnson’s favorite drink.

 Mountain Dew.  Surprisingly, this Pepsi product dates from the 1940s.  What was “extreme” back then?  To me this looks like anti-freeze, and tastes like a lemon-lime drink on steroids.  As with the others, they made several different variants, including, but not limited to, Code Red, Cherry, Baja Blast (lime & pineapple, only at Taco Bell), Live Wire (orange), Voltage (blue raspberry/ginseng) – but my favorite, to the extent I like any of these, was Pitch Black.

 Pschitt.  This was a lemon-flavored drink, made in France, we could get at the high school cafeteria at the American School of Paris.  The name is pronounced “SHIT”, which produced all sorts of laughs.  “Could you pick me up a can of shit?” “I’m drinking shit!” etc. The French wouldn’t get it, unless someone overseas made a drink called MERDE (which is French for “shit”). 

 Jolt.  This probably deserves the title of first “energy drink”, and came out around 1985 – way before its time.  It claimed to have twice the caffeine.  I did notice it has a jolt to it, but nothing special in terms of flavor.  Back in January 1991, when the Gulf War was in full swing, Wayne & Garth claimed to be zoned out on full-time CNN coverage supported by Jolt Cola and Pizza Hut.

Cheerwine.  This is local to western Virginia and North Carolina, and has been around since 1917.  Basically it tastes like a cherry variant of Dr Pepper – not quite like Cherry Coke.  I picked up a bottle of this in Massanutten in December, and while it has a distinctive and unique taste, it’s not so fantastic that I’m motivated to seek out more of it.

 Nehi.   This came in various flavors, but the grape is the most well-known, with by far the most cultural references, not the least of which is RADAR’s preference in “M*A*S*H”.  It’s been around since 1924, but eventually merged with RC Cola.

 Orange Crush, Grape Crush, and SunKist.  I remember being obsessed with grape soda as a kid, despite never really caring for it once I actually tasted it.  I have no use for carbonated orange drinks.  I do like Sunny Delight.

 Fanta.  I remember this was popular in France when I lived there, in grape, lemon, and orange varieties.  Remarkbly, this was developed in Nazi Germany when import restrictions prevented the German branch of Coca-Cola from making Coke the normal way, so they had to improvise.

 Shasta.  This was a line of low-cost drinks in various flavors (cola, diet cola, lemon-lime, etc.) we’d see at the PX (Walter Reed).  I can’t recall ever drinking any of this.

 Ginger Ale.  Actually what we think of as “ginger ale” is dry ginger ale, as opposed to “golden ginger ale”, which is not as popular.  Canada Dry and Schweppes are popular brands.  I do like ginger ale as a change of pace from Coke every now and then.

Guarana.  The best known brand is Antarctica, which also makes beer.  This is very popular in Brazil.  It has a big kick to it, and tastes like a unique blend of Coke and ginger ale.  Guarana, the little red berries, have a high caffeine content and is used in may of the energy drinks in the US.

 Crème soda.  Has a vanilla flavor.  Nahh.  The Dr Pepper Berries & Crème flavor had a strange taste, almost like children’s grape flavored medicine.  Kid’s medicine has a odd taste: it has to be nice enough that a kid would willingly swallow it, but not so nice that children would really want to drink it.

 Clear colas.  Remember those?  Talk about lame.  Water is clear, so it’s healthy, so if it’s clear it’s healthy, right?  Hydrochloric acid is clear too, would you like to drink that?  I didn’t think so.  Carbon monoxide is colorless and odorless, but clearly deadly.  “Clear” is not clearly better.

 Sweeteners.  These are what make the drinks sweet, and why we enjoy drinking them.  They’ve changed over the years.

Sugar.  Better known as sucrose.  This is still used in Mexican Coke, but I can’t tell the difference between this and HFCS, see below.  It’s making a comeback, in the form of Throwback Pepsi. 

High fructose corn syrup. Replaced sugar in Coke and Pepsi in 1984.  It’s much cheaper than sugar but has the same flavor and strength. 

Saccharine.  This was in Tab and Fresca.  It definitely tastes different than sugar, giving a chemical kind of taste.  It’s been around for a long time, as I recall reading references to it in We The Living.

Aspartame (aka Nutrasweet).  One of the more modern sweeteners, making saccharine obsolete.  It tastes a little better than saccharine.

Splenda (sucralose).  I can’t tell the difference between this and Nutrasweet, or why it’s better.