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September 26, 2005:
Those mad madmen at the Jones Soda Secret Laboratory are at it again. Longtime readers should remember the Jones Soda Holiday Pack review from last year, detailing the company's efforts to turn classic seasonal foods like turkey & gravy, mashed potatoes and even green beans into perfectly safe but absolutely disgusting soft drinks. The beverages were awful, and yet, they were amazingly accurate. The Holiday Pack caused such a stir that stores sold out of the limited inventory in record time, leading to hopeful gross-out connoisseurs to spend as much as a hundred bucks for a set on eBay. Bottles of Jones Soda make for unlikely collectibles, but there we were, stockpiling bottles of "Mashed Potatoes & Butter" soda alongside rookie baseball cards and old Franklin Mint coins. While Jones has made plenty of good drinks (the kind you buy because you like the way they taste and not for the stories you'll get to tell your friends), they've clearly found their niche with these holiday offerings. So why limit themselves? Why not make...Halloween soda?
Four different kinds of Halloween soda! With obvious inclusions like "Candy Corn" and "Caramel Apple," Jones quickly ran out of ideas and fudged up two even stranger formulas -- "Scary Berry Lemonade" and "Strawberry S'Lime." You can't purchase the four flavors in a set; instead, each is only available in its own four-pack, with half-sized cans that seem perfectly generous to anyone who's ever had the overwhelming pleasure of drinking caramel apple soda. While far more palatable in theory than the flavors of the Holiday Pack, I sadly report that all four are largely duds that must be considered only for novelty purposes. One sip and you'll agree that cool pumpkin can graphics cannot alone justify the existence of flavors like these.
Candy Corn: Candy Corn is "leader" of the pack -- or at the very least, this one got the biggest effort. As soon as you pop the can, the scent is overpowering. It's disgusting at first, but in due time, you'll come to recognize the odor that defeats your soul as being genuinely reminiscent of candy corn. So it's gross, but it's definitely candy corn. Furthering the excitement and fear is the fact that it's been visually altered with a yellow dye capable of blinding every living creature within three miles of it. I don't think they had any specific, nigh-natural way of making the shit yellow, either. It's like they just dumped five spoonfuls of yellow Easter egg dye into each can, therefore producing the only soda on the planet that can outright stain oak. I speak from experience, and Jones will pay.
It takes a few sips to really comprehend the taste. The shock involved tends to either dull or exaggerate one's senses. Once you get past that and approach the soda with a more Zen-like philosophy, we'll all agree on two things. One, it tastes like something that came out of a bottle of Orange Slice left open in the backyard since 1992. Two, it really is as if you're drinking candy corn. I'm not saying that this is a good thing, but nobody can make any false advertising claims.
Strawberry S'Lime: A fiery red teaming-uppage of strawberry and lime, this one smells a heck of a lot worse than it tastes, a loose but nonetheless valid chalk-mark on Jones Soda's infamous Scorecard of Triumph. The atrocious odor is remarkably akin to the stench of wet aspirin. If you've never smelled wet aspirin, just know that there's a reason so many credit it with the atheist boom of last century. If you can avoid using your nose while bringing the can to your lips -- tricky but manageable -- it actually tastes like something that could be mass-marketed in a totally non-novelty fashion. That's more of a testament to how much shitty soda there is out there than to Strawberry S'Lime's great taste, but in a sea of ill will, I think the S'Lime will take any compliment it can get. It's kinda like Pop Rocks soda.
Scary Berry Lemonade: Wow. Because the flavor itself has no real connection to Halloween, they had to cover for it. I'm not sure exactly how dyeing the soda bright blue improves its relationship with Halloween, but that was the solution, and whoooo wee is it ever blue. Expecting this to be the least offensive of the bunch, I dove into the glass without half as much apprehension as I did the others, confident in the substantial chance that I might even like it. Let me be the first to say: Never dive into a glass of Scary Berry Lemonade soda. Never. Don't do it. It will mark the beginning of the end for you and yours.
It's basically an combination of all the various, gross medicines you had to take whenever your chest got wheezy as a kid, only without the naughty alcohol content. It's not at all like lemonade or berries, relying on the loophole that it's just too fucking sour for anyone to be able to tell what it really tastes like. And I'm not talking "really sour" like I would when describing lime juice -- we're talking the kind of "really sour" that literally fizzles and smokes on your tongue, seeping into every crevice like an invading liquid pirate brigade looking to tick people off. I realize that this particular flavor has been around for a while and indeed has fans, but even as a smoker with extremely dulled taste sensations, I can't picture washing down anything with this stuff.
Caramel Apple: The cynic in me believes that Caramel Apple is a specialized killer that understands the need to disguise itself as something unassuming in an effort to lure in a broader range of victims, but I must admit that it's really not that bad. In color and scent, it's exactly like apple juice. In practice, it's exactly like carbonated apple juice. Doesn't mean that I'm gonna drink it for kicks or any crazy shit like that, but at least this one doesn't inspire visions of a Jones Soda flavor scientist trying to gain revenge on the public at large for being jilted six hours before his high school prom. Caramel Apple gets a halfway-there thumbs up.
Overall: We're 2 for 4. Caramel Apple and Strawberry S'Lime aren't without their share of crimes, but all told, they're edible in more than a literal sense. Scary Berry Lemonade and Candy Corn are the more obvious liquid sentries of Satan, existing in no small part to destroy innocence and make people throw up. Regardless, Jones Soda continues to rule, fully understanding that the best time to nail the public with alien soft drinks is during the holidays, when we're so crazed with freaky cheer that we'll even overlook the fact that we signed papers long ago swearing that we'd never drink candy corn juice.
The Jones Soda Halloween selections are available only at Target, and only for a limited time. That sounded like it was paid for.
- Matt (9/26/05)
One year ago on the Halloween Countdown:
Marcus The Carcass!
Two years ago on the Halloween Countdown:
Halloween Treats From The Hostess Bakery
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