The other night, I saw a commercial starring Michael Ian Black and a singing hawk, introducing me to "Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash," a special variation on the original formula (which I don't believe I've ever drank) that's only available from now until the end of the Christmas season. The commercial played it like this was already a holiday tradition, but 2006 is indeed the drink's debut year. With Pepsi Holiday Spice presumably gone forever, this may be as close to a Christmas cola as we'll get this year, discounting everything Jones Soda sends our way.
Though intended to be a "holiday edition" of Sierra Mist, there was a concerted effort to not alienate anyone who hates Christmas, the holidays or even just random snowflake graphics. I can take the green label and the red color of the beverage as just enough to give it a passing grade, and after all, cranberries belong to the colder holidays. More importantly, as someone who can be given a Ziploc bag full of raw limes and cranberries and call it dinner, I had high hopes that "Cranberry Splash" would put me on the Sierra Mist bandwagon for now and forever.
It's good stuff -- kind of like carbonated Cherry Kool-Aid. Its hue makes glasses full of Cranberry Splash a-okay on the holiday table; plus, it's always fun to drink things that are supposed to taste like two different things entirely. On every sip, your head will try to separate the flavors of lemon-lime and cranberry, never quite succeeding but always believing that you "almost had it." Factor in the "limited time" aspect of the drink, and we've got a winner. Personally, I'll drink fizzified dog shit if a soda company tells me it won't be around in two months. It's always nice when a comer-and-goer actually tastes good.
While hunting for lime Mist, we also stumbled upon several bottles of Febreze air spray in holiday scents. Regular Febreze is a lifesaver in this house, as I'm sure it is in many homes filled with cats or smoke or both. These "Air Effects" editions don't pack the same "clean punch" as normal Febby, but they do smell like Christmas, so hooray.
There were three -- "Apple Spice & Delight," "Vanilla & Baking" and "Fresh Evergreen & Snow." And that's pretty much the order of desirability, too. "Apple Spice" is a nice apple cinnamon blend, of the same smelly genre as all of those red candles people can't stop buying until 12/26. The vanilla one is supposed to make your house smell like you just baked cookies, but it's just plain old vanilla. Not bad, but not entirely Christmassy. "Fresh Evergreen & Snow" just smells like regular room spray, and not a particularly good regular room spray. With correspondingly colored can tops, I couldn't resist buying all three. And now I will go huff them until the walls melt.
This here post is also an SNT.
Posted by Matt on 11/11/2006. E-mail me!
Chestnuts roasted by 
of biscuit donuts.
They rewrote Christmas standards using Cranberry in the lyrics. http://www.sierramist.com
God save us all.