I’m extremely pleased to confirm the return of Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash, which debuted last year and was automatically accepted by my committee-of-one into the pantheon of special edition holiday sodas worthy of word-of-mouth gushing and marble notebook sticker tributes.

I rarely if ever actively choose a soda from the lemon-lime branch, but the addition of cranberry (even artificial cranberry) turns this into something I’d consider calling “wicked” if fucking Weasel Ron didn’t ruin the word for me. It’s so good. I usually have to rely on my holiday spirit to get through these seasonal offerings, but this stuff is worth stockpiling in an empty cupboard for use in late June.

With its green packaging and 100% “Christmas Red” soda color, this is an absolute must for anyone seeking to boost their spirit by way of carbonated beverages. There’s even a diet version, which I don’t recall seeing last year. Everything about it makes me happy, and while soda technically shouldn’t be able to stir such strong emotions, I find myself at peace knowing that it’ll be at least two months before Cranberry Splash becomes hard to find. If anything I write between now and New Year’s Eve seems cracked out and jittery, this soda will be the reason.

One of our local pharmacies is especially awesome as it relates to carrying random holiday decorations/candy/blahblah, and a few nights back, we turned what was supposed to be a routine contact lens fluid pickup into a shopping spree. The woman did a comical double-take when she spotted the three Care Bears “Holiday Friends” shown above, and though they’re usually the kind of thing we’d look at for a minute before buying something cheaper and less cutesy, the store had mispriced them at $2.49 each. They’re supposed to cost eight bucks each, and even rung up as such, but the manager decided to honor what the price stickers said. He likely belt-whipped the employee responsible after we left, or at least, that’s how the story ends in the big budget film I plan to produce based on this experience.

“Cheer Bear” is clearly the leader of the trio with his (her?) kickass reindeer getup. The other two are just bears in hats, but Cheer Bear vies to be two animals in one, like a Wuzzle. Wuzzles are at least slightly more appropriate for scribes-with-sacs to be writing about, so he (she?) makes me feel okay with this level of coverage.

Fun Fact: Spellcheck tells me that “mispriced” isn’t a real word. Who knew?

Posted by Matt. E-mail me!