Weird Drinks: Pepsi White vs Pepsi Green!
Behold, I present to you, a death match between two exotic Pepsi flavours, gathered from around the world!
In this corner…
Pepsi Green
I got this little gem at a 7-11 in Thailand, where it’s all over the place. My friend who lives there absolutely hates it, and can’t understand why the locals “are obsessed with it” (she says with disgust). I’m not sure how I feel about it, or even if it counts as a cola. Everyone I feed it to says the taste is familiar, but they can’t quite place it (check out the heated internets debate on the subject). My kid sister says it tastes like Dr. Pepper. I also taste mint, with a hint of a floral bathroom air spray (or maybe just it’s the putrid green colour that makes me think of bathroom products talking).
Wanna know more? Check out Pepsi Thailand, which has got to be the slowest loading corporate website in the entire known universe. I wrote this entire post before it finally loaded. Go you, Pepsi Thailand!
Once the novelty wears off, I give it 6 Mehs out of 10.
In the other corner...
Pepsi White
Good old eBay provided me with this questionable limited edition beverage from Japan. Guess what the White refers to? Yogurt! But it doesn’t actually taste like yogurt. At all. (Maybe this is a good thing?) I was expecting that it would taste like calpis, but it actually tastes kinda spicy. According to the “The Japan Marketing News” it has ‚Äúa deeper, more memorable flavour.‚Äù Metafilter says it tastes like “malted battery acid.”
I do like the smell though, which smells like a cordial I had as kid in New Zealand called witches’ brew (any kiwis remember it?).
Overall, I give it a 5 Good Thing It’s Limited Editions out of 10.
So, Pepsi Green … wins! (if you can call being less gross winning…)
Update: Smart Energy Blood Orange & Chilli not recalled
I was kinda excited when someone named Amelia reported in the comments that a Coles employee told her that the Smart Energy Blood Orange & Chilli had been recalled. This was all I needed to prove that those skinny little cans were filled with chilli flavoured danger and insanity. So, I emailed Spring Valley to ask what was up, and after about a week they replied:
Dear Ms Raynes-Goldie
Thank you for taking the time to contact us regarding our Spring Valley
Blood Orange and Chilli Smart Energy Drink.Please rest assured that we have no concerns with this product. It is
supplied to smaller retailers only such as Petrol stations and Convenience
stores.Once again thank you for taking the time to contact us and we trust this
has been of assistance to you.Kind regards
CADBURY SCHWEPPES PTY LTD
I was kinda relieved since I accidently bought a can the other day, thinking it was the Blueberry flavour. And not being one to waste food, I drank it with some spicy pizza, whilst fearing for my life. Now I’m glad it was safe, but, it still tasted mega-ick.
Weird Drinks: Spring Valley Smart Energy Blood Orange & Chilli
What’s more disconcerting than an energy drink flavoured like blood oranges and chillies? A blood orange and chilli flavoured energy drink that doesn’t actually have chillies in it. Spring Valley has a new line of “Smart Energy” drinks featuring such a flavour (so new, they aren’t even on their website yet. That, or they’re just lazy).
As a fan of chili chocolate, I was pretty excited to try this drink. Chillies create a warm, friendly burning in your mouth. This, however, causes scary chemical burn in your throat that is probably not unlike battery acid, or self induced acid reflux. It’s a more palatable, more fruity version of the worst energy drink I’ve ever had - Cocaine, which is more like a pepper spray-based drink than an alternative to street drugs. It was so vile that I couldn’t have more than one sip.
The artificial chilli flavour of this Smart Energy drink makes me suspect that they came across it by mistake, and decided to turn a flaw into a feature. “Oh, it’s crap, this is supposed to taste like orange, but it makes my throat burn!” “Just say its chilli flavoured! The kids will go crazy for it!” Or maybe, as my friend suggested, it’s just a guise to get rid of some gross chemical that was taking up room in the Spring Valley factory.
There is one plus side to this drink. Even though there are no actual chillies in the Blood Orange & Chilli drink, it does contain yerba mate, a plant popular in South America, where it is prepared like tea and often served instead of coffee. It’s more potent than coffee but makes you less jittery. Perhaps this is why the drink produces a nice buzz, despite its not so great taste.
But I can’t help but notice that the other supposed flavour is not just orange, but blood orange. Perhaps it’s a subtle suggestion of what will happen to your throat of you drink too much.
Weird Drinks: Cucumber Drink
Look! Cucumber flavoured drink (or green pumpkin, according to the ingredients list, the only thing in English). Awesome! I thought this was another exciting gem like the Basil Seed Drink from my local Korean food store (even though this one is made in Taiwan).
Or, at least that’s what I thought until I opened the can and took a sip. First warning that boredom would ensue: it was brown. This is never a good thing. I expected it to be clear or milky, like a cucumber. And maybe have some delicious bits of cucumber. Nope. Second warning: it was sweet! Since when is cucumber sweet? And not gross sweet, just boring plain old sweet. Like sugar mixed with burnt water. How do you burn water? I don’t know, but they figured out a way.
It’s so underwhelming, I can’t even think of a snappy line to end with.
UPDATE: R has kindly informed me that this is in fact winter melon flavour, not cucumber. I guess this could’ve made it even more exciting, since I’ve never tried winter melon, but it doesn’t change the fact that it still takes like burnt!
Weird Drinks: Basil Seed Drink with Honey
I’ve recently become obsessed with drinks that have crap floating in them. It started when I had a bizarre craving for aloe vera drink, the kind with floating bits of aloe vera. Mmm. Since finding it in Perth at a Korean grocery store, I’ve been drinking it by the litre.
Anyway, I was in Sydney last week, and while buying vegan Thai lunch in Newtown I spotted a few bottles of Basil Seed drink for sale next to the Coke. It stood out for obvious reasons - the bottle looked like it was full of mini floating eyes that look at you while you drink them. Yum! It tasted like melted popsicle, and the basil seeds were kinda crunchy and slimy at the same time. But in a good way.
Then, the other day I went on a midnight mission to procure some of my delicious aloe 
juice and was super excited to see that they too had the Basil Seed drink, although a different brand (apparently this drink is so popular in Thailand that its made by a bunch of different companies). But, I was disappointed when I took my first sip. It tasted like melted popsicle like the last one, but the basil seeds in this version tasted like dirt.
The dirt taste raises some questions. Is this actually basil seed or something else? While gulping down my first bottle in Sydney (it was a very hot day), I briefly imagined that I was drinking a weird blob creature, made entirely of eyeballs, that feeds on the filth at the bottom of some remote lake. A creature that was put in that by the thriving eyeball-blob-creature-bottling industry in Thailand. And it’s only by some badly translated mix up that Australia gets bottles of this stuff labeled “Basil Seed Drink.” Or maybe that second bottle I got had just gone off.
-
Food Pr0n
-
Syndicate!
