Crush Lime

   I’m sleepy so let’s get this over with.  Aaron like lime soda, blah, blah, blah.  There aren’t many lime sodas on the market, yada, yada, yada.  Hopefully Crush Lime is delicious, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.  What I obviously have in front of me is a can of Crush Lime.  This was given to us by Dan Dub who I believe hated it.  Mike has since tried it and apparently loves the stuff.  I’ve been over thinking the order of drinks to review in my fridge and in a tired stupor picked this one out because it’d be the easiest to photograph (I could either photograph and then review it, or I could review it and then photograph).  Any who, this is a can of lime flavored soda which is made by Crush.  I like Crush Orange so I might as well give this one a shot as well.  Time to crack’er open. 

   Smells D-Lishus!  The first thing I thought of when I opened the can was candy.  This could very well be liquid lime candy.  I suppose most soda is liquid candy when you think about it but I don’t really want to think about it at the time.  I just want to drink this, so I shall.

   Well the initial taste is much weaker than I thought it would be.  The smell psyches you out, making you think you’re going to enjoy liquid lime candy when in fact you’re just drinking an average lime soda.  There isn’t a whole lot of fizz to Crush Lime, or Lime Crush as I’m sure everyone else in the world calls it.  I have no qualms with there being little fizz to this drink.  If it were any fizzier then the already muted lime flavoring would be stuffed even further back onto the bookshelf much like Garfield Tips the Scales: His Eighth Book.  The cat has like 50 something books and if you planned on collecting them as a kid you probably gave up around book 30 like I did.  To this day I’ll be going through my bookshelf and randomly find a Garfield book stuffed amongst my other bizarre reading material.  I found a Hi-lights magazine in there from 1987.  Guess what?  Goofus is still not ready for “big boy” scissors and Gallant will end up housing over 60 cats by the age of 42… most of them imaginary.  You know why I ranted just then?  I’ll tell you, because Crush Lime is boring.  This is a generic flavored lime beverage with no life to it.  This is something that you’d find when you need to scavenge for food right before a hurricane hits.  “I can’t believe I didn’t do this earlier.  Why isn’t there any bottled water left?!  Beef Jerky?  Yeah that’s a meat, we can eat that.  A gallon of sweet tea… sure the kids like sweet tea.  Generic lemon cookies?  Those go great with sweet tea!  What’s this?  Lime Crush?  I didn’t even know they made… ah heck I might as well grab it.”  You take it home and guzzle it down with your beef jerky and generic lemon cookies.  Never once do you think that it’s great or that it’s horrible.  You just drink it because it’s there.  If you like lime but don’t have access to Jarritos Lime or Stewarts Key Lime Soda, then I guess this would be ok.  Just know that you’re missing out on the superior product.

~A

Twist was oddly attracted to this can.

Mug Root Beer

   Well true to our word we really will review any soda if given to us for free by our fans.  Today’s review is Mug Root Beer, given to us by one Double R.  I really think that he meant for this review to be difficult.  Anyone can review an odd drink, pointing out what makes it unique… but a mainstream root beer that most everyone has tasted could be much more difficult.  Mug of course is one of the three big name root beer brands out there, the other two being Barq’s, and of course A&W.  I have a co-worker that refers to Mug as “the working man’s root beer”, or the “blue collar” root beer.  I really enjoy thinking of it that way, and the bulldog on the front of the can offering me a frosty glass of root beer seems to give off the feel of a “blue collar” kind of guy.  Speaking of the can art, it looks as if I’m picking up a frosty mug overflowing with suds.  Nice touch Pepsi… I mean Mug.  Enough with the chatter, let’s crack it open.

   I’m realizing now that I’ve never truly smelled Mug Root Beer… and upon doing so I realize that its root beer smell really isn’t that strong.  I kind of thought all the chemicals inside of it would have increased the aroma, but I’ve been wrong before… ONE TIME.  Time for some drinkin’.

   To be honest with you, and I always am, I haven’t had a Mug Root Beer in a while.  This tastes much more watery than I remember.  Mug doesn’t have the “bite” of Barq’s, or the creamy taste of A&W.  In fact it has a muted, less impressive version of the characteristics that make the other two root beers loved by so many.  A positive attribute of Mug how clean the taste is for a mainstream root beer.  There are definitely cleaner tasting root beers out there, but this one does pretty well compared to its A&W Rival.  As you might expect this is a very safe drink.  By safe I mean that you pretty much know what it’s going to taste like when you pick up a can for the first time.  It’s going to taste like boring root beer.  Now I recognize that I’ve probably become a root beer snob over the past two years, and I’m sure that’s affecting this review.  If you love Mug Root Beer and don’t understand why I’m not rating it higher, go out and try some Virgil’s, Boylan’s, or Bundaberg Root Beer and tell me they aren’t heads, tails, slugs, and snails better than Mug.  Until then I’m sticking with this…

~A

Faux Fact: Twist was the original mascot for Mug, but he asked for too much money

Dr. Pepper Cherry

   Being from Texas, I love Dr. Pepper (Especially Dublin Dr. Pepper).  Dr. Pepper is a staple soda here in the Lone  Star State, as it was invented here.  I also like cherry flavoring in soda, so normally you’d think that Dr. Pepper Cherry would be something I’d be all over.  Let me tell you in four words why I’m skeptical:  Dr. Pepper Red Fusion.  Red Fusion came out in 2002 and lasted a whole 2 years.  They never came out and said what flavored Red Fusion, but I always assumed it had a cherry base.  Sadly though, Red Fusion tasted like flat Dr. Pepper.  So excuse me if I don’t get all excited when I try this Dr. Pepper Cherry.  I will tell you one positive thing right off the bat about it though… I got this for free!  Thanks to reader D.W. (Not the caped crusader that graced The Disney Afternoon toon block) but a cool guy nonetheless. 

   Looking at this can, I can’t avoid thinking that Dr. Pepper is trying to seduce me.  It’s a black can, which isn’t something that’s very common right now (I can only think of Coke Zero off the top of my head).  At the top of the can in lowercase is the phrase “amazingly smooth”.  I seriously doubt that I’m going to be amazed at how smooth this tastes, but let’s give it a shot.  Oh before I continue, you know this is full of chemicals right?  I didn’t bother going into the ingredients list because they would just depress you.

    The aroma wafting (ok maybe wafting is a bit strong) out of the can smells just like Dr. Pepper… with a tiny, tiny amount of cherry in it.  Time for drinkin’.  The first sip I take puts one thought into my mind… normal Dr. Pepper is better than this.  I will never favor this over Dr. Pepper.  Ok, that was technically two thoughts, but let’s continue anyway.  While somewhat smooth it’s not “amazingly smooth”, but no one here is surprised by that.  Actually, when it first hits your tongue you get a nice bubbly sensation.  To put it somewhat bluntly it tastes like a slightly weaker Dr. Pepper with a little bit of a cherry taste to it.  I will say that this tastes better than Red Fusion did though.  I’ve harped on this drink more than it deserves, but I’m disappointed.  In my opinion you could make this a lot better by ramping up the cherry flavoring, and using sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.  I don’t say that because I prefer sugar, (I do prefer sugar, but I didn’t say that because I did… stay with me here.) but because sugar adds a crispness to soda that HFCS does not.  All in all, this is about what I expected… which saddens me.

As you can see by his expression, Twist was not seduced.

MTN Dew Live Wire

   We always like it around here at the Soda Jerk labs when someone gives us a drink to try for free. This week's installment is somewhat mainstream. From the Mountain Dew line, I have been given Live Wire. This will be the first 20 oz. plastic bottle I've reviewed, so I guess there is some history here. The packaging used is your basic Mountain Dew style; although, I do notice that it isn't "MTN DEW" but "Mountain Dew," so apparently they don't care as much about relabeling their other flavors. By the way, under the words "Live Wire" is the statement, "DEW sparked with orange." I don't know how you wouldn't guess this, given the bright orange color of the drink. I can't, off the top of my head, think of another flavor of drink when the color is orange.

    Anywho, here goes the test. It's a pretty sharp initial taste, with a slight burn. That is quickly dissolved by a candy-esque flavor that finishes off the experience. It's like a sweeter Sunkist Orange soda taste, which to me is the superior drink. There is hardly any, if any, original mountain dew flavor to be had. It's not a great drink, but it's not a horrible drink... in my opinion it's pretty average. I guess this should be a given, seeing that it's a branch of a mainstream drink line. While Code Red and Original Mountain Dew would be my top choices in this drink line, if someone offered me this, I wouldn't refuse them.

~A