Boing! Strawberry

Serendipity plays a large role in the life of a Weird Soda seeker. Tonight, the lab staff had a hankering for burritos. When we went to our favorite local burrito place, lo and behold--a beverage I had never seen. And even better, one with a weird name.

Bang! is a fairly common brand of fountain drink found in Mexican restaurants in this area. I've never actually had it, but my understanding is that it is a vanilla cream blended with various fruits (in addition to the fairly ubiquitous Orange Bang!, there's also Horchata Bang! and Melon Bang!). But this isn't Bang!

It's Boing!. And yes, the exclamation point is part of the name.

Boing! is non-carbonated, and based on actual fruit pulp. The lack of carbonation makes it difficult to classify it as a Weird Soda, but I personally think the Weird part is more important than the Soda part, so I feel comfortable with the occasional foray into Weird Non-Carbonated Soft Drinks.

Anyway, I have observed two flavors of Boing! in the wild--Strawberry and Peach. Tonight, we'll try the Strawberry.

Where and when: purchased 3/27/09 at Super Taco, Vista, CA
Color: fairly opaque slightly bluish red. There is visible strawberry pulp floating around in it.
Scent: strawberry jam, almost exactly.
Taste: Very much like a strawberry fruit spread. Pleasant, somewhat overly sweet. Doesn't have the tartness of real strawberry, but the strawberry pulp is recognizable.

This isn't bad at all. I kind of miss the carbonation--this is more of a fruit nectar--but it's pleasant, if a bit overly sweet. The advertising strongly suggests that it is marketed for refreshment--the label features a strawberry in the background, along with a heavily muscled man in a yellow hardhat quaffing a bottle of Boing! enthusiastically. Over his head is text advising us to "Shake Well". It's like a soda bottled by the Village People; with any luck, the Peach flavor will have a cowboy or a biker on the label.

Quaff rating: 3. Pleasant, but a bit too sweet.
Cough rating: 0.5. Not really objectionable in any way.