Faygo Vanilla Creme

Where and when: Purchased 3/4/09 from BevMo, Oceanside, CA
Color: Very pale, almost clear with just a hint of yellow. Beige? Ecru? Can a soda be off-white?
Scent: Almost pure vanilla, very sweet. Smells a lot like vanilla ice cream, as compared to vanilla extract.
Taste: Vanilla ice cream. Very little aftertaste; almost pure sweet vanilla, not much extra acid beyond the carbonation. This won't appeal much to those who like their vanilla cream sodas to taste like the kind of vanilla you get for cooking--that's got a much more complex taste, more bitter notes. This is more like french vanilla ice cream than the kind of vanilla ice cream with little bits of actual vanilla beans in it.
This vanilla cream soda is a testament to simpler times--days when you tipped your hat to folks you saw on the street, when little Jimmy rode his bike down to the lot to meet his friends for a game of pick-up baseball, then came home for a backyard hot-dog cookout with his dad, mom, sister Susie, and their dog Rex, followed by bedtime at 7:30. Days when vanilla was vanilla and chocolate was chocolate, and never the two needed to meet. Days before the scandalous Twist, and the advent of those new-fangled (and probably Communist) fancy foreign-tasting vanilla cream sodas, with their complexity and subtlety, usually consumed by suspect beatniks and hippies along with their chais and weirdo reefer coffee or whetever the kids are doing these days, I tell you, it ain't like it was while I was growing up, the kids of today, no respect with their long hair and no manners, oughta have some sense knocked into 'em...

Er. Sorry. Actually, while this is a nice vanilla cream soda, its a little too "plain vanilla" for my taste. There's nothing at all offensive about it, but nothing all that interesting either. Now I'm noticing that there is a very delayed, faint, but persistent tangy aftertaste, which is maybe a little interesting. Still, I'd rather have a more vanilla-y cream soda.

As it's getting warmer, there's just the tiniest hint of more complex vanilla. Sorry, Faygo, too little too late. I am deaf to your feeble attempts at charm.

I wonder what this would be like in a vanilla ice cream float.

Quaff rating: 3 and a half. Very pleasant, but not interesting.
Cough rating: 0. There's no reason one would throw this up unless one couldn't stand soda at all, and then everything on the blog would be a 5. Except maybe the Dry: Lemongrass.