Filbert's Banana: Supplementary Review

The Mysterious Stranger strikes again!
As I walked by the mailroom at my place of business today, I caught that telltale gleam in my mailbox out of the corner of my eye. My heart swelled with joy. I moved into the mailroom--not prancing, mind you, but with a definite spring in my step--and found a bottle of joy in my box.
God bless you, Mysterious Stranger! You fill my heart with gladness and my box with Weirdness.

Today, the Stranger has left me a sample of Filbert's Banana. As it turns out, we have reviewed this particular weird soda on a previous occasion. However, it was one of the first Weird Sodas the Lab ever reviewed; it was prior to the use of highly standardized and scientific Quaff and Cough ratings. Thus, I am very pleased to be able to give Filbert's Old Time Quality Banana Soda the new, updated, modernized Weird Soda Review taste Test. Thank you, Mysterious Stranger!

Where and when: in my mailbox May 18, 2009
Color: Bright, bright yellow. The departmental assistant--a woman not easily fazed--said "I'm not going to tell you what that looks like." This isn't the creamy yellow of Post-It Notes, this is an ever-so-slightly greenish yellow. A yellow more like that found on warning stickers.
Scent: strong synthetic banana. I shall call it "Bananinator". It's not totally unlike the smell of banana bread--it's RIPE Bananinator.
Taste: The banana is definitely the dominant flavor, strong attack. As it fades, I'm surprised by the lack of tartness-0-there's just a hint of acid. Unusual in a soda to be so sweet without a tart aftertaste. Actually, there isn't much afetrtaste at all, just a moderately-fast-fading banana taste.

In my mind, the bright yellow Bananinators march in a line, but as they pass you see that their metallo-pulpy feet have left no imprint on the ground. They march on, leaving one unsure if their onslaught was simply a passing daydream, with its factual existence only hinted at by the faint, lingering fruitiness in your mind.

OK, that ended more strangely than I intended. More quaffing.
*quaff*

Hmm. There is a bit more tartness now, even in the initial taste. How odd. The banan is strong, but there's a rising note of sour/herbal. It's faint, still, but present. Perhaps it's a lasting aftertaste of the first quaffing--persisting just under my perceptual threshold, only to manifest as the next quaffing passes.

The ground trodden by the Bananinators seems to be unmarked, but as I walk it, there is the faintest feel of hardness in the ground--as if tiny filaments of metal and cellulose, deposited imperceptibly by the passing of the Bananinators, were weaving themselves into some sort of unholy Banandroid device, taking shape beneath the soil.

*quaff*

The herbal is fainter this time, and has a slightly more bitter taste. It's mostly sweet and banana-ey.

The secondary Banandroid's shape stops self-assembling. The time is not right; better to wait thus, half-formed, conserving its energy until a more optimal moment. And beneath the unmarked soil, the Banandroid half-slumbers. Dreaming, not dead, lying eternally until the stars are right. Only the faintest hint of banana-scented industrial solvents arise from the soil to betray its lurking menace.

*burp* Still banana-ey.

Quaff rating: 2.5. Overly sweet and fake-tasting, but as banana sodas go, pretty nice.
Cough rating: 1. Would be off-putting to those who fear bananas. And well they should...