I don't actually have a good alias for this fine man, but I'm guessing he wouldn't mind if I referred to him as "Bryozoan". That combined with the fact that he was my freshman-year roommate at UC Santa Cruz should make it easy for him to identify himself**, and to know that it's him I'm thanking right now.
He sent me a couple of sodas I truly hadn't seen before, and which fall without question into the "Weird" category.
 |
| I'm glad they put the intended flavor in the upper left side of the label. |
I don't think I'm familiar with "Avery's", but they seem to be bottled in Connecticut***, so at least they're far from the Lab. I feel safer now.
First, we'll try Kitty Piddle. An interesting observation: this is the only bottled soda I've ever had which was filled to the very top of the bottle (you can see this in the photo). I know I'm not supposed to eat food from swollen cans lest I ingest botulinium toxin and die****, but the same thing shouldn't happen here. I can only imagine that, when it was being bottled, some kind soul didn't want me to miss out on that last swallow of kitty piddle.
Where and when: Purchased sometime in spring 2012 at Powell's Sweet Shoppe, Los Gatos, CA
Color: Translucent straw yellow. The bottom of the bottle has a bit of precipitated whitish stuff.
Scent: Sharp, tart. I'm quite familiar with the scents of human and dog urine*****, but not cat, so I suppose this could smell like kitty piddle.
Taste: Kind of reminiscent of Orangina, but with a bit of added mellowness. This is consistent with the label's proclamation of "Pineapple Orange". Pleasant, except that my mind (being the suggestible thing that it is) keeps trying to imagine cat pee. If I manage to ignore that, it's actually decent. Not a lot of aftertaste.
Quaff rating: 3.5. Surprisingly good.
Cough rating: 1.0. I can't quite shake the mental image.
Okay, on to the Dog Drool.
Where and when: Purchased sometime in spring 2012 at Powell's Sweet Shoppe, Los Gatos, CA
Color: Pale pink. Perhaps not too far from the color of living brain tissue.
Scent: Different. Tart, with a slight bitter undertone. Grape?
Nazgul: "Cherryish, with a little bit of watermelon".
Well, that's pretty different from mine. However, given that Nazgul did twice as well as I did on the Coke/Pepsi identification test, I really should give his opinion some weight.
Taste: Okay, I have to make a confession here. I'm more afraid to try this than most of them. And I can tell you exactly why--it's because of a joke RoTalMomska told me when I was a kid. It was triggered by the "drool" in the soda name. I'll include the joke at the end of this review...but consider yourself fairly warned by the fact that I still bear the scars of it more than twenty years later.
But I am--at least for this moment--still the Quaffmaster, and I cannot shirk my duty.
*not thinking of the joke* Not too bad. Pretty nice, actually. *not thinking of the joke* Grape-ish, with a substantial citrus, but more like lime. *not thinking of the joke* The label says "Orange Lemon", but I'd call it "grape lime." *not thinking of the joke* I think I like the Kitty Piddle a bit more, but I'd happily have this too, as long as I can avoid *thinking of the joke*.
Oh, crud. Now I may actually be sick. But it's not the soda's fault. It's RoTalMomska's.
Quaff rating: 3.0. Pleasantly mellow.
Cough rating: For the soda itself, probably 0.5. With the joke, 2.5.
* The review being 13 months late only makes me a somewhat cruddy friend.
** Unless my housekeeping habits that year have caused him to attempt to expunge me from his memory, for which I really couldn't blame him.
*** State motto: "Secretiones animalis esse bonos potiones"
**** But without *any* facial wrinkles
***** Flitwick, the Lab's Amazing Obnoxo-Dog, responds to the presence****** of most material objects by peeing on them, or the nearest convenient alternative object.
****** Or absence.
Oh, you want to hear the joke? Okay.
A guy walks into a saloon in the old west. He's obviously drunk, and the bartender doesn't want any trouble, so when he asks for a whiskey, the bartender refuses him.
Swaying, he addresses the bartender: "If you don' give me a whiskey, I'm a-gonna go get that thar spittoon and drink it instead."
The bartender doesn't believe that for a second. "Well, you just go ahead then, partner," he says.
The drunk man stumbles over and seizes the spittoon. He lifts it to his lips and tilts it up. The bartender is shocked and horrified to see his Adam's apple moving up and down.
"Okay, okay. I'm convinced. Come have yer whiskey," he says.
The man doesn't stop. He just keeps swallowing.
"Stop! I'll give you a whiskey, just stop!" the bartender cries, sickened.
The man doesn't stop. He keeps swallowing.
"STOP! Please, stop! I can't stand seeing this!" the bartender shouts.
The man puts down the spittoon and stumbles back to the bar. The bartender, awed and disgusted, brings out a shot glass and pours the man a shot.
"Mister, that's gotta be one of the worst things I ever saw. Why didn't you stop when I first asked you to?"
The drunk man looks blearily at the bartender and says...
"Well, I tried to, but I couldn't; it was all in one string."
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