Cleaning out the junk (food)

I've been sort of neglecting my duties recently as pop/candy/snack/general crap connoisseur extraordinaire. I know you all read this blog eager to know what I thought of the latest flavor modifications. It happens that I frequently try these things at lunch, then jot down a quick review in Gmail before returning to work. Then I never ever get to them again. So here come a few things I've reviewed that you may even have seen at the store.

Dr. Pepper Berries and Cream: I actually just tried this over the weekend, but it's the only new review of the bunch. A vast improvement over the Cherry Vanilla variety, this is easily one of the most interesting flavor variations to date. The flavor of Dr. Pepper is still present, but the raspberry flavor kind of attaches to and mixes with it, generating a sort of "black raspberry" flavor that is simultaneously easy to notice and yet still relatively subtle. I can't say I noticed the cream much, but considering I came in expecting more of the same as Cherry Vanilla - i.e. a complete inability to taste much of anything beyond the regular Dr. Pepper - I'm not about to complain. I'm not sure the world needed a black raspberry soda, but kudos to Dr. Pepper for doing something a little different. This is one of the few of the myriad flavor-combination soda varieties that I can actually recommend, and considering that Dr. Pepper's previous attempts were so mediocre (see: Red Fusion), I'm glad to see they've gotten it right this time.

Black Cherry Vanilla Coke (1/31/06): Not bad. The black cherry is a bit muted - as, really, black cherry flavors tend to be - but the vanilla is pretty good. In other words, it's basically as though Vanilla Coke had never ceased to exist in the first place. I'm not sure why soda manufacturers have started to insist on adding multiple flavors to their base flavors all at once, particularly when I'm not sure I've tasted one yet where all included flavors really stood out. (In Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, you really can't taste either of them, so at least this is an upgrade over that.) This isn't wine, I don't need to be tasting "subtle hints of vanilla, with a cherry finish." It's fucking Coke; just make the pop and be done with it.

Kit Kat Coffee (1/31/06): For people who like the overpowering odor of coffee but would rather not feel any of the benefits, Kit Kat's new coffee spinoff is the candy of the year. For the rest of us, it's just a Kit Kat that manages to make you smell like you just worked a double shift at Starbucks. I suppose it tastes fine enough during the eating process, but if your nostrils are open at all the aroma will knock out your tastebuds from noticing much else anyway. Kit Kat clearly didn't learn anything from the relative understatedness of coffee ice cream.

Two older pop reviews which have been in the archive for a while but which I don't think have been posted anywhere else:

7Up Plus Cherry (11/15/05): I'm sure that my telling you that this flavor has the exact same problem as the original 7Up Plus will come as no surprise to anyone. It's actually not quite as odious - the cherry mixes slightly better with the Splenda than the original berry mix did - but it's still pretty bad. It's funny because Splenda combines fine with cola - Diet Coke with Splenda is a perfectly reasonable alternative to original Diet Coke, with a minimal difference in flavor - but it just doesn't work with fruit. This may be more true of artificial sweeteners as a whole, but aspartame, despite a harsher chemical edge, doesn't have the sickly-sweet issue that Splenda does - letting 7Up Plus linger for more than a couple seconds causes involuntary spasms and a threat from my tongue to secede from my mouth in protest.

Black Cherry Fresca (11/9/05): I'm not sure what Fresca thinks they're doing. Challenging the Diet Rite monopoly on the "endless flavors of diet soda" market, perhaps? But rather than simply make a straight-up diet black cherry soda, Fresca has chosen to combine the flavor with its standard grapefruit. The result is, well, pretty abominable. Original-recipe Fresca already has one of the strongest aspartame kicks of any diet soda, and the black cherry's clash with the citrus is harsh enough that the chemical punch only becomes more pronounced. It's possible that another flavor - the other one I saw, but did not purchase, was Peach Citrus - would work in such a combination, but black cherry and grapefruit just don't mix, especially when there's no sugar involved. Stay far, far away from this one.

Before anyone asks, yes, I do plan to try that new Coca-Cola Blak stuff. I fully expect to be grossed out, though.