Sam Smith
CRYSTAL
PEPSI
Crystal
Pepsi
is
basically the “Citizen Kane” of lost drinks of the 90’s.
In 1992, Pepsi gave birth to this “clear
alternative” to dark soda which claimed to retain the flavor of regular Pepsi,
while other drink companies released variations on lemon and lime drinks.
Public reaction couldn’t have been better upon conception. Granted, most of this
popularity can be attributed to Pepsi’s use of Van
Halen’s stellar “Right Now” (another 90’s milestone as a music video) in its
sprawling marketing campaign. Pepsi also tapped into the pop culture current
with a compilation CD that was available through mail order featuring such
classic early-80’s hits as Tom Cochrane‘s “Life is a Highway,” Ugly Kid Joe‘s
“Cats in the Cradle,” and The Pixies’ “Head On.” Then, like many great historic
triumphs, everything turned terribly
sour. People simply stopped buying Crystal Pepsi, and the
drink was suddenly a subject of ridicule, most memorably on Saturday Night Live
with their faux-commercial for “Crystal Gravy.” In a pathetic,
last ditch effort, Pepsi re-released the drink with a citrus flavor. Apparently
you can still bid on unopened cans of Crystal Pepsi on eBay. Wasted-off-Butter
welcomes any volunteers who would be willing to sample
this precious artifact.
NEW YORK SELTZER
This is my sentimental entry into our archive: Everyday as a young lad, William and I would end a long afternoon of play with a bottle of New York Seltzer out of the Tyler’s refrigerator. NYS excels for its variety of flavors; Being a NYS drinker meant being a collector, scanning grocery store shelves for the certain pastel or neon-colored label that you’d been looking for for so long. It went through some changes, like the use of a 20oz. plastic soda bottle with modern label... It's nothing short of a disgrace when compared to the original 12oz. Miniature glass bottles with plain, bold, and classy label design. Personal favorites were Raspberry and Lemon-Lime.
HI-C: ECTO COOLER
That’s right, brough
t
to you by the same company that brought us the glorious “Orange Drink” (recently
and questiona
bly
renamed “Orange Lavaburst”), HI-C hit its artistic peak with “Ecto Cooler,” the
mascot drink of “Slimer” from Ghostbusters. Here we run into a common problem
with Middle-School-Lunch-Sacky-Drink-Boxes: the inability to perceive the
drink’s unique color, due to the drink passing directly from the box through a
thick white straw and into the mouth of the child. Even when spurts of cooler
would dribble down the chin, or even accidentally ejaculate out of the box
itself due to over-squeezing (so, so, SO common), this would not be enough drink
volume to truly see or appreciate the drink’s color. True fans of the drink
immediately transfer the boxed drink into a plastic cafeteria glass and proceed
to embibe the cooler with a traditional straw. Ecto Cooler recieves high marks,
however, for its straw-puncture-ability. Unlike other Middle-School-Lunch-Sacky-Drinks
like Capri Sun, where children got so frustrated with either a misaligned foil
circle or a crumpled straw point that they even resorted to entering through the
bottom end of the drink unit, Ecto Cooler always did its share to make sure
children had a most successful straw puncture without even the slightest amount
of hole overflow. For better or for worse, Ecto Cooler is now the name for a
citrussy cocktail that probably wouldn’t be appropriate to pack in little
Jameson’s lunch sacky.
***postscript: in my research, I came along a series
of items that mindfucked my brain back ten years into my kitchen pantry: Super
Mario Soda. The only information I can find about this Lost Drink of the 90’s is
that it was released in miniature cans by Shasta in 1990 (preceding the release
of the Super Nintendo) and came in the following flavors: Mario (Fruit Punch),
Luigi (Mixed Berries), Peach (Cherry.. LOL), and Yoshi (Apple). If anyone has
anything else to contribute to this find, please contact us.
UPDATE: wOb fan Jason Budd took it upon himself to track down these
moving images of Mario Soda in action. HUGE props to him for that.
Pablo Maurer
Orbitz
One m
ight
think that my first contribution to this article would be some thoughts on a
beverage that provoked the respon
se
"HUGE FAN" from me after imbibement. Instead, I am choosing to start with a
beverage that does nothing but confuse me. I talk of Orbitz. Should you not
immediately know what Orbitz is, just think "that fucked up fucking drink that
had those damn little balls floating in it, forever suspended." Upon a sampling
of this beverage, my young 14 or 15 year old mind would be sent into a
nightmarish deathspin. There are simply too many elements of this beverage to
even discuss - there's the supposed citrus flavor, which ended up tasting more
like a nice tall glass of bathroom cleaner. There was the thick consistency of
that fucking syrup beverage that the balls floated in. Need we even talk
about the balls? The balls were cold, slimy and disgusting. It was as if,
and please pardon the comparison, you were eating pieces of someone's brain.
Often times, consumers would save the balls for last, straining the horrible
liquid through their teeth and filtering out the balls - then they would eat the
balls in one fell swoop, hoping for a taste sensation.What they got instead was
a taste abomination. Side note: I once dated a girl in high school/college, and
in her bedroom, she had a STILL UNOPENED bottle of this shit. I have no regrets
when it comes to that relationship, except that I DIDN'T STEAL THAT FUCKING
BOTTLE OF ORBITZ.
Fresca
My other selection is a personal favorite. I
credit my father for many things - raising me, supporting me financially,
encouraging me to do something productive with my life. But more than anything,
I credit him for exposing me to fresca at a young age. I can't tell you the
number of times I returned to my home from a taxing day of wiffleball or
long-distance neighborhood bicycle riding, and slammed down a fresca or two.
It's taste can best be described as a grapefruit juice induced flavor tantrum.
Imagine my shock, then, when I discovered that fresca was a diet beverage. I had
been consuming it for years.... it's ironic, I only stopped consuming fresca
after I learned of its semi-healthiness.
**Postscript: Sierra
Mist: I'm predicting the downfall of this beverage. Sam and Steven and I
discussed this. I don't believe that this drink has any redeeming qualities at
all. It completely lacks the ability to refresh, and it's taste is, in a word,
brutal. Even the packaging and marketing is garbage. I don't care if it has the
financial backing of coke or pepsi or whoever the fuck owns them. I can see a
massive, violent, lemon-lime smelling bomb about to go off, and believe me, it's
going to leave a massive, lemon-fresh crater in the fucking ground.
Steven Davis
Shasta
Shasta: Shasta was like the white raver-rasta faraian-hiphop-redneck-phish fan
who wore a backwards notre dame hat-social chameleon you went to high school
with. You just wanted the weasel to make up his mind. You could believe that
peckerwood Shasta would be Caffeine Free Cola flavor playing magic cards with
moon mist and grapefruit zazz, but when you saw that cracker hanging out with
the black kidswearing cross colors as Raspberry Crème you knew that honkey was
straighttrippin.
Jungle Juice
Jungle
juice: If I had to judge the goodness of a drink by the number of times I have
witnessed it spouting forth from a youth’s noseholes behind the sound of
blissful giggling then only second to milk would I rank sweet jungle juice. It
did not matter that jungle juice tasted like a diabetic peeing down your throat,
you would drink it until your teeth were stained red with questionable
permanence. One day after second grade I had to go to synagogue and my rabbi
asked “But, Steven…why are your teeth red?” And I said,“from drinking the blood
of Christians.” (seriously) He did not laugh. Thank you jungle juice.
and finally....
Cheerwine.
Cheerwine:
Don’t even tell me it tastes like doctor pepper. In fourth grade “yo let’s go
to the playground” was synonymous with “shit little dogs; let’s grab a few cheerwizzles, sit under the monkey bars, and look up girls dresses.” See in
kindergarten, we would just tell girls to spin around upon which we would fall
to the ground to see up their dresses. But by the time fourth gradecame around,
we had put the milk cartons down, picked up the cans of c dub, and found a spot
where we could just cold kick it, and live out our flyest youthful fancies. And
what did they do?…they took this all away from us. And where did they take
it?…to the Carolinas. That’s right, cheerwine can still be purchased in the
Carolina states (those being north and south). I will be visiting North
Carolina within the month and I am taking orders. No profits will be made. I
am only a run to bring back cheerwine’s sweet sweet flavor and cherryish
aftertaste and its even sweeter memories. Get at me for some c: (Steven@wasted-off-butter.com )