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It's a Halloween Soda, it's a dessert topping, it's a floor wax!

The Jones Soda company is known for coming up with strange, holiday-centric flavors. Not to mention their weird regular flavors, like the daughter's favorite - blue bubblegum. Who wants to drink a soda that tastes like blue gum? Who even wants blue flavored gum in the first place?

I think it was Thanksgiving 2003 that Jones came out with the Turkey and Gravy soda. Last year it was Green Bean Casserole soda. Sort of like a Willy Wonka "meal in a stick of gum" idea. Without the nutrients.

So I was quite unsurprised to see, while strolling through the Target Halloween section, Jones Halloween flavored soda. It comes in tiny cans (small enough to be given out as Halloween treats, I would think) and four flavors, only two of which Target had in stock:

jones-2
click for bigger

Candy Corn and Caramel Apple (missing are the Scary Berry Lemonade and the Strawberry Slime, neither of which sound overly unappetizing).

Let me preface all this by saying that I loathe soda. I hate carbonated beverages as a whole, except for Guinness beer stout, which is smooth and rich and would never come in ridiculous flavors. Carbonation is the devil, it is born of evil and the bubbles are made from the flatulence of Satan himself. So the sacrifice I made here just to entertain and inform is a great one. Recognize, k?

The Candy Corn flavor looks like something pissed out by a person with a rare genital defect. It's quite reminsicent of Surge soda (the only soda I'll ever own up to actually liking, though I mostly drank it in its flat state, mixed with vodka) in that way:

jones-1
click for bigger.

And because it looks like toxic piss from a diseased penis, it's almost oxymoronic that the soda tastes like ass. Now, I really have no idea what ass tastes like, but I can assume that if ever I were to lick an ass, for whatever reason - and I don't mean just lick the baby fresh bottom of Jessica Alba's perfect rear end, but lick, say, the crack of King Kong Bundy's ass after he got said ass kicked by Andre the Giant, that's what this soda could be compared unfavorably to. All you have to know about this soda is that it has the appearance of what nuclear waste might look like. You could even say it glows.

Honestly, is there anyone out there who likes candy corn even in its natural, candy form? Mmmm...sugary wax shaped like a vegetable! No, it's not even shaped like corn. I've never seen a perfectly triangular piece of corn, have you? Maybe this wasn't the best Halloween candy to put into liquid form. You know what I'd like to see? Reeses Peanut Butter Cup soda. Now there's a Halloween candy. It even comes year round in Halloween colored packaging. Kids go crazy when you hand out Reeses on Halloween. You put a couple of those peanut butter cups in their grub bags and you are the Queen of the block.

Now, I know other people have reviewed these sodas before (and in a much more funny/extreme/ironic/post-modern way than I have) and I'm sure these drinks have been referred to by every adjective from toxic to rancid. I am going to shock - and probably appall - you here by saying that I like the Caramel Apple soda just fine. Considering my fear of carbonation, this is no small feat. The Caramel Apple soda actually looks normal, (the color of cream soda, in fact) and tastes like those lollipops that are really pieces of delicious, creamy caramel covered in a green apple candy coating. I love those pops because I love caramel apples. And I love anything that can make me feel like I've eaten a one without actually losing a filling to the caramel. Hence, I sort of like this soda and I would probably even venture to love it, to have a relationship of sorts with it, if it weren't for the satanic carbonation. Also, I've discovered that two or three sips is enough because after the third, you get that feeling as if your teeth have been coated in a sheen of sugar and it's crystalizing and forming a thin layer of rock candy right over your molars.

So, in summary (as they say in all science experiments):

pp.gifThe Candy Corn soda gets a rating of an asstastic one teeny tiny pumpkin and the only reason it didn't get zero or even 1/2 is because it tries. The whole idea of Halloween flavored soda is a brilliant one and I have to give it some props.

pp.gifpp.gifThe Caramel Apple Soda gets two pumpkins; while better than the Candy Corn flavor, it's still soda, and it makes my teeth hurt.

I'll continue with Halloween treat reviews as long as I can find something to review that Matt hasn't already.

Update: I just decided that I really am going to give out these sodas as Halloween treats. I'll get one of those giant size witches cauldrons, fill it with ice and dump an assload of Jones Halloween soda cans in there. I'll still have candy, but I have a feeling my caudldron of liquid sugar is going to be a huge hit.

Comments

handing out small sized cans of soda for Hallowe'en - brilliant.

I wouldn't even have to shake them first; the running/joggling motion of the bag as the kids careen from house to house hitting people up for treats would do that.

(even better? hand out small cans of HIGH-SUGAR, CAFFIENATED soda. That way, the trick is also on the kids' parents).

I'm having a misanthropic day.

Years ago, I had the misfortune to spend three weeks in the old Soviet Union. The Soviets seemed to be confused about how soda and concrete were made. Concretewas made with cement and lard, cement and wood chips, etc. or no cement at all, while soda seemed to be made in one of two ways. Either with only the syrup or with only the carbonated water. Drinking the carbonated water not only made your teeth hurt but I swear you could feel them dissolving. Maybe Jones Soda uses the same formula?

The candy corn looks a lot like Mountain Dew which I refer to as "irradiated horse piss." When my youngest brother became a fan of it I forbid him from drinking it in a clear glass in my presence.

Candy corn, cotton candy, anything with 110% sugar and a weird form seems to catch kids fancy.

Carmel apples are good but i prefer my carmel straight. One piece can last for days.

Soda rocks. Don't be a hater.

Mountain Dew and Cigarettes: Fueling Programmers Since 1999 (me).

You're handing out sodas on halloween? And you thought kids running around smashing pumpkins was a nuisance. Wait 'til every home on your street has a smashed bay window and a Jones Halloween soda sitting on the carpet. So much for Reese's and being Queen of the block eh?

Mmmm, candy corn... love me some candy corn.

Dear Michele,

GUINNESS IS NOT BEER. IT IS STOUT. IT MAY BE CALLED EITHER "GUINNESS STOUT" OR SIMPLY "GUINNESS". DO NOT INCLUDE THE WORD "BEER" IN THE SAME SENTENCE AS "GUINNESS". OH CRAP, NOW I DID IT.

Love,
disconnect

Oh geez. That's twice today I was berated for that.

Hey, I like candy corn! I tried the candy corn soda, and I'll agree that it tasted like Surge (I used to live off that stuff in high school), but with more syrup.

Mountain Dew and Cigarettes: Fueling Programmers Since 1999 (me).

This IT geek (me) has preferred Jolt since 1989....

I found my can of the candy corn soda to taste much like that nasty crap they make you drink before a glucose test at the hospital. Never had Surge, as I was a Jolt kid back in the day.

Michele:

"Reeses Peanut Butter Cup soda"

What unholy...

While you're at it, you should pour it into your "Count Chocula" in the morning! :) lol

Ewww they sound like those nasty flavored Jelly Belly Jelly Beans that they make.

The trick or treating kids on Halloween are gonna love you, though.

I'm sorry... I had a tough time getting past the name... "Jones Soda" - put the Jim in front of it and call it Kool-Aid and it's JUST sick enough.

Saranac is coming out with a pumpkin flavored beer....

uh...stout is beer. guinness is beer.
http://www.guinness.com/us_en/beer/default.aspx

smoking is bad mmm'kay. real programmers do NOT smoke. sorry. bad for the equipment.
mountain dew was good, but since they started making the diet version, I lost all respect for them. Not to mention the alignment with the gnarly x-gamer crowd, dude.

nothing wrong with candy corn.
goes good with guinness, even.
OK, made that part up.

best pumpkin beer is:
Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale

they also make an orange blossom ale
that is very nice.

neither is much like guinness, tho.