I’m in the habit of bringing my lunch to work. Ergo, I often bring something that needs to be refrigerated so I plunk it into one of 2 fridges on the floor here at work. Yesterday, around 1 PM I head to the breakroom to grab my grub. I innocently opent he fridge to snag my vittles when I notice a green soda can.
“Hmmm,” I think to myself, “Must be Mountain Dew or Mello Yello. I wonder which one it is. Oh wait, it says Dr. Brown’s on it.”
Thumbing through my mental filing cabinet, I realize Dr. Brown’s makes a pretty darn good cherry cola I have enjoyed, so naturally I would be curious to try a citrus flavored beverage they would put out.
I reach in and grab the can (not to steal it from a co-worker, just to see what the exact flavoring is for future reference) when I see the 6 most horrifying words I have ever come across - Celery Soda with other Natural Flavors.
Oh good God. Why would someone choose to make a carbonated drink based on celery? Even more baffling, who in their right mind would ilke that drink so much they would be willing to bring it to a public workplace? There is nothing sane or logical about this concept. Might as well make pork flavored ice cream or radish yogurt. There are certain flavors that should never, ever be mass produced into a buyable product and celery is absolutely one of them.
Of course, the scary prologue to this story is that the can is now gone which means someone I work with now has this vile product running through their digestive system.
Not to justify Cel-Ray (which I think is vile, by the way) but you should think of it more as an old-fashioned Digestive Tonic (now with more morphine!) rather than a modern Soda Beverage Intended for Consumption with Fries.
Not unlike Vernors which I also think is gross beyond all description, tasting like sugared oak. Moxie (it’s Wicked Good!) is just TOO strong, if it were weaker it might be consumable.
I suspect Cel-Ray was the Hi-C of its day - a nutritionally bankrupt beverage that tries to redeem itself, in Hi-C’s case by adding Vitamin C and in Cel-Ray by having some trace of vegetable juice, somewhere in the process.
It’s kind of like Pop-Tarts that say, “Made With Real Fruit!”
(Of course, with my very literal mind, I suspect that what they really do is put a basket of fruit next to the assembly line…)
Celery soda? But celery has no flavor. It would seem to me that most of the taste would come from the “other natural flavors.” Kinda doesn’t make sense to me.
“Moxie is absolutely the greatest soft drink ever produced, bar none.”
—Oh my god, Exgineer! Even the Moxie company itself has always admitted the stuff tastes like hell, but it’s “good for you” because it’s full of bitter, vile-tasting gentian root.
My college rommate was hooked on the stuff, and whenever we’d take a road trip to New England, she’d fill the trunk with cans of Moxie . . .
Celery has no flavor?? Are my taste buds that far out of whack? Sorry, bouv, but celery has a flavor that is essential in soups and stew and my sloppy joes. No flavor, indeed…
And, as you might have guessed, there is another can in the fridge. That kind of ruins my hopes that someone had lost a bet. I’m probably going to get strange looks when I start digging through the garbage cans in people’s offices tonight.
