I bought a couple of their Holiday Pack last year. It didn’t have anything too weird (no Brussels sprouts or green beans), but it was all pretty good and pretty much tasted like what it was supposed to (though I’ve never had sugar plums, so I can’t say for sure about that one.) The four flavors were:
Sugar plum - Pretty good. As I said, I’ve never had actual sugar plums, but I like the soda. It was really sweet with kind of a fruity taste. (One friend compared the flavor (favorably) to “a Dimetapp Icee”.) I’d drink it again if I had another bottle.
Pear tree - Very obviously pear flavored. Like the sugar plum, I liked it and would drink it again.
Ginger bread - It tasted a lot like ginger bread and was pretty strange to taste in a carbonated liquid form. It was OK, but I don’t know if I’d drink it again.
Candy cane - I’m not a big fan of candy canes so I didn’t really like the soda. The taste was pretty accurate though. I’ve still got one bottle of this that I haven’t been able to get anyone to drink.
Coconut soda sounds awesome! I need to go find some.
My favorite is sangria soda. I don’t remember what brand I had, and they’re probably not all the same, so don’t blame me if you get one that’s not so good. I also like Izze grapefruit soda.
Some of the Fentiman’s drinks aren’t odd as such, but rather pretty old-fashioned. They are traditionally made, supposedly, and they certainly have more complex and natural seeming flavours than most soft drinks. The Dandelion and Burdock, Rose Lemonade, and Curiosity Cola are all fantastic. Also, now I’ve stopped drinking alcohol for the time being, it’s great that a few pubs sell them, and I can have something with actual flavour instead of diet Coke…
Last Christmas I saw 1-liter bottles of the cheap Polar mixers. Eggnog, peppermint, and I can’t remember the other - gingerbread? - clear seltzers with those flavors. I never got back to that store and now I’m wondering what I missed.
We’ll they aren’t odd to UK standards, but very different from US standards. Like how blackcurrant flavored drinks are impossible to find here, the niche filled by grape or something. These do sound pretty damn awesome, though.
Long before Snapple was an iced tea distributor, in fact, long before they even made iced tea, they were a small, natural soda company in my hometown of Valley Stream, NY. And Wendy was the receptionist.
I discovered them in the early 1980s; they had a few really good fruit sodas, strawberry among them, but the crowning glory way the Tru Root Beer, a clear concoction whose aroma would literally fill a room when the bottle was uncapped.
I bought the Jones soda Thanksgiving pack a few years ago on a lark. It was definitely interesting. Everything tasted spot on but I don’t think green bean soda will ever be popular. The mashed potato one wasn’t too bad though, very buttery. I mostly didn’t like them though because of the artificial sweetener-it always tastes really odd to me.
In many parts of Europe, Fanta sells a lemon soda which is truly the beverage of the gods. It’s not like Sprite, It’s more like an American-style lemonade with carbonation. The one I’m talking about is whitish to pale yellow in color. (NOT electric yellow)
I can’t understand why it isn’t sold here in the U.S., since it is a Coca-cola product and lemonade is fairly popular. maybe it’s because Minute Maid, also a Coca-cola product, sells a far yuckier, non-carbonated lemonade and they’re afraid Fanta Limon will eat its lunch.
When I was at Epcot, they have an exhibit (sponsored by Coke) that allow you to taste sodas from around the world. Most of them are bland to terrible, but we loved Mezzo Mix which is kind of like orange Coke.
Back in the early 90s, Coca-Cola released something called OK Cola that I remember liking quite a bit, although it looks like I was the only one. I haven’t had it since then, so there may be an element of nostalgia/romanticism to my memory of its flavor.
I was thrilled to learn that a hot dog shop here in DC, DC-3, sells the stuff. Though when I tried to buy it, the clerk did his level best to dissuade me. “Are you sure you want that? Really? Really?”