Upcoming Novelty Soda Reviews

I was walking around Maplewood Mall earlier today. As with many suburban malls it can feel like everything changes if you haven’t visited it for several years and Maplewood was no exception. Where that mall used to feel extremely racially white it now felt much less so to me and it was really interesting seeing the difference. Part of that difference was definitely a growth in shops that catered to what I would have called “nerd culture” 20 years ago and included an outpost for the national chain FYE. The thing that drew me in was the portion of the huge window display for Care Bear merchandise that included a soda bottle labeled “Sparkle Heart Bears Strawberry Sparkling Water”. How could I resist going in to grab a bottle!

While looking for the Care Bear water it was pretty clear that this was not the first interesting novelty soda they had carried and, while I avoided the energy drinks, managed to bring home 10 items that I’m definitely looking forward to reviewing. The list:

• Sparkle Heart Bears Strawberry Sparkling Water (FYE Exclusive)
• Garbage Pail Kids Nuclear Sunrise (FYE Exclusive)
• Paul Frank Sweet and Sour (FYE Exclusive)
• Dragon Ball Z Lemon Lime Sparkling soda
• Hatsune Miku Blueberry Flavour Sparkling Drink
• Duff A l’Orange Sparkling Beverage (label modeled after the beer from The Simpsons)
• Ocean Bomb Dragon Ball Super Sparkling Waters
  • Future Trunks (White Grape)
  • Vegeta (Vanilla)
  • Buu (Peach)
  • Goku (Orange)

I’m not entirely sure when I’ll finally get to these. I have 19 (!!!) items in the queue before them, including the full range from United Sodas of America finally, and possibly a few retries that I’m thinking about calling “Second Sips”. In any case, with nearly 30 new items to review keep an eye out for new content pretty regularly over at the soda blog!