Food
Top 10 Discontinued Soda Drinks We Miss (Part 2)
What’s the worst thing that can happen to a lover of soda? The worst thing that could ever happen is they discontinue your favorite flavor of soda. Grab a box of tissues and reminisce along with us as we look back on the Top 10 Discontinued Soda Drinks We Miss.
10. Mountain Dew Revolution
You remember the day like it was yesterday when the store stopped selling Mountain Dew Revolution. You went all over town asking anyone who would listen if they still had any Mountain Dew Revolution left in stock. You may have found the odd two-liter bottle and thought your worst nightmare wasn’t, after all, becoming a reality. It wouldn’t be long before you came to grips with the fact that Mountain Dew Revolution was indeed no more. How can they produce something so berry delicious and pull it off the shelves? Life is not fair, and no one knows this better than lovers of Mountain Dew Revolution. Flavors come and go, but ones like Mountain Dew Revolution leave a lasting impression. You think about Mountain Dew Revolution during the good times; you think about it when times are rough and you need a friend. There isn’t a moment in your life when you don’t wish there was a cold bubbly can of Mountain Dew Revolution in your hand. We understand. We’re not here to bring up hurtful memories of the past. Sometimes it helps to talk about these things. We’re in this together, and no one wants Mountain Dew to bring back this totally awesome flavor more than we do. We feel your pain and wish there was some way we could bring back this ginseng-enhanced soda for the good of all humanity.
9. Kick Soda
Kick was a brand of citrus-flavored soda produced by Royal Crown. You know, the cola company that almost no one drinks. Well, maybe your oddball aunt still drinks RC Cola. She swears by the stuff and drains can after can all day long while watching game shows on TV. It’s not lousy cola, but it seems that anyone who wasn’t busy being groovy back in the 70s has never even heard of RC. Kick soda was meant to compete with the top lemon-lime sodas of its day. Surprisingly, the soda was on store shelves up until the early 2000s. That meant that Kick had a run that was over 30 years long. Some of the other sodas on our list can barely seem to make it past a year, so three decades almost feels like an eternity. Do you find yourself longing for a can of Kick? Are you up late at night, hoping that someone will put a two-liter bottle of Kick on eBay? You would use your alternate eBay screen name and buy it. You know, the screen name you use when you buy stuff you don’t want anyone to know about. No one needs to know about your collection of furry slippers with cute puppy dog ears. Just like no one needs to know of your obsession with a soda that has been off the shelves now for almost two decades. Some would say you need to get a life; those are the people who have never tried Kick before.
8. Coca-Cola Blak
What do you do if you love to drink coffee and Coca-Cola? Do you mix your morning coffee and a can of Coke together? You don’t do anything of the sort because that would be, well, probably disgusting. Actually, some people might try to use a cold brew technique to let their coffee grounds soak in Coke. The resulting beverage would more than likely lack the fizzy kick that the drinker desperately wants. The answer to your coffee and cola woes comes in the form of Coca-Cola Blak. It is, as you’ve probably guessed, a coffee and cola mix like only Coca-Cola could produce. It makes sense when you look at it on paper since many people like the caffeine jolt that both drinks have to offer. Coca-Cola Blak had a short, but strong run. Coca-Cola Blak was discontinued after less than two years. How were people ever going to get their caffeine fix after that? They would have to go back to drinking coffee and cola separately. It was a sad time for people who like to have so much caffeine pumping through them that it makes their heart feel like it will explode. Do you remember the day when you felt less jittery because Coca-Cola Blak was nowhere to be found? If so, memories of pure terror and overwhelming fatigue must still be ripe in your mind.
7. Mountain Dew Dark Berry
Fans of The Dark Knight Rises no doubt remember the release of Mountain Dew Dark Berry. You didn’t need to be a fan of the movie to enjoy Mountain Dew Dark Berry. No, you only had to be a lover of berry-flavored fizzy drinks to enjoy this soda pop. Why aren’t there more berry inspired sodas? Could it be a conspiracy to keep berries out of the hands of those who crave them the most? Mountain Dew Dark Berry packed a serious fruity wallop on the tongues of everyone fortunate enough to drink it. You probably remember the time and place where you first cracked open a Mountain Dew Dark Berry. Some people never forget when they first laid eyes on their spouse. But others can’t ever forget their first sip of Mountain Dew Dark Berry. Why do they have to do this to us? All we want is some sweet berry liquid with so much fizz that it tickles our nose. Throw in some caffeine and plenty of sugar to make sure we stay wide awake throughout the day and you couldn’t ask for a more perfect drink. As the popularity of the 2012 movie waned apparently so did this drink as Mountain Dew Dark Berry became another in a long list of discontinued soda drinks we miss.
6. Pepsi Twist
The combined flavors of cola and lemon seem to go together wonderfully. That’s what made Pepsi Twist so special. It was the familiar Pepsi flavor that you love alongside the exciting citrus twist of lemon. Nothing says summer excitement like anything with a hint of lemon. A can of Pepsi Twist and a hammock were all you needed for the best summer afternoon ever. Sadly, those relaxing afternoons are now a thing of the past. As many of you already know, Pepsi Twist no longer exists. You search high and low, and it’s nowhere to be found. You call up long lost friends not to hear how they’re doing, but really you just want to see if maybe they have the scoop on Pepsi Twist. No one is trying to hide the truth from you, what you’re hearing is true – Pepsi Twist is no more. What can you do if you’re craving a Pepsi Twist to the point of a breakdown? The solution requires a little work and some knowhow when it comes to buying produce. Desperate times call for desperate measures. What you need to do is go to the grocery store and head to the section where they sell fresh fruits and vegetables. You know, the area that you usually walk right past. Buy a lemon, take it home and cut it up. Take a wedge of lemon and squeeze the juice into a glass of Pepsi. If you want to make your life easy, then get one of those plastic lemons filled with juice and squeeze a few drops of it into your next Pepsi. Voila! Pepsi with your own twist.
5. Citra
Lovers of lemon-lime soda are as unique as the day is long. You don’t like cola. No, you wouldn’t touch cola with a ten-foot-long straw. You crave the sweet acidic taste of lemons and limes with the added kick of bubbles and sugar. Citra soda had a dedicated following of people who understood what made this drink so special. It takes a lot for a lemon-lime soda to stick out from the pack when Sprite, 7Up, and Mountain Dew stand tall like giants. Citra soda was able to win over the taste buds of many by being different than the rest – though, it wasn’t enough to put the soda on the path to supermarket shelf immortality. Citra soda may be no more, but the memories of this famed soda live on. Originally released in India, no one can buy Citra soda anymore no matter what country you’re in since it was discontinued sometime in the 90’s. But the memory of this soda lives on in the hearts and minds of those who yearn for one more taste of their long-lost favorite brand of soda.
4. Slice Sodas
It’s hard to believe we now live in a world without Slice. Who can forget all of the varieties of Slice? You weren’t tied down to one flavor like you are with so many other soda brands. You could choose from grape, orange, and even Dr. Slice. Anyone who remembers Dr. Slice knows it gave Dr. Pepper a run for its money. Somehow the people at Slice were able to mimic the flavor of Dr. Pepper well enough to come up with something that tasted rather similar. Creating a soda pop similar to Dr. Pepper seems like an impossible feat when you consider that no one can really accurately describe the flavor of Dr. Pepper. Go ahead, try to describe the flavor of Dr. Pepper to yourself. Your inability to describe its flavor proves how smart the geniuses behind Dr. Slice were. Slice was in every supermarket from coast to coast, but it only made up a lowly single-digit percentage of the total soda sales in America. That’s surprising considering how widely available the product was. Don’t remember Slice? If you went to Taco Bell in the 90s and ordered whatever soda they had without caffeine, then you drank Slice. It went pretty well with a couple of Taco Supremes. The fashions of the 90s may be coming back in style, but Slice is still long gone.
3. 7up Side Down
7up, often viewed as a runner-up to Sprite, have made many attempts to break free from the competition and become top dog in the lemon-lime soda race. They’ve used some creative releases and advertising over the years to try and achieve this. One of these attempts was the release of dnL, which is actually what the 7up logo appears to spell, when flipped upside down. dnL was first released in the early 2000s and the marketing for it obviously focused on its “upside-down” theme. This even included their slogan, which was “Turn your thirst upside-down”. They really took this theme to the max, making the drink essentially the polar opposite of regular 7up, flipping the idea of the drink, upside down. While the original 7 Up is caffeine-free, colorless, and comes in a green bottle. dnL had caffeine, was colored the same green as 7Up’s bottle but came in a clear bottle. It also featured a much more pronounced lime-lemon/citrus flavor, something more akin to Mountain Dew or Mello Yello. The folks over at 7up knew they had something cool on their hands and tried marketing it hard. First in the snowboarding video game SSX 3, as well as during the Annual Grammy Awards. It was even the sponsored drink for the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. All these brand deals and the hard marketing push unfortunately did not translate to commercial success and just a few years after being released, dnL was discontinued, and does not appear that it will ever be heard from again.
2. Pepsi Fire
Pepsi Fire delivered a rarity in the world of soda, and that is: cinnamon flavor. We all love cinnamon in things like candy, chewing gum, and even chicken spice. So why aren’t there more cinnamon flavored sodas? The great mystery continued after Pepsi decided to discontinue their only cinnamon flavored offering. It’s easy to understand why the average person wouldn’t go crazy over something like this. However, it’s equally surprising that there wasn’t even the smallest loyal group of fans to make putting this on the shelf, even in limited quantities, feasible. Surely there must be enough cinnamon lovers out there to justify doing at least one production run of Pepsi Fire a week at the bottling plant? Well, apparently, there isn’t, and that’s sad news for Pepsi Fire lovers. What will life be like without your beloved Pepsi Fire? Do you find you spend countless hours talking about the one soda that got away? You’d think something like this would be much easier to replicate at home than it is. You can’t just sprinkle cinnamon in your soda since all it would do is float to the top. You’re going to need to get a degree in chemistry to come up with a way to liquefy cinnamon so you can put it in your glass of Pepsi. If you were ever able to find a way to make Pepsi Fire at home, it would likely bring you in tens, if not hundreds of dollars by selling your concoction on the street corner. There weren’t that many people who liked Pepsi Fire, but those who did will surely buy your product.
1. Fruitopia
Was Fruitopia simply a knock off of Snapple? Wait a minute; there’s no need for you Fruitopia lovers to get huffy. It was just a question. It seems that the Fruitopia lovers out there go on the offensive when the name of rival Snapple is brought up. Fruitopia seemed like a gimmick from the very beginning that wasn’t going to have much-staying power. The fruity flavors were all the rage with the cool kids back in the 90’s. You know, the kids who jumped on the Nirvana bandwagon once they saw how popular it became. It was a strange time when jocks decided to stop washing their hair, drink Fruitopia, and act rather odd all for the sake of being seen as being “alternative.” Yes, that’s who Fruitopia was marketed to, and it worked surprisingly well. Not everyone who enjoyed Fruitopia was a poser. You weren’t. No way. You were as cool as a cucumber and the hippest person on your block. You can’t think of cracking open a Snapple and hearing that famous pop. No, you won’t even touch a fruit-flavored drink that doesn’t have the Fruitopia label on it. Grunge bands seem to make a comeback every few years, and so do the fashions, but Fruitopia appears to be stuck somewhere in a time capsule since its discontinuation in 2003. That said, the popularity of the drink in both Canada and Australia is such that it was never discontinued there. Frutopia juices are still being sold in both of those countries to this day! Does that means we can expect a re-release in America?! One can hope but there has been no word on a comeback for Frutopia as of now, unfortunately.