Have i discovered the "perfect" soft drink combination?

Didn’t work

Have you tried Coke and beer? I think it only works with an authentic German Pilsner. Fanta and beer is even better.

It was called C2 and it was available during the low carb craze a few years back (2003–2004), I thought it was the best thing ever, but they discontinued it.

My mom has been doing that since I can remember. Back in the day she was a Tab/Coke girl. We could only got to McD’s for fast food, because Burger king had a Pepsi contract, God forbid. Now she drinks Tab/caffeine free coke, but since you cannot get Tab on tap anymore, she settles for diet coke/coke when out I think. She does travel with Tab when she is taking a road trip.

@Snarp In my opinion, the only thing to be mixed with beer is orange juice. Brass monkey!

Sprite and the raspberry tea drink is good, as well.

The “solution” I came up with for the missing C2 is half Zero half regular, tastes remarkably close without the diet aftertaste. I don’t like half diet, half regular because I can still taste the diet aftertaste.

Has anyone tried Pepsi Throwback? I wrote Coca Cola a couple of years back to put sugar Coke back out there on the shelves while Dr. Oz and others are berating high fructose corn syrup, but they have not done it as far as I know. I can get cane sugar coke where I live at the Mexican stores and restaurants though.

Also, did they take the sugar out of Coke when they introduced new coke? I was wondering if that was why it never tasted the same when they supposedly went back to the original.

@JLeslie – if you want Coke with sugar, even some of your larger supermarkets now have hispanic sections where you can buy Coke with sugar by the bottle. But no, Coke has no “throwback” product.

They did not take the sugar out of Coke when they made “New Coke”, which I believe you can still buy some places, the whole thing was a ruse to add a new flavor. Pepsi was a touch sweeter (if you look at a can I think a Coke has 140 calories and a Pepsi 150), and after Pepsi had their “Pepsi Challenge” going around the country, Coke basically decided that they could put out this new “sweeter” product and they would create interest/controversy by taking the original Coke off the market. I don’t believe however that they ever intended not to bring back “Coca Cola Classic”. What you found was that when about 6 months after old Coke disappeared from the shelves and Classic Coke started appearing, if you looked at the two cans, instead of “sugar” the ingredients listed “high fructose corn syrup”.

You see, the problem was that if Coke had just up and changed an ingredient on their labeling, people would have (as they did with New Coke) said, “HOW DARE YOU” and they would have rallied against the change, and Coke would have had to go back to the more expensive sugar, which would have put them at a competitive disadvantage to Pepsi. So, by making the products not available on the shelves at the same time, they knew most people wouldn’t ever make the comparison and notice.

I however hoarded old Coke and Classic Coke tasted very close, but not exactly the same to me, so I DID compare, and I noticed the difference. And I even called Coke and told them that this was not the same, and their response (which as a 15–16 year old kid I bought at the time) was that sugar comes from different sources, but it’s all still sugar, it’s just how this one is labeled, but there is no difference, it’s still the same recipe, they’re just using sugar derived from a different source but which is the same sugar.

Liars.

This reminds me of the chart they have at most Burger Kings where it shows you good mixed soft drink combinations. I like to experiment and make my own.

@dalepetrie I think you are saying what I meant, but maybe I worded it poorly, that when classic coke came back, after the new coke dissappoinment, classic coke came back with the high fructose, not having been in there before. Or, did I misunderstand?

My supermarkets don’t have sugar coke, but like I said I can get it at Mexican restaurants and Mexican markets. Memphis is not very international in general, especially out where I live, it is one of my biggest annoyances here—grocery shopping. There are about 30 items that I regularly bought previously that I cannot find here, some of them I can find about 30 minutes away a few towns over. When I am in Nashville I stock up, and I also bring back items from FL and NY.

Right, it came back with a different ingredient but they claimed it was the same, and they intentionally created a false controversy by removing their flagship product from the shelves to distract from their actual cost cutting measure.

I live in the Twin Cities of MN, and we have large Hispanic and Hmong populations here, so it’s very easy to find products geared towards other cultures in our regular supermarkets.

Next time you’re having OJ, reach up in the spice cabinet and stir in a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Orange Julius adds vanilla extract to their drinks and that besides ice and the blender is basically the recipe.

I also stumbled upon one of my favs the other day. My wife keeps a pitcher of unsweetened tea on the counter for us, and a pitcher of Kool Aid for the kids. While I love to put Real Lime powder in my tea (I find plain tea to be a little dehydrating on it’s own) I reached over the other day and splashed a little Kool Aid in my tea and LOVED it.

And with all the different flavors of Kool Aid, the combinations should be endless. I’m getting thirsty just thinking about it.

@dalepetrie It was brilliant really. What the heck are Hispanics doing up in that arctic weather?? LOL. It’s not just Latin American products, I mean I have trouble finding linguine (there is one store I can get it) literally kroger has three brands of fettucine, and three brands that have spaghetti, but not my linguine! also local supermarkets sell Hebrew National hot dogs, but not the mustard, Walmart just started carrying Polly-o mozerella (no one else does), but still does not have the ricotta, and all the other brands suck. Not one market has medium amber maple syrup in any brand, but they have dark amber in two or three depending on which store you choose. I could go on and on. Not to mention I find expired food, sometimes literally moldy, on the shelves all too often. Ugh.

@JLeslie – It did used to strike me as a bit weird to have such a large Hispanic population in Minnesota, but we do, there are certain areas like West Saint Paul and Lake Street in Minneapolis that have large sections where all the homes and businesses are Hispanic. If I had to guess, I think it boils down to we have what the people who are desperate to escape their plight actually seek. In the 90s, every fast food restaurant was hiring at like 8–9 bucks an hour, pretty much any warm bodies they could find. We also have a great educational system, and traditionally we’ve had a pretty strong social safety net. I think it was considered a place where anyone could make a decent living, have a fairly low cost of living and not have a lot of the big city problems. Then I think it became somewhat generational, people began to move here because their siblings or parents or even children could get them work and a place to stay where they would be with their estranged families. We simply have traditionally had a lot of the kinds of work that Americans shun and immigrants embrace, we have a lot of restaurants, the metro area of the twin cities has grown exponentially with construction, and people up here pretty much keep to themselves, no one wants to cause anyone any trouble, they call it “Minnesota nice.” So, as these areas with Hispanic owned businesses and homes sprouted up, it sort of became a mecca for immigration.

I sympathize with your plight at the grocery stores. To be honest, it really isn’t all that bad here, we’ve got SuperValu which runs Cub Foods which are everywhere and Roundys which runs Rainbow Foods which are all around, plus we’ve got Super Targets that have full grocery sections, not to mention discounters like Aldi, warehouse clubs like Sam’s and Costco, and a number of smaller independent franchises like Festival, Jerry’s Foods, Kowalski’s etc. We even still have corner markets that still have butcher shops where I’ll often go to buy meat. Basically, there are some brands of things I’ve liked that no markets in my area carry, but for the most part the problem is too much choice, not too little. And of course, if you really want to specialize, we have many Hmong and Hispanic markets that sell authentic foods, and a variety of farmer’s markets, some of which run year round. Plus we have organic stores like Whole Foods, Mississippi Market, etc. and several co-ops for more healthy organic foods. The only time you’re likely to find spoiled food on the shelves here would be either at a discounter or at a store in the poorest parts of town, like you could go to one Rainbow and find huge selection, fresh fruit and delicious pastries, a well stocked butcher counter, tons of selection, well lit aisles, clearly marked prices, clean bathrooms, or you could go to one five miles away that looks like a scene out of 28 Days Later.

Which might explain why all us well fed Midwesterners might draw immigrants who are looking for more to eat!

No. Sorry John. Diet Pepsi has me.