Death Can't Come Soon Enough:
The Jones Soda Holiday Pack, 2005

    For most of the year, Jones Soda has a reputation for bringing different and interesting flavors to the soda market.  Their green apple flavor alone earns them a permanent place in my heart, and it's nice to see that the "little guy" can do fairly well by painting the corners of a soda market dominated by massive conglomerates.  They even have a deal on their website where they'll print up a set of bottles with the photo of your choice on the label, which is kind of neat and something I might take them up on when I have the money, primarily because I am an embarrassing loser.
    Around the holidays, however, Jones has begun to do something... well, a little different.  It turns out that there is apparently a market for a soda that tastes sort of like turkey.  Across the country, thousands if not millions of people decided that turkey-flavored soda was too hilarious a concept to be ignored, and they bought it in droves.  And so Jones was inspired to bring out an entire line of holiday-themed flavored sodas - in 2004, the flavors of Green Bean Casserole, Mashed Potato, and Fruitcake were added to the repertoire.  This year, four new flavors joined Turkey and Gravy, and they combined to simulate an entire holiday meal.
    So perhaps it was perversely appropriate that Alma and I found ourselves sampling the package on Thanksgiving day.  Unfortunately, the experience nearly put me off both the foods represented and soda itself forever.

    The package came with a spork as well as a list of suggested wines to accompany your meal.  This was presumably included as a joke, but as Alma noted darkly afterwards, "You'd have to be drunk to really drink any of these things."  Alma and I were not, in fact, drunk.  We were simply curious.  Curiosity, as they say, killed the cat; it didn't kill us, but it came alarmingly close.

From left to right: Pumpkin Pie, Turkey and Gravy, Brussels Sprout, and Wild Herb Stuffing.  And just look at those colors!  I mean, who wouldn't want to drink a cloudy, earth-toned beverage?

Round One: Wild Herb Stuffing

    We started by setting the order in which the sodas were going to be... well, I can't very well say "consumed," so let's say "tasted."  (Simply taking a whiff of the Brussels Sprout as I poured it nearly caused me to throw up, so it was obvious I wasn't going to be chugging the bottle any time soon.)  Wild Herb Stuffing was first on the block.  It had, at least, smelled pretty close to what it was representing, so that wasn't terrible.  But how would that actually do as a drinkable flavor?  Alma went first and did not enjoy herself.   Then it was my turn.  Because Alma was thoughtful enough to use her video camera, footage of this historic event follows.

(Click to view - 5.49mb Quicktime)

    Not good times.  I don't recall thinking that it would be funny to overreact, which must mean that those contortions of my face are legitimate, a worrisome thought.  Here's the problem with the stuffing soda (and, really, all of them, but more noticeably here than anywhere else) - the freaking Splenda.  My disdain for Splenda in pretty much any soda you could name has been noted elsewhere on this site, but this has to take the cake.  I mean, first of all, why are you using sweeteners at all?  I realize that these sodas exist largely as jokes (anyone who buys them out of anything other than morbid curiosity is probably the same kind of idiot who buys Bertie Bott's All-Flavor Beans instead of regular Jelly Belly because they think it would be hilarious to get one that tastes like grass), but would it be too much to ask that the developers don't try even harder to make them disgusting?  So, okay, the last joke is that this "meal" has no calories - but I'm certainly not asking them to put sugar in it.  That might even have been worse.
    Aside from the slight sickening feeling produced by the Splenda (and Splenda makes me feel ill even when combined with normal fruit flavors, so you can only imagine how ghastly this was), the Wild Herb Stuffing tasted mostly like Alka-Seltzer, and I don't mean the flavored variety.  Take a glass and fill it with salt water and you've pretty much got it; maybe add a teaspoon of Karo syrup just to complete the effect.  Just be glad I do this stuff for you.

Round Two: Brussels Sprout with Prosciutto

    Prosciutto?  Alma commented that it was that aspect to the flavor that really put this one over the edge, but what really put this one over the edge was ever existing in the first place.  Brussels sprouts are already not the most delightful vegetable in the taste department; add ham and Splenda and it's no wonder that even a whiff of the aroma nearly caused me to lose breakfast.  Sadly, it didn't end there.  Alma went first again, but this time her reaction was captured for posterity.

(Click to view - 2.38mb Quicktime)

   As you can see from the photo, she was already dreading the experience thanks to my ringing endorsement of the scent.  But if you thought she came close to losing it, well...

(Click to view - 4.95mb Quicktime)

   I think the only other time in my life I threw up as a result of something in which I willingly participated was after riding the Tilt-a-Whirl at Eric Gorman's birthday party in sixth grade.  I didn't actually throw up here, but I was really close - so close that I suspect Alma cut where she did at least as much because she didn't want me throwing up on video as because the footage was running long.  Her cut means you don't get to see the scene where, after spitting the soda out (I couldn't even get it down), I taste it on my tongue and proceed to reflexively dry-heave.  I'm getting sick right now just thinking about what it was like.   Let's just move on.

So, is the crying baby meant to show a person's normal reaction to tasting this soda, or is it that the soda is actually comprised of the vomit of a baby who had just eaten pureed Brussels sprouts?  Neither one would really surprise me.

Round Three: Turkey and Gravy

    Considering that this is the centerpiece of the package, the flavor that proved so bizarrely popular in 2003 that I was able to put myself through hell today, I was expecting more.  It doesn't smell like that much of anything and it doesn't really taste like that much of anything either.  Certainly I'm not sure the essence of the flavor was really captured, though I don't know that that's really a bad thing either.  Really, not much to say about this one either way.  I can hardly say it's drinkable, but it was the only abnormal flavor in the bunch that didn't make me gag.

Alma is not thrilled with the Turkey and Gravy experience.

Round Four: Pumpkin Pie

    This was the sort of flavor that could go either way.  Basically, it was going to be okay because it was actually something sweet, or it was going to be nasty because it wasn't the right flavor for soda.  Oh boy, was it the latter.  To think that Turkey and Gravy was more palatable than Pumpkin Pie is amazing, especially since I love pumpkin pie, but this was bad stuff.  It didn't even taste that much like pumpkin pie; it was too maple-y or something.  One sip and I gagged on it, needing to down yet more palate-cleansing ginger ale to wash the taste away.

Round Five: Cranberry

   Cranberry was, in every respect, a perfectly legitimate, normal soda.  In fact, if they wanted to put some damn sugar in it, I would actually buy it if they decided to release it year-round.  Since it was actually drinkable, it's not really worth talking about.

Recap

    The Jones Soda Holiday Pack is the stuff of nightmares.  From now on, whenever I think about it I'm going to feel a clenching in my stomach and a slight gag in the back of my throat.  Sure, the sodas are intended as novelty, but there's nothing funny about a revolting, Splenda-tainted flavor that clings to your tongue and won't let go, leaving a memory so strong it's like your mouth is a house and the taste is a ghost that's haunting it.  It's so bad it ruined other sodas for me by association; I got a Club Lemon at Jewel later in the day and I could barely even enjoy it.  These are seriously (with the obvious exception of Cranberry) the worst sodas ever produced by man, I don't care how funny they're supposed to be.  They cost two dollars a bottle and only one is going to see more than a sip get consumed by any individual person - that's not funny.  That's just gross.  Did they provide ten dollars of entertainment value?  I guess, to some degree.  On the other hand, you can't un-taste these things.  They are honestly that bad.  So I hope this page has provided at least a marginal bit of humor for you; I wouldn't want the suffering of Alma and myself to have been in vain.