i am not quite sure why this soda was so hard to find. actually finding specific Jones Soda flavors in general is difficult. i don’t see the regular root beer all that often. or when i am in the mood for a foofoo berry, i can’t find that. stores seem to pick a couple of random flavors and stock them. or maybe they just don’t sell and sit on the shelf? i doubt that, seems a waste of shelf space and stores are supposedly very aware of exact turnover of all stock.
you probably know about Jones Soda by now. they are the ones who have different photos on their labels, may of them sent in by the public at large. so that is fun. you can even order soda with any photo you want to put on them. that is handy for weddings or birth announcements or break ups or cookie decorating or whatever occasion you want custom labelled soda for. they now seem to have fortunes stolen from actual fortune cookies under the caps. which is fine i guess but they invite you to send in ones you found also, which seems to extend the laziness. they can’t take their own photos or get their own fortune cookie fortunes now. i guess next they will invite you to send in your own paper for the label or perhaps you own bottles or maybe your own soda to fill it. lazy kids these days…
so whatever, this drink is not good. there is barely any root beer taste to it. blindfolded, i don’t think i would know it was supposed to be root beer to be honest. it does have a gross metallic taste though! so if you are looking for a steel flavored carbonated beverage, here you go, find this and you are set. maybe if they DID have people send in soda it would be tastier. ok, it is not spit-out level bad but it is not even decent.
Ingredients:carbonated water, caramel color, natural and artificial flavors, phosphoric acid, sucralose, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (as preservatives)

Anthony’s Rating: 31
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so i never really knew what malic acid was but this time i wondered so i looked it up in the giant brain. there i found out it is added to food to make it tart, mostly in extreme candies. often instead of the less sour citric acid, which i also kind of wondered why it was in root beer. now, i really don’t know why. would these sodas be too sweet otherwise? is root beer supposed to be tart and no one ever told me? that would be rather funny to me.
so yeah, this has malic acid, let’s see how it is.
the packaging is fine. the plaid is similar to the regular root beer but more generic looking at the plaid itself is white and silver, very reminiscent of the classic generic food containers which seem to have disappeared in the past couple of decades. as it IS indeed generic soda, that is not the worst thing.
and this is not the worst store brand diet soda. or even the worst diet soda in general. in fact it is better than some regular root beers. it is not good of course, but it is not terrible. i do get somewhat of a root beer flavor even! more prominent though is a sort of fruity thing in the middle taste which fades away and becomes a lingering diet soda taste that is never good. that that taste is minor is a major thing though for me. i dread diet sodas since they make me feel like i need to grab some pepto, but this one should be ok. thanks Meijer for that. it is also a little rough in the carbonation, it hurts my mouth a bit. i seem to be getting more sensitive to bad carbonation as i get older, weird. i think it is the larger bubbles from some forms of forced carbonation. it makes for a rough swallow. so you could do worse than this but it is not great. if i was a diabetic with 12 cents in my pocket, i might get this sometimes.
Ingredients:carbonated water, caramel color, potassium benzoate (preservative), aspartame, natural and artificial flavor and malic acid

Anthony’s Rating: 40
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i reviewed the regular root beer from Filbert’s long ago. funny as the place i ordered it from is no longer in business and the place i ordered this from stopped doing mail order kind of in the middle of processing my order resulting in me only getting about 1/2 of what i ordered. that of course meant i got all of the diet sodas and only one regular one. oh well, i will just have to find another way to get the others i guess. more questing…
i was immediately struck by the label on this bottle, it seems almost fake, as if someone photocopied a real label onto regular paper and glued it on bottles of their own stuff. it is like at the local flea market where the people have bootleg cds with color photocopies of the real covers. but this is actually quite clear and precise so i am sure it is really what it says it is. it is just a very matte finish look, unlike any other i have seen, except maybe a couple of home brews i have had. i doubt this would stand up to water in any way. oh well.
i am always shocked when i see anything made with saccharin these days, i thought it was found to be both disgusting and not good for you. it served its purpose in 1977 to flavor Tab or whatever but there are better options these days. but perhaps not in the mind of Filbert’s.
frankly this is not good. as i expected it would not be. it tastes awful in that way only a diet drink can, very harsh and metallic and bitter. i would never buy this if i could not drink sugared drinks and especially won’t while i still can. their regular soda is tasty though, so check that out. plus the name “filbert’s” is pretty cool for some reason.
Ingredients:carbonated water, sodium gluconate, carmel color, sodium saccharin (8.9mg per fl oz), natural & artificial flavors, sodium benzoate (Preservative)

Anthony’s Rating: 18
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oooo, a diet soda!! yeah, sarcasm is coming to a town near you, right about now, catch it while you can!!
let me get the good stuff out of the way first. i actually quite like the design on this and the regular root beer. for store brand soda, it is well done. a circus-like font for the name along with beige vertical stripes to increase the circus-ocity of it all. then, in the center, a tasty looking mug of what i assume is supposed to be root beer, frothy and overflowing, surrounded by a ring of hypno rays. so overall it looks like an advertisement for a side show freak or something. an unusual tact to take but hey, whatever works for you Save-A-Lot people. and like i said, i do like it much better than most store brand sodas. at least some thought and effort went into it.

onto the bad part. which is the soda itself. it is bad. not good. gross even. it tastes like i forgot to take the foil off of my sandwich for lunch and bit it anyway but got no sandwich, just foil. and carbonation. yeah, very carbonated aluminum foil, you know the stuff i am sure. so yeah, i don’t like this if you did not gather that. my mouth is not happy and my stomach even less happy. it hurts in fact.
so much for starting the 2nd 500 with a solid soda. since i did not actually write #500 when i am writing this, i sure hope that one was good.
Ingredients:carbonated water, caramel color, potassium benzoate (as a preservative), sucralose, natural and artificial flavors, citric acid and acesulfame potassium

Anthony’s Rating: 16
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so, fresh off reviewing a very excellent diet soda, my hopes and expectations for diet soda is raised up. they can be good! Point pulled off a pretty tasty regular root beer so can they come through with a solid diet version? i sure hope so. they also seem to have moved to the long, skinnier bottles in the intervening several years since i had the regular root beer. whatever, doesn’t matter to me really except that i will probably have to display them on different shelves if i ever get a root beer room in some future house. the packaging otherwise is good, full wrap label again, olde tyme photos and some pointy headed fellow on the back. fine, fine.

hhhmmm, not bad. yeah, it has the aftertaste, but less than most do. yeah, it has a little bit of a harsh, bitter flavor for a moment but it passes quickly. weird. this one is not good in the grand scheme of all drinks, but in the diet world it is solid. the vanilla is very much there which is a good thing. i also get a good level of sweetness, not as much as in some diets, but fine. perhaps sucrolose is the way to go for avoiding the aftertaste as much as possible. but who knows what else any sweetener does to your systems? not me that is for sure. well carbonated. almost creamy if not for that slight bitter tinge. it would do in a pinch if i had to do diet.
Ingredients:carbonated water, caramel color, natural and artificial flavor, phosphoric acid, acesulfame potassium, sodium benzoate (protects freshness), sucralose, vanilla

Anthony’s Rating: 66
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alright, a diet soda… i can do this. it might be good, right? Northwood’s other two drinks were quite tasty, so this could be awesome!

wow, this is sweet! i mean that in the “it is sugary sweet” way not in the “it is rad, awesome, sweet” sense. but for whatever reason it works and it pretty much blocks the artificial sweetener aftertaste. which makes no sense to me. the artificial sweetener is what causes the aftertaste, so why would adding more of it to make this sweeter decrease said aftertaste?

but i could mean it in the “rad, awesome, sweet” sense too actually. because it is a good diet drink! holy moly! i never thought it possible but this is good. better than a lot of sugared sodas. the best diet soda i have ever had. it must be something about the Wild Bill name since the only one close to this is the NJ Wild Bill’s. interesting…
i see these commercials for the new fangled diet colas and diet prune soda with the opposing delivery truck drivers or the easter bunny and Santa Claus and so on, all saying that their blech is as good as the non-diet version, but they really need to try this one. it tastes like root beer! a very very sweet one, but still… if you melted a root beer barrel candy or one of those candy stick things, it would taste a lot like this. which is good if you like sweet stuff. i am just astounded. it is not bad. weird. they say it is a “rare, smooth beverage” on this one too and this time they are right! very rare and quite smooth. whoa. job well done, Bill and family. you have taken the lead. anyone care to step up and challenge them?

Ingredients:carbonated water, natural & artificial flavor, phosphoric acid, sucralose, aceuflame potassium & sodium benzoate to preserve quality

Anthony’s Rating: 72
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so i saw the review of this soda on the Thirsty Dudes site, having never heard of the company at all before. i proceeded to leave a comment to that effect and bing, bang, boom, a day or so later i get an email from the company asking if i wanted to review it also! crazy how this internet deal works sometimes! i accepted, excited to perhaps get a diet soda that was naturally sweetened and thus might taste good. but also apprehensive as i have never likes things with stevia so far.
soon after that a six pack comes in the mail. cool. i pop a couple in the fridge and await the coldness to take hold.
and here i am, popping the top on the can. i kind of like the style here but i think it comes across as a very generic soda from 1972, with the fonts and overwhelmingly white background. i don’t think i would take it for a semi-premium beverage if i saw it on a shelf myself.
i wondered if this would be brown or clear before i read the ingredients and saw the caramel color. so yeah, brown soda.
ok, trying it…. wow, this is horrible. i read Thirsty Dudes review of this and had high expectations but even with low to mid expectations, it is just not good. the diet taste is all i can taste, there is no trace of root beer there at all. if blindfolding, i would have no clue what flavor this was supposed to be. it is harsh and bitter and angry at my taste buds for something they did a long time ago i think. maybe those grape jelly and lettuce sandwiches they enjoyed in the 80s finally caught up to them. i keep on sipping it to see if i am just missing the yum. or the ok-ness. but i did not. i think this is a little better than the Zevia but just barely. i really do want to like stevia sweetened stuff, but so far i don’t. a natural, no calorie sweetener would be amazing. i even stopped buying Stoneyfield 0 fat yogurt since they added stevia, they wrecked it. not that being natural makes something automatically safe and healthy and all but artificial sweeteners kind of scare me.
Ingredients:triple filtered carbonated water, caramel color, rebiana (natural sweetener), natural flavors, citric acid, gum acacia

Anthony’s Rating: 12
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so how will this be? every time i sample a new root beer i think that to myself. with the diet sodas it is more “ok, how bad could it be? maybe it will be good for once!” but i try not to get my hopes up too high. that is harder when i have tried the regular, full-on sugar version of a soda though. from that one i feel like i know that the company can or cannot make a good soda, so the diet is expected to follow along the same lines. sadly that does not always happen at all. well, not really “sadly” i suppose, more “unexpectedly” or “illogically” or “your assumption was dumb Anthony.”
i do somewhat doubt that Al Capone ever drank a diet soda, let alone had a secret recipe for one, but i will let that slide. as long as at least one drink in their soda line came from Mr. Capone or bore his name at some point, even if Geraldo did not find it on prime time TV, then they can go with it.
this actually is not so bad tasting. wow. i would never choose it over even a regular A&W or something mind you, but i am not getting sick feeling which is often the case. it even sort of tastes like root beer too! pretty creamy and very smooth with just a slight metal taste in the middle, not to start and not in the aftertaste, it just lasts for a moment and then is gone, like that cute guy you saw was on the bus this morning when you missed it.
Ingredients:carbonated water, caramel color, potassium benzoate, aspertame (NutraSweet brand), artificial and natural flavor and malic acid

Anthony’s Rating: 65
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yes indeed, another of my absolute favorite kinds of soda, diet store brands!! woo hoo! ok, turn the sarcasm down anthony ok random italicized voice, will do. no problem. not sure when he snuck in here from razzball though. wacky.
once again, this “Main Street” stuff seems to be the store brand of a whole bunch of different grocery stores, Stop & Shop, Giant and more. an interesting concept the graphic design is interesting. each flavor has a different color combination but all have this old time soda fountain worker looking guy trying to hand you a frosty glass of whatever soda you have chosen. in this case, it is a very heady brown soda. the fonts mainly go along with the 50s/60s car hop/soda fountain feel. so i guess that is pretty well done, especially for a store brand. why the birch beer glass had some orange looking soda in the glass i am not sure as it is a clear birch but perhaps it would be too hard to make the label clear or even just white. whatever.
this is not horrible. that is really saying something for a diet, store brand. it is not tasty though either. it just takes longer for the diet sweetener to spread metal all around my mouth and make my tummy ache. is that a good thing? relative to other diet sodas, yes i guess it is. relative to other drinks, no, it still is bad. i get a bit of root beer taste in there somewhere but it is behind a lot of sharp carbonation and some bitter kick, even before the dietness kicks in. i guess i could live with this being my generic soda if i was forced to only drink diet drinks. yet i doubt i would do that, it is not like i have a generic regular root beer now that i ever buy unless it is for review.
Ingredients:carbonated water, caramel color, aspertame, potassium benzoate (a preservative), natural and artificial flavor, citric acid

Anthony’s Rating: 32
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the first thing that surprised me about this drink is the color scheme chosen. usually, when there is a diet and a full calorie version of a root beer, the full calorie one is the one that has brown as traditional main, primary color and the diet version has some other color, usually something lighter or more subdued. perhaps this is supposed to make one thing of the lighter caloric content of the diet soda. “hey, Mildred, this bottle right here has a white label, it must be lower in calories than that there brown labelled one! i am gonna get me some of this here DIET bev-er-age!” but those ingenious folks at Bobby Boy’s Barrel has reversed that and made the diet soda have the brown label and the full calorie one have the blue label! whoa! the world is on its side, swine are a flying! or not. whatever.
on first taste, i thought “hey, not bad, very syrupy sweet but not a lot of aftertaste. oh wait, there it is. but still not terrible.” yeah. especially for aspertame, they have somehow made it not be awful. like before them, they have an aspertame product that is alright. and for something with no calories, actually pretty tasty. there is a root beer taste in there, under a lot of sweetness. nonetheless it is there and not so bad. interesting Bobby Boy, very interesting. i don’t think it is quite as good as that one, but it is much better than the other 60 or so diet sodas i have had over the years, which is definitely saying something. i am also not getting the tummy ache i always get with diet sodas so that is another plus here. fine job, Michigan soda maker! i don’t know how you did it, but it does not matter much. unless you are lying about the whole “diet” thing and this has sugar or something.
Ingredients:filtered carbonated water, aspertame, caramel color, vanilla, natural flavors, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate (a preservative, and citric acid.

Anthony’s Rating: 66
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