Manhattan Special Diet Sarsaparilla

wow, this is the FIRST american diet sarsaparilla i have reviewed in the almost 15 years of doing these reviews! that seems so strange. but then again there are not a lot of regular sarsaparillas out there so it sort of makes sense. yet the number of birch beers and sarsaparillas are pretty close and there are a bunch of diet birch beers. on the 4th hand, many birch beers are stand alone entities while most sarsaparillas are just one in a larger line of sodas made by the same company, usually including a root beer and they would be more likely to make a diet root beer as it is more recognizable. i am just guessing on all of that, but it may be true.
i really thought i would eventually find some of this in my searching in the real world as i see the full sugar version reasonably often. but i just never did so i gave up and mail ordered it.
the label is excellent. good illustration of a mug of frothy soda in front of a bunch of leaves and junk that i assume are sarsaparilla tree leaves.
it is a shame that the image is so deceiving.
oh my golly gosh green grape, this is really really horrendously bad! wow. i think it is worse than the Villa Diet Sarsaparilla even! geez. i am trying to think of how to describe the taste. for lunch today i brought a piece of leftover pizza in foil. just to see, i but off a piece of that foil. it taste very similar but better than this drink. so yeah, very metallic, very bitter. i think stagnant swamp water tastes kind of like this. if anyone in the world enjoys this i think i have found my opposite. not in a good way. now i know why i could not find this anywhere. it is evil. and i am going to put the cap back on and try to forget it ever happened. please never even open one yourself, life will be happier that way. i provide this service for you.

Anthony’s Rating: 5
User’s Rating: 1
# of ratings:1
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A & W Root Beer Freezer Pops

alright, so this has been in the freezer for quite a while now, awaiting review. actually the freezer has a few frozen root beer treats in it. i don’t really feel like these things deserve the usual wait of actual soda reviews so i will just post them up at random times i think.
the basic concept here is that they are ice pops flavored like soda, there are 4 flavors i believe. granted, i used to make these a ton when i was a kid with our ice pop molds. so they were not quite the same. that was fun though, i should bust those things out again, i think i got some new ones at Ikea a couple years ago! this is decent, it tastes like A&W, frozen. i guess a little more sweet if anything. if you don’t know what A&W tastes like, well shame on you. go get some and come back, i will wait. ok, so while those people are gone, i will go on anyway. yeah, i did not actually feel like waiting. it does not stack up to drinking a real soda of course, but it will do in a pinch. if that pinch involves planning ahead enough to have these in the freezer for a day or so and not have any soda in the fridge. which is a weird pinch to be in.
the fact that the flavor is less than 2% of the actual content is somewhat weird to me, but i suppose it does not take much to flavor something. i guess i would hope it would take less than 2% corn syrup to sweeten it too, but no such luck. perhaps it is only 3% corn syrup so they could not put that into the final section.

Anthony’s Rating: 35
User’s Rating: 30
# of ratings:2
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hello new people!!

wow, so i did not quite expect the huge traffic spike as a result of Modern Marvels! crazy! mainly since they did not ever say the site address or name. i had about 10 times more traffic than usual yesterday and i am quite surprised my server handled it ok. very good.
anyway, welcome new visitors! thanks for finding me. enjoy a frosty one and feel free to browse around. there are 430 reviews up right now with new ones posting every 12 days for at least the next year or so. hopefully longer if i find more sodas. click on “Reviews” above to go to the alphabetical list of all of the sodas i have reviewed in the past 14 years. you can submit ratings for each one under their reviews. if you click on “Rankings” you can see what sodas i and users each rated highest. or lowest. sign up to receive updates or just follow me on Twitter to see when i post new reviews. i have sodas lined up for the next year already so no worries there. send me a message and i will be sure to get back to you soon. and come back again soon.
oh! if you can get any of the sodas in my WANTED section, i would be more than happy to pay all costs. or trade with you. also if there any any sodas you can get that you don’t see reviewed, i probably want em! so write to me. please. kthxbye

Modern Marvels! at last

so finally the episode of Modern Marvels that i am briefly in, “Soft Drinks”, will be aired this Thursday, April 8th at 8 pm EST on the History Channel. it will also be on a few more times in the week or so after that at various times, so check your local listings. i am in it for a couple minutes and there are many shots from my house, close ups of bottles and me pouring a root beer and junk like that. cool junk! check it out!

My Private Label Root Beer

ah, a vanity label! the birch was quite disappointing so my expectations for this are rather low. i actually got a couple different bottles of this from different establishments but i will just pick one randomly to review, trusting that the others are the same.
you know what? this is actually very good! nice work NJ vanity label company. in fact it is so tasty i may even get it for my wedding! although it having HF corn syrup does drag it down a little in my opinion. the flavor is a step up from the norm yet still sticks with the expected flavor. they add extra sweetness for sure without making it syrupy sweet. there is also a little bit of a sharp undertone that shows up after a few seconds but is rather yummy actually. granted it is not the top tier, it is not the perfect combination of some of them or the unique take of others, but it is solid and very enjoyable. i would be happy to grab this when given the chance.

Anthony’s Rating: 88
User’s Rating: 0
# of ratings:0
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Oogave Esteban’s Rootbeer – old formula

i was sent this by a very kind reader some time back. actually it was much less time back than when this review will actually appear, at least a year or so. at this point it is only a couple months i believe. anyway, i had never heard of this beverage before so i was very excited to get to try it out. i suppose it falls sort of into the “natural soda” category, it has no preservatives, is sweetened with agave nectar and is all around all natural. i like natural stuff and i like the label design here too. it is different but still with the traditional brown root beer action going on. the yellow is a nice touch, grabs the attention.
the taste? oh yeah, i should get to that huh? it is pretty decent. a little sharp, a little harsh, totally lacking in the “creamy” side of root beer and also the “sweet” side too. and that is fine, you can do that in this world. but it does not mean i am going to love it. in the realm of natural sodas, this ranks pretty well. yet in the world of all sodas it is just ok. i know they are trying for a minimally sweetened drink here, so they succeed at that indeed. if you are a person who drinks a lot of soda, you should get this, save yourself all of those calories and weird sweeteners. but if you are like me and only have a soda maybe once a week or so, there are yummier choices. i do want to like this a lot, more drinks sweetened with agave would be excellent, it is a very underserved market, in fact i had to add it to my database so i could review this. in the end though i am a bit underwhelmed, sadly. i would like to try their other flavors though, they seem interesting.

UPDATE the kind folks at Oogave have told me this is their OLD formula and they have a new version which they are sending over for review. so expect a new review soon.

Anthony’s Rating: 75
User’s Rating: 82
# of ratings:3
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Cubby Bear Root Beer

i had neglected to review this root beer for a long time since it is made by the Joseph Huber Brewing Co and i always assumed that it was exactly the same as their other root beer, Blumers. they also make (or made, i am not sure anymore..) Berghoffs root beer. but i don’t think this one is the same as either of those, i believe they make a recipe just for the Cubby Bear. now, i have heard of this restaurant, being a baseball fan and all but i actually don’t know a ton about it. of course it is right across the street from Wrigley Field where the Chicago Cubs play and it seems lots of people then go to this place after games. i have never done that. or even set foot in the place. although i have gone to a couple of Cubs games in my life. i also did not get any pizza while i was in Chicago which seems even sillier. silly anthony!
i am quite amazed at just how precise their nutrition info is. that they know there is exactly 43.7 grams of sugar in here is real quality control! good work peoples! so despite this having been in my fridge for probably 2 years now it is quite very fresh and bubbly! again, good bottling work!
the flavor here is pretty good, a touch weak for my taste but the sweetness level is very high. just below being TOO sweet, so that is good. i imagine some people will find this overly sweet as my threshold for such things is rather high. it is a smooth drink, not really much of a suprise on the flavor beyond the slightly weak aspect. it tastes like a root beer is expected to taste, a good amount of vanilla in there along with the rooty spices. i would not turn this down but it is not among the elite brews for me.

Anthony’s Rating: 72
User’s Rating: 0
# of ratings:0
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