I would have sworn that I’d ranted about this before but I did a search and couldn’t find it. It must have been in private email. But I’ve been looking for stuff to post that isn’t about my running and when this topic came up in conversation today I realized I’d found something.
This is it in a nutshell:
There are too many kinds of soda!
Walk into any convenience market and go to the freezer section. Look in there. Start counting – Coke, Cherry Coke, Coke with Lime, Coke with Vanilla, Coke Zero, Pepsi, Cherry Pepsie, Pepsi with Lemon, Pepsi with Lime, Pepsi with Vanilla, Pepsi One… then all the diet versions of those… and now there’s the Splenda versions… then the lesser brands, like Mountain Dew, Sprite, 7-UP, Squirt… and multiple flavors of those… Dr. Pepper and all it’s incarnations… holy crap I can’t even list them all. Do not post in the comments that I missed your favorite flavor because I would be writing forever if I had to actually list them all.
And the sports drinks, like Gatorade and all the knock-offs. C’mon! The only real Gatorade is lemon-lime. That’s why they called it Gatorade — it was named after the Florida Gators! Hello? Has anybody seen a cherry alligator? A blue alligator? I didn’t think so. Alligators are green, motherfuckers. Live with it.
And how many “flavors” of bottled water do we really need? I swear, the next time someone claims to be able to tell the difference between Dasani and Aquafina I’m going to introduce them to Mr. Shotgun.
And that’s just for soft drinks!
There isn’t enough room in a typical mini-mart freezer for all of these. Is that the plan? Soda companies just keep proliferating soda flavors until they push out their competition.
Just 10 years ago, it was Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, 7-Up, and diet versions. Sure, they tried gimmicks like “clear” Pepsi or “New” Coke but they didn’t last. Those offshoots were flashes-in-the-pan and were laughed out of existence. But now, you can’t stop the new flavors coming out. Soon we’ll have Pepsi BBQ or Diet Coke with Cilantro or some shit.
It boils down to this: there are only two good flavors to add to a caffeinated beverage: Vanilla, and Lime. Everything else is crap and, frankly, just a waste. Stop, soda companies, just… stop. It’s over. You’re done. Don’t you know there’s a war on? Stop hurting America. Get some rest.