New Diet Coke flavor series (Part 5/5)

Product: Diet Coke Zesty Blood Orange
Origin: USA

First looks

Nick:
My blood orange is so zesty! We couldn't find this one at Target and got a can from a very dedicated reader, so we're going to have to make this review super entertaining. Uh, knock 'em dead, Katie.

Katie:
The soda does have an orange smell to it, which pleases me. I'm always somewhat disappointed when things don't smell like the thing they're supposed to be flavored with. I think orange is one of my favorite scents. It reminds me of Horizons (which I'm sure Nick is extremely sick of hearing about as I mention it practically every time Epcot comes up or we're there or it smells like oranges). For those who did not get the chance to go on the ride when it was still at Epcot, it was a ride all about the technologies we might have in the future. One of the scenes in the ride took place at the daughter's orange farm and it smelled like delicious oranges in there. I want to go to there still. Horizons and the original Journey into Imagination ride were my two favorites from the original Epcot. I liked World of Motion just fine and adored the sharks at Living with the Seas but those original two were what I looked forward to. While I'm sad to see a beloved ride go, that's how we get new ones that are just as cool. We wouldn't have Soarin' if Kitchen Kabaret never retired, after all. I guess I should shut the french toast up about old Epcot rides and move on to actually trying the soda.

Post-sip thoughts

Nick:
Pretty good! The sweet orange taste actually works with the aspartame, instead of trying to cover it up; I think I like this one even better than the cherry flavor. I don't know how much of this I'd want to drink, but I think this is the clear winner of the batch. There's not really any Coke flavor at all, but it works. Is this what blood orange tastes like? By the way, did you know that if you order orange soda at McDonald's you actually get orange Hi-C? That's why it's not carbonated. Also, did you know they finally closed Ellen's World of Energy? If you didn't see an Ellen animatronic getting menaced by a giant boa constrictor, you missed your chance. (You didn't really miss much, the ride's really weird; you learn about energy for ten minutes, then it's a 20 minute dinosaur dark ride except Ellen and Bill Nye the Science Guy are yelling over it, then you learn 20 minutes more about energy and see Jamie Lee Curtis lose at Jeopardy! to Ellen, who kind of cheated by freezing time and learning all about energy from Bill Nye the Science Guy if you think about it. Is that the example we want to leave behind for our children, cheating at game shows by stopping time and getting nerds to come help them come from behind and win? They're replacing it with some kind of Guardians of the Galaxy roller coaster, which will teach our children that I am Groot.)

Katie:
If baby Groot dancing doesn't bring a smile to your face, you have no soul. But yeah, the soda was good!  I agree with Nick, we have a clear winner. And what did Zesty Blood Orange win, you ask? A future home in our tummies because we're going to buy more to pour down our face holes.

New Diet Coke flavor series (Part 4/5)

Product: Diet Coke Feisty Cherry
Origin: USA

First looks

Katie:
There is a little bit of a cherry scent to this one although I must have sniffed a little too vigorously as I'm pretty sure some escaping bubbles went up my nose. It's all tingly. I'm a skosh hopeful although plain old cherry soda isn't my favorite usually. I like cherry mixed with vanilla. Maybe plain cherry reminds me too much of liquid medicine from when I was a kid...it was always cherry flavored and always disgusting.

Nick:
I really like Cherry Coke, so I have, uh, medium hopes for this. I don't know what Feisty Cherry tastes like, but hopefully the Feistyness can cover up the aspartame flavoring. Smells pretty good, so we'll see (TM).

Post-sip thoughts

Katie:
It's a good sipping soda, if that makes sense. It's definitely not the best soda ever but it's certainly better than other sodas I've tried for this blog. I think I'll finish the amount I have then maybe get this once in a great while at the store. I like how it's cherry but not CHERRY. Like this is the cherry flavor you'd get if you made cherry soda from your Animal Crossing cherry trees...pleasant but not the best fruit (the best fruit is peaches because they look like big pink butts growing in my town hahahahaha then I mail them to my animals saying "here's a butt for you" in the letter).

Nick:
I really like the letters in Animal Crossing when one animal is like "Check out this letter Katie sent me," and it just says "b" and then they're like "Check out this letter you sent me!" and it's hamburger stationary and the text is "GET OUT, GET OUT NOW, I WILL FEAST ON YOUR FLESH" and they're like "This letter really made my day!" and they give me an old 8-ball T-shirt.
Anyway, this is by far the best of the diet coke flavors; it actually tastes like cherry with a mild aspartame undertaste, whereas all the rest taste like aspartame with a mild undertaste of whatever flavoring they're supported to be. If I was going to get any more diet coke, I'd definitely get this, but realistically I'm probably going to just keep getting regular Cherry Coke, or Cherry Vanilla Pepsi, even after the box exploded and like half of them fell on the floor and got dented. Katie yelled "Write about the one with a hole in it!" so here's the story: Katie found one with a tiny hole in it (how did the box explode and she found a can right after with a tiny hole in it recently enough that it was full of soda? HMMM. I'm not accusing anyone. Just wondering. Just sayin'. I'm just asking questions) and called me over so we could watch the entire can drain out of a tiny hole in it and then I was scared to open the rest of the cans but luckily none of them exploded.

PS from Katie:
The box was oppressing the cans so they made a daring escape. Sorry Nick. Sorry I was fighting so hard for freedom. We don't all leave innocent cans in can bondage boxes like you must love so much. #nocanleftbehind
Also regarding my one letter Animal Crossing letters, they don't really care or are capable of noticing what the letter says, they react the same every time. Nick used to take like 20 minutes telling a frog about his day and it has the same reaction as if I wrote "aaaa" or "fart" but I didn't have the heart to tell him because he must be very lonely writing these long letters about what he had for dinner to imaginary cows. Except Rosie, she's the blue cat and my best friend.

New Diet Coke flavor series (Part 3/5)

Product: Diet Coke Twisted Mango
Origin: USA

First looks

Nick:
I need to go to the doctor - I twisted my mango! I don't know. I guess I don't have much to say about these diet cokes before trying them; this one actually smells pretty mango-y, and I really like mango soda, but the last two have been nothing but aspartame flavor, and I've been burned too many times to expect anything else. This is the flavor that lady was drinking in the horrible Super Bowl ad where she had legs longer than her torso and head combined, so maybe my legs will get super long. Or Katie's will if she drinks this. No, that's not allowed; she already has an elegant torso, she can't have super long millennial diet coke twisted mango legs too.

Katie:
I would like to be taller so here's hoping for some long twisted mango legs. You're mine at last, items on the top shelf!
As Nick said, this smells pretty mango-y, which marks it as the first soda I've been able to smell a difference in for this series. I'm hoping I like it better than other fruit sodas I've tried in the past. Fingers crossed!

Post-sip thoughts

Nick:
Well, it's better than the last two for sure; this definitely has a strong mango taste, but unfortunately it has an equally strong aspartame taste. Reminds me of the time I was eating a grapefruit and I didn't know what the pink and blue sweetener packets were and put them on the grapefruit. I mean, I put the contents on the grapefruit, I didn't literally lay the unopened packs on it. Although that might work eventually when the juice destroyed the packet. The point is, this is not great; a little too sweet and too fake for me to enjoy. But at least it's not 100% aspartame! Ha ha!

Katie:
Pretty good!  For diet soda. Look, it's not going to match soda with real cane sugar in it, does anyone really think it will? (Nick just asked "Is this aimed at me?"). This is some nice, guilt free soda for people counting their calories to enjoy.  I might even get another can of this and the ginger lime one now and then.  Will I drink either on the regular? Probably not. As I said in a previous review, I used to drink Diet Caffeine Free Coke like water and that's not healthy either. Having a soda, diet or otherwise, now and then is not going to make or break a diet or healthy eating kick. You have to let yourself have a treat sometimes or risk an all-weekend ice cream binge.

New Diet Coke flavor series (Part 2/5)

Product: Diet Coke Ginger Lime
Origin: USA

First looks

Katie:
Sure looks like a coke! There's no visual or scent difference between this and any other coke so this whole section feels redundant. Nick! Make something out of this. Call upon your Wordsmith skills!

Nick:
I'm a little bummed out this is just regular cola brown and isn't colored green. Really missing the boat there, Coke. I like ginger ale and I like lime soda (well, lemon-lime soda; do they make just lime flavored soda?) so I'm slightly optimistic, but then I took a big sniff of the glass and all I smell is gross aspartame, so my hopes aren't too high for this. Oh man, I hope this whole thing wasn't a big mistake. I can only reword "ew, aspartame" so many different ways. Ginger my lime, Coke!

Post-bite thoughts

Katie:
Wow, can that guy stretch out thoughts or what? Take that, arbitrary college paper word counts!!! I wish I could do that. I'm usually like "I used these three sentences to get my point across, paper complete!"
Anyway.
This soda is pretty good. The ginger lime is very subtle. You can tell there's a little flavoring but you're not being fireballed in the mouth by ginger's burn or soured up by lime flavor. This might be an early winner!  Of the contest for diet soda that doesn't taste like aspartame.

Nick:
If anyone needs their paper beefed up, I charge ten cents a word, unless my professor is reading this in which case ha ha, what a funny joke I just made. (Free tip: You can waste a lot of words in your introduction by just saying what the paper is going to be about and the conclusion by saying what the paper was about. Try re-wording the assignment instructions!)
As for this soda, uhh... I think Katie's being generous calling the ginger lime taste very subtle; I mostly taste, shockingly, aspartame, with a taste I guess is ginger? kind of? lurking back there in the shadows somewhere. If you had me blind taste this, I would have no idea what flavor this is supposed to be. I'm like Tonya in the first Fievel movie singing about somewhere out there except I'm singing about ginger lime taste in my new Diet Coke instead of my brother the cowboy mouse from Russia or whatever it is. I haven't seen those movies in forever. In conclusion, I did not care much for this diet coke and really hope the other flavors taste more like what they say on the can instead of aspartame.

PS from Katie: He's got a very sensitive pallet for someone who eats Skittles off the floor.
PPS from Nick: They're still good! Sometimes they're a little hard. I'm sure it's fine. Builds character. That's why when I go to the doctor they're like "Nick, you're the most cool, powerful and attractive patient here," and I'm like "It's those Skittles off the floor, they boost my immune system." (Some of that is true)
PPPS from Katie: None of that is true except that he eats Skittles off the floor if I'm not paying attention!!!!!

New Diet Coke flavor series (Part 1/5)

Product: Diet Coke
Origin: USA

First looks

Nick:
I would like to state that we are not being sponsored by Coke; in fact, we can't even find the Blood
Orange flavor of new diet coke (sold out at Target), so if you got an extra one, give it here. That being said, I'm not really much of a diet soda fan; I've heard this new recipe just tastes like Coke instead of that gross fake aspartame diet soda taste, but I'm skeptical. We're trying this mostly as a baseline before we get into the weird flavors, and honestly, I'm expecting that gross fake aspartame taste despite what Coke's terrible Super Bowl ad promised about it being different this time.

Katie:
I used to drink Diet Coke caffeine free like water years ago. Currently, I'm rediscovering my love of regular Coke. I'm hoping that my new love regular Coke hasn't ruined me on diet soda. I mostly just hope Nick doesn't totally hate it!

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
Ew. I'll give them credit that this tastes less like gross fake aspartame, but the main flavor is still gross fake aspartame. This is missing the bite that regular Coke has. Tastes like flat, gross Pepsi more than anything else. I sure hope the other flavors manage to cover up the disgusting sweetener taste.

Katie:
Not bad! Like Nick said, I miss the regular Coke bite has. It was fine. I look forward to the different flavors having an impact on the diet soda taste aura it still has. I think I still liked this better than regular Pepsi, which I had at lunch/dinner earlier. Doesn't it just grind your gears when a restaurant has the opposite soda brand from the one you like? Serves me right for not ordering water, I suppose.

Licorice ribbons

Product: Fini Mini Kollisions
Origin: Spain

First looks

Nick:
The bag screams "The Boldest Ever Mix of Sweet and Sour Licorice" and you know what guys, I'm gonna give you that one. No longer must my mouth fall asleep chewing timid, excuse-me taps together of sweet and sour licorice. I'm mildly hopeful for these; they smell like sugar and cheap fruit flavoring. Don't let me down, Spain!

Katie:
I can't stand licorice.  Not really very fair of me to review it!  I do like how colorful the ribbons are. Hopefully they're tasty.

I don't have anything funny to add here. sorry. nick add something funny and not that joke about the lonely ghost at the Halloween party.

See that white and red filling? That's all pure sugar. Also,
look at how white this guy's hands are. Where is his blood??!!

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
Hey why was the ghost sad at the Halloween party? he didn't have any BODY to dance with! Oh ho ho ho ho ho! Oh, yes! Ripping good laugh!
As for this snack, my god; it's like 99% sugar. Two of the three shapes in the bag are a very thin layer of licorice wrapped around an extremely thick filling, and that filling is 100% sugar. Wow. If you need a sugar overdose, pop two or three of these in your mouth. I'm going to finish the bag, but maybe one a day. Very powerful stuff. I feel like I should be wearing a hazmat suit and using tongs to drop a single one of these into my mouth before cackling maniacally.


Katie:
How many apples grow on a tree?
t
h
i
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k
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All of them.

I don't want to ruin Nick's joke by calling this entry "Pizza Assholes"

Product: Fabitos Pizza Assado
Origin: Brazil

First looks

Katie:
The pizza smell is strong with these, even breaking through the remnants of the sinus infection I'm getting over at the time of this writing.  The chips are puffed and shaped like wheels, meant to represent a sliced pizza I think. I'm really rooting for these to be delicious.

Nick:
I swear to God, when I first saw the package, I thought these were called "Pizza Assholes", and if you look at the shape of the snack... uh, yeah. They smell like very basil-y pizza, but I don't have my hopes up too high; I'm pretty sure none of the pizza flavored items we've had actually tasted anything like pizza. We'll see. My mouth is armored in powerful skepticism at what these are actually going to taste like.

Post-bite thoughts

Katie:
All the nope.
Let's start with the texture--these things have all the pleasant mouthfeel one would expect from a packing peanut. They don't crunch so much as collapse in your mouth with a cracking eggshell feeling.
And the taste? Was that supposed to be added at any point? Brazil, do you even have pizzas to use for reference?  This tasted like bad salt and out-of-date taco seasoning. Your culture is vibrant but your pizza snacks are awful. Bleck.

Nick:
Oh, boy. I'm really struggling to think of even a single nice thing to say about these pizza assholes. The taste and texture is like they made an extremely cheap, pizza in name only cheese snack, then left it around to get stale and musty before putting it in a bag and unleashing it on innocent food bloggers. Something nice, uh... hmm. Ummm... the bag has a little diagram showing you how to open it? That part was okay! Ha ha!

Milka and Oreo

Product: Milka & Oreo
Origin: Poland

First looks

Nick:
So this is like chocolate with Oreo goop inside? All right, this looks pretty good. As long as they didn't make it sugar free or gluten free or GMO free or gum free or whatever other way we've had promising snacks ruined before, I think this is going to be quite nice. I mean, chocolate normally doesn't have gluten anyway, right? This is like when I'm shopping for candy and the product that's 100% sugar yells FAT FREE on the package. I'm going to pass the keyboard to Katie so I can stuff this in my mouth now.

Katie:
This seems very promising. The Oreo inside (btw I keep typing Oreo as "Orea" wtf is an orea???) is not goopy, which is the ultimate crime when it comes to chocolate...even more so than flipping quinoa being in there. Anyway.  The chocolate smells exactly like regular milk chocolate, nothing more or less. It's broken up into handy squares, as you'll see in the photo below. I'm hoping this is good, melty chocolate with Oreo cream filling bonus taste. We shall soon see!

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
Ah, yes sir, yes sir indeed sir, indeed sir yes sir, this is really good. Like Katie I don't enjoy it much when chocolate has "goop" inside - substantially softer filling - and the texture of this filling is great; very slightly softer than the outside chocolate, but not so much it's distracting; instead it kind of melts in your mouth with a very nice light milky flavor. Even better than I anticipated! I'm sure that liking Oreo-flavored chocolate bars like this so much doesn't make my taste seem terribly sophisticated, but I don't care; this is delicious. I would definitely get more of this. My only caution is that it's very super sweet - you'll want to have some water handy to wash even a small amount down with, I think. A+!

Katie:
Oh my gosh, an explosion of sweetness. I definitely liked this but a little bit goes a huge distance. Pick this up if you see it but be prepared to work on this Charlie Bucket-style (i.e. very slowly because you're a poor little English boy in a Roald Dahl story). A great mash-up of tastes from our friends in Poland!

Pre-smashed peanut cookies

Product: PikaNut peanut biscuits
Origin: Pakistan

First looks

Katie:
Having been already smunched up fairly well, I grabbed a sliver of cookie from the bag as my taste-test piece. The cookies have a very weird, plastic-y smell to me. The cookie piece is rather hard and I have a feeling it will taste very dry and not very good. I hope I'm wrong.

Nick:
These allegedly peanut-flavored (by the way, shouldn't it be, like, peanut-butter flavored? I've never had just peanut flavored something before, probably because peanuts don't have much of a taste) biscuit smells exactly like extra virgin olive oil. I don't know how that's even possible; maybe there's a ton of extra virgin olive oil in them. Uh, wish us luck, everyone.

Post-bite thoughts

Katie:
Texture is softer than I thought.  Tastes like bland peanuts. Not especially good but not especially horrible. These aren't for me, dude.

Nick:
Deeply bland, with a mild undercurrent of... uh, slightly unpleasant blandness. I'm afraid there's not even really enough to make fun of here, it's just a bland, sad cookie and it's kinda not good. Maybe we could do a joke because PikaNut sounds like something Pikachu would eat, but I think Pokemon just eat berries or something, and it would be boring if Pikachu even ate these, like he'd take a bite and then just frown and the episode would kinda end on an anticlimax (like this review).

Explosive quinoa chocolate

Product: quinoa ka-pow!
Origin: USA

First looks

Nick:
I'm very confused. The container screams "TASTES LIKE A CRUNCH EXPLOSION IN YOUR MOUTH" but surely that's a texture? Crunch is a texture, not a taste. "What's your burger taste like?" "CRUNCH"? Is this just dark chocolate with quinoa in it? Is the quinoa exploding? Is that normal? How does quinoa explode? This looks and smells like a regular dark chocolate bar with a very tiny amount of quinoa in it, so I'm getting the feeling the wrapping is over-promising a little bit here.

Katie:
Is quinoa even crunchy? I don't remember it being a crunchy thing but I've only had it like twice. Did everyone run out of ways to make chocolate good so now we're just shoving random foods into it?

Post-bite thoughts

Nick:
I'm still confused. My quinoa isn't exploding. This does indeed just taste like good chocolate with random food shoved into it; there's very little quinoa, and when I do even notice that it's in there, it just feels like crunching a seed. I mean, the chocolate is pretty good, so I'll eat the whole bar, but the quinoa is completely accidental to the whole experience, and I wouldn't miss it if it was gone. Did this not just sell as, like, "Tastes like a nice dark chocolate bar in your mouth"? The chocolate is very nice, it doesn't need quinoa and lying packaging. Very puzzling.

Katie:
Mlech. Do not want.  The chocolate is fine but it's not going to make you love dark chocolate all the sudden because there's weird crap in it. The quinoa does not need to be here at all. The texture is not right for chocolate and is very distracting. Just...don't with the adding weird stuff to chocolate. Make good chocolate, people. Add actual good food to it, if you have to add something. Stop being 'lol so random'.

Also, instead of touting that your chocolate is 'non-gmo', which is a bs thing to be proud of, how about you get your chocolate fair-trade?  How about chocolate that doesn't involve child labor or slavery? That's quite a bit more important than your non-gmo crap.