To remember a discontinued soda is to write a eulogy in fizzy impermanence. Once it's gone, it can never be reborn. Ratios shift, tastes change, shareholder dividends are paid with corners cut, and the state levies punishments for the effects of their policies on a per-sip basis.
I keep my favorites on ice, deep in a quiet corner of my mind. An ice box, not where my heart used to be, instead with each row restocked and emptied at the behest of nostalgia. A relaunched soda never prevails above the memory of its predecessor, more often it falls short of even matching the former glory.
I allow myself to be led by novelty instead of searching for familiarity because it provides a greater promise of fulfillment. Curiosity allows for surprise more readily than the set expectations of sentimentality. And I struggle to imagine a beverage that would elicit less sentimentality than Coca-Cola Spiced. At least I was curious enough to try it without using a coupon.
I twisted open the cap and was greeted with a familiar cola aroma with a quiet candy-like note, a combination that I will keep in mind the next time I'm browsing fragrantica but not one that made me particularly thirsty. The taste? It caught me off guard because my immediate thought was this Euphoria vs. Oppenheimer edit. I had a visceral but illogical sense of deja vu.
I had deja vu because Coca-Cola Spiced tastes exactly like Pepsi Blue.
Not this Pepsi Blue, the 2021 reboot that seemed to forget the "cola" flavor the label promised.
But this Pepsi Blue. The original soda that snuck a slightly unnerving cola base into a beverage presumably made from melted popsicles that had accidentally been delivered to a Pepsi bottling plant. The Pepsi Blue of my adolescent lore.
I know it doesn't seem surprising for two berry colas to echo the same form of simulacrum but Wild Cherry Pepsi and Cherry Coke are spiritual opposites. So I was surprised! Not shaken but I will be thinking about it for a long time and I hope you will feel the same way about this assortment of unsnackables.
the unsnackables
sweet
It is easy to use the faux-superiority of staying out of cyclical discourse on meaningless topics as a safeguard against wasting energy but I'm not immune to well-placed bait! Once again people are calling unsalted butter useless and I have to call them unserious. If you see butter as a neutral ingredient, you're using it wrong. Unsalted butter is simply the version that gives you more control, even when you're making toast because good bread with unsalted butter and some flaky salt? That is a true luxury! Just like these wafer cookies that employ the seemingly neutral flavors of butter and milk to create a flavor that commands attention.
savory
I don't think that horny bird's Language app provides much educational value in my life, but whichever neural pathways were formed by snap streaks have not faded so I continue to use it every day. That means I am occasionally faced with a loud bar at 11:43 PM, limited lives, and enough shame to make me turn down the brightness on my screen and eke through the monetized bastardization of "new math" on Duolingo. I don't understand what it is supposed to be teaching me, but I do feel like by the end of summer it will give me the skill set necessary to calculate the savory, flavorful surface area of these uniquely shaped chips that sorta resemble a hair accessory that would be sold on tiktokshop.
thirsty
The existence of these flavored CO2 canisters makes me sympathetic to flat earthers. I do not understand how they work but I feel in my heart that it must be possible to infuse coconut flavor into a beverage via gas, yet I also feel a slight fear of a world where that is possible?
boozy
I didn’t know that I wanted my cheesecake to include raisins until I saw comments on social media posts about this liqueur saying it couldn’t nail the flavor of cheesecake without them. But I’m still curious about the pairing of honey, which is the traditional base of Krupnik, and cheesecake. I would just make sure to have a bowl of raisins nearby to snack on while I sipped a glass.
I’m still figuring this out, but hopefully, you enjoyed v.70 of unsnackable.
If you didn’t please don’t tell me, tell your friends to subscribe because they hopefully have better taste than you.
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