Whoppers

Now this will come as no suprise but I am no stranger to packing a bag of whoppers.

I don't think anyone in this country is really a stranger to malted balls, it's ok we can say that.

So I got myself a packet of these recently and thought to myself ohh right it's like the American version of Malteesers. Almost but not quite. First thing is the chocolate is Hershey and it works very well on this product. The centre themselves is not just an aerated chocolate seperator oh no it's quite meaty well milky (note to self don't use terms meaty and milky when talking about balls) and it gives them a different kind of vibe entirely.

I actually think I prefer them, maybe it's just because it's different but hey I'm sticking with it. Really hope in the spirit of their Hershey trials that Asda bring these over for a period. Well worth a look guys.



NOTE : Don't do an image search for whoppers. It apparently assumes you want to see large breasts

Fentimans Cherry Tree Cola Update

Hello,

Cast your mind back to the Summer of 2011. Great times we all agree but do you remember the quest Fizzness started? Of course I do you cry, what sort of moron do you take me for? It was a cry for Fentimans to unleash their much desired Cherry Tree Cola to the UK.

GREAT NEWS!

The following was posted on their FB page last week

Fentimans Ltd Fentimans Cherrytree Cola will appear in Fentimans stockists over the coming weeks and will be available in Tesco early March.

YEEEOOO! So officially we can't claim any credit for this happening. Unofficially though the dog who brews fentimans has told me that it is entirely down to Fizzness.

NO NO UNITED KINGDOM. THANK YOU

So now that one great quest has come to an end, well we're going to bloody go and start another one. More on that later

Tic Tac…Toe Up Your Arse-Grape and Lychee Twist Tic Tac

What's the most annoying advert in the world? Any Sainsburys’ one with Jamie Oliver dribbling over some value pasta? The one where Freddie Flintoff's presenting style confirms one of my long held suspicions that he is indeed a bit special needs? Or even (and this is a bit controversial as it’s beloved by many) the one where the monkeys drink tea and wear hats? (If we let them drink tea and wear hats then we're one step away from them TAKING OVER THE WORLD AND PUTTING US IN BAMBOO CAGES.)

The correct answer is none of the above, the most annoying advert in the world is the Tic Tac’s ‘Shake Your Tic Tacs’ campaign.

In this abomination we are lead to believe that the act of shaking a box of Tic Tacs at someone is a sign of sexual attraction.

Um yeah

I love Tic Tacs but can safely have never shaken a box of them at anyone to demonstrate sexual attraction, in fact the only recorded case of that ever happening was Freddie Flintoff’s attempt to woe his wife (and it actually worked thus proving the mental state of someone who would marry Freddie Flintoff). It all seems like a desperate attempt to become hip and relevant and to forcibly create a catchphrase along the lines of ‘You’ve Been Tangoed’ but it fails miserably.

Why they felt the need to create a catchphrase based campaign for something as boring as Tic Tacs confuses me as much as it annoys me. As I said before I love Tic Tacs and I love them for their simplicity, they are little mints in a box they don’t need a hip bloody catchphrase, they don’t even need an advert they are little see through boxes of mints, nothing more, nothing less, except when you find exciting new flavours.

As a fan it's great when you find new flavours, which happens more often than you’d think, however they never seem to last. Introduced over the past few years, on top of the standard mint, orange and orange and lime varieties, have been other mint variations, a peach flavour, a few different cherry combos and even giant sized boxes.
Recently I discovered Grape and Lychee twist flavour and was quite excited.

This is a nice combination, the grape really shines and it’s a refreshing change to mint but nice is about as far as it goes when it comes to Tic Tacs. They are never going to be an exciting candy but that’s their charm, they’re always going to be there and always going to be nice.

As nice as the new flavours are they are never going last, firstly no one is going to get excited about a new line of what is essentially a range mints and secondly most people do just view them as a range of mints rather than the sweet candies they can be. Cherry, peach, Grape and Lychee are all tasty treats but they are tasty treats in a mint shaped box, a mint shaped box merchandised beside all the other mint shaped boxes, which is as confusing as Freddie Flintoff on a Ferris wheel with Bruce Forsyth.
Plus they have a really shite advert.

Turns out they have more than 1 check this one out

MY SOUL HURTS

Rip It Lime Wrecker

Another RipIt! flavour up today. I loved the GForce flavour and really didn't get on with the 3-Way flavour so Lime Wrecker is coming in without too many preconceptions. I'm a little surprised as it's odd to get a drink which is just Lime. It's normally the deadbeat tag team partner of the fruit world playing second fiddle to the more glamorous lemon.

Not anymore he screams. I'm going solo as he slips into his shiny unitard and charges to the ring. LIME WRECKER he screams as he rains down terrific blows to Lemons waxy skull. They battle for what seems like days with neither truly getting the upper hand, that is until that single pivotal moment when the Lime looks Lemon right in the eyes and says "I SLEPT WITH YOUR WIFE".......


Sorry I got quite into this and I forgot to talk about the drink. It tastes pretty good. It's like a lime fruit gum but in energy format. If lime is your sort of thing, and it's a modern world so I'm not going to judge you, you're probably going to be bang into this. It will probably go very well with spirits as well at a guess. If you're not fussed by Lime this is still a good drink. Strong taste, smooth ride on it and top notch. I'm beginning to think these Rip It energy drinks might infact be a bit special

Get this one from our good pals at American Fizz
http://www.americanfizz.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=65_67&product_id=97

Rhubarb and Custard : Marks and Spencers

It's entirely appropriate that Heston Blumenthal is on TV as I write this. As I have found some gastronomic magic living in plain sight on supermarket shelves all around the country. The big thing is I don't think even the bald Joe 90 look-a-like could pull this one off.

This doesn't need a lot of words. They (Marks and Spencers) have stolen the souls of innocent boiled sweets such as these

and then I can only assume made some sort of sacrifice (in fact has anyone seen Mylene Klass recently?) to pagan gods to create this drink. It's amazing. AMAZING. It's not only a delicious drink but it tastes exactly like the sweet. Exactly. Give this a go. They deserve it. You deserves this. Fantastic.

New Walkers Flavours : Fizzness Preview

It was with great excitement that I took delivery of a little bundle of joy from Walkers Crisps yesterday morning. 3 new flavours and we at Fizzness are among the select few who get to try them out.

So I opened the package to find a nice note from same, the social media face of walkers I guess you would call him and that's when the surprise really hit me. These flavours really are a pretty big deal and they really are a bit of secret. So secret in fact that I haven't been told what they are.... no seriously Check this out

Yep unmarked packets. Not final packaging designs but 3 plain packed bags of crisps with only the subtlest of hints to their flavours. We have

'Spicy Flavour'

 

'Meaty Flavour'

 'Dairy Flavour'

So I guess I'll tell you what they tasted like, whether I was impressed and lay my paltry reputation on the line by having a guess as to what the flavour is meant to be right?

Spciy Flavour :- My personal favourite of the bunch. Definitely a curry flavour. Mild curry but enough to be noticeable. It's not going to leave you breath heaving of curry but you will get the taste that you would hope from it. Comparable to the really great Chip Shop Curry crisps from Marks and Spencers. I think this is in fact also a Chip Shop Curry or Curry Chip Flavour and it's great. Really great. I would certainly be making a bee-line for these when they make it in stores. No doubt about it. Seal of Approval Material.

Meaty Flavour :- Right this is a bit weird. I'm vegetarian, I can hear the tuts of disgust from here guys, and I kind of don't eat meat flavoured crisps. Not out of principles, I have none after all, but for taste it's not something I normally crave. So that means I reckon this is the one I'm most likely to get way way wrong. These crisps are smokey which makes you think of a barbecue or something like that. There's citrus notes combined with a little garlic and herb there as well but the main taste is Roast Chicken. I did think there was a little chilli note there but my best guess on these is Lemon and Herb Roast/BBQ Chicken. Now as for preference I think it would be unfair for me to give one as I don't have much to base it on, my lovely other half however was a big big fan of these. She said of the 3 it was her favourite so that's pretty high praise there.

Dairy Flavour :- So initially I thought these will be cheese. After the impeccable Goats Cheese and Monterrey Chilli flavour that's not a bad thing. Those are incredible. You open the packet though and the smell is super strong. It nearly blows your head off. The flavour itself doesn't seem to pack as much of a punch as the scent but it's decent. I think it's a sour cream and onion, possibly sour cream and chive. It tasted quite similar to the sour cream flavour of Sunbites another Walkers product. It was probably for me the most dissapointing but still a solid flavour.

I am very excited about these curry crisps coming out though. They were fantastic. I also hope to god I've got close to nailing what the flavours are

Big thanks to Walkers for giving us the preview as well. 

If someone throws down you should throw back : Mountain Dew Throwback

I’m going to start this article with an honest confession, one that is very hard for someone who writes for a blog about soda to make. For a brief period during this past festive season I went off my drinks. Yes that’s right, after making a serious dent into my ridiculously huge Christmas stash, I had simply had enough.

For a soda lover this was a dirty feeling, one I had never experienced before and one that filled me full of dread. I worried that the great love affair of my life might have been over and worse still I still had some of my stash left and it would’ve been a crime to let it go to waste.

Thankfully the feeling passed, but for that terrifying hour and a half on the 28th of December my world nearly came tumbling down.

The drink that I could pin point as the one I perhaps went overboard with this Christmas was Mountain Dew, regular readers (and viewers of my video reviews) will have noticed I have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with the Dew and this Christmas I went a bit mental on it. Voltage, White Out, Super Nova, Code Red, US import, UK Energy, they all got many samplings this Christmas and it got to the stage where I thought I could never drink another Can of Dew again.

And then I was given a 12 Pack of Mountain Dew Throwback

Gifted to me by a friend who said he found it in the sort of shop in Edinburgh in which you’d expect to find a Mogwai in a cage and a magic monkey’s paw for sale, or is it claw? Or monkey hand even? Who cares all I know is that if I had a magic paw I’d use all three wishes it granted me to wish for Mountain Dew Throwback. Well actually I’d save one wish to wish for more wishes but then I’d use those 3 extra wishes to wish for more Throwback, but that’d be my limit, I’m not greedy and five Dew wishes is enough for any man. Plus I reckon the monkey would be getting all pissed off with me by that point on account of my disrespect for the wish giving process, and you don’t want a pissed off monkey all up in yo face. Actually it’s just a paw/hand/claw isn’t it? And that wouldn’t be too bad, well a claw might hurt a bit but no matter I’d stick to the five wishes anyway just to stay on the safe side. Um…

So I can safely say I loved Mountain Dew Throwback, it tastes quite similar to the standard US import Dew although just a little bit sweeter. The main difference you’ll notice is the smoothness, this is one smooth drink, as smooth as a babies bum, not that I know what a baby’s bum feels like have never touched one (honestly officer).
The reason for the smoothness is that this drink is made with real sugar (instead of corn syrup) like they used to use in the old days, hence the Throwback title and really cool retro design.

I actually wanna take a moment to mention the design of both the can and the box, its not often I care about such matters but in this case they’ve really done something special. I’m not sure of it’s a faithful recreation of the 1970s design but they’ve really nailed the retro look and it really adds to the whole experience of the drink so bravo.

This really is a special drink and one that reignited my love affair with the Dew (plus after a few hours apart I craved all the other flavours again anyway) I’m not sure how long it will be around or how easy it will be to get hold off but if needs be go fight a monkey steal its hoof and get wish making because believe me its worth hacking off animal limbs for.

FIZZNESS SEAL OF APPROVAL

Throwback is available at most web suppliers but we'll even give you some links as we love you deeply

AMERICAN FIZZ http://www.americanfizz.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=69
AMERICAN SODA http://www.americansoda.co.uk/uk/American-Soda/Home/Drinks/Regular-Soda/Mountain-Dew-Throwback-12-FL-OZ-(355-ml).aspx
AMERICAN SWEETS http://www.americansweets.co.uk/american-mountain-dew-throwback-soda-12-pack-9582-p.asp

Rip It! 3 WAY

Rip it again and fresh up from tingling my tastebuds with the impactful g-force grape flavour now want to make things a bit fruity between us. A berry blend with the eyebrow raising name of 3-WAY

Strawberry, Blackberry and Blueberry. Things are getting juicy here. The cans pretty cool and when you poor it out the liquid itself is an insane blue colour. Really bright and yeah things are starting to stir. I'M READY FOR DEBAUCHERY.

Then the taste hit me. I didn't get it, I didn't like it and I didn't like the after taste. I was expecting a berry blast but it feels like I just took a blast to my own berries. I can't distinguish any of the fruit flavours individually but even as a blend or mix something isn't right. I'm going to blame the energy nature of the drink for most of this to be honest.

This isn't a stinker of a drink. It's not far off it but it's not. If I hadn't tried the incredible GForce I might have even liked this a bit more but compared to it, well it's a disspointment. If this is a "3-Way" it's one that happened in prison against your will that you don't like talking about.

Sarsae (hongkong) DRINK

Welcome class,

Thank you for joining me at this very special assembly were we will discuss something called 'SARSAE' drink

Ohh I know I know a lot of sniggering at the back there. This drink is very popular in asia infact I guess you could say it puts the SARS in sarsaparilla (ohh dear god did I really write that) with you youngsters and your pop music. It may seem harmless on it's own but I warn you that down to it's sarsaparilla notes being similar to a really smooth root beer it could act as a dreaded gateway drink.

It all starts of with you at a party and marty mcfly over there pressures you into trying some sarsae. Hey man everyones doing it. It's perfectly natural stuff man. One sip and you could become stuck. Before you know it you'll be blowing men in truck stops just to get your next fix of A&W root beer or punching swans to death to get your pale little hands on a hit of Mugs. Be careful kids this is powerful stuff.

Now please watch this short educational film* on the real dangers of this gateway drink

* What follows is a youtube link to a movie which uses a can of sarsae as it's central plot device. That movie is called It's a Drink, It's a bomb and follows the incredibly likely tale of a can of drink actually being an incredibly powerful explosive. It has happened before actually we think that's what killed fizzy g's ghost mate

The world no longer makes sense to me. I kind of liked this despite it's proximity to root beer which I normally have a disdain for. That has worried me. A lot.

I got this can as a christmas present from my lovely other half. She managed to get it from a local asian supermarket, the version I got was the Hong Kong canned version. I know it is a brand that has many other flavours aside from sarsaparilla in other parts of asia.

Has anyone run into the HK version themselves?

Rip It Energy - G Force

Now most of us here in the UK will not be familar with the rip it energy drink brand. I know I wasn't. Well let me blow your mind with some facts

IT COMES IN 15 FLAVOURS
IT'S VERY POPULAR WITH THE US ARMED FORCES
RIP IT IS PART OF THE NATIONAL BEVERAGES INC PORTFOLIO IN THE USA AND THEY ARE THE 4TH LARGEST SOFT DRINKS MANUFACTURER. THIS IS THEIR FIRST ENERGY DRINK BRAND
I LIKE SHOUTING AS IT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE RIC FLAIR


I'm, as regular readers will know, a big fan of grape. GRAPE GRAPE GRAPE, i basically love me some grape drink (forever shortened to grink now). So I was properly bloody excited about this. Grape Energy Drink and here's the best bit it just really tastes of that american grape flavour. It's like Welches Grape soda but with the caffeine kick. There's something medicinal about it but in a way that if you've over indulged the night before you would genuinely think this will do me some good.

The only downside for me with this drink is it's not available on shop shelves. I would definitely bump this when pre-gaming (infact I enjoyed a can of this with some vodka recently and felt like an extra from Young Jeezy video, IN A GOOD WAY).

Ohh man it gets better. There's a sugar free version which hits as hard. Bosh. This gets a double seal of approval. One for the regular and one for the sugar free.

If you fancy getting your paws on this reach out to our good friends at American Fizz who can help you get your grink on
http://www.americanfizz.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=96