Monday, June 16, 2008

Might I Have a Sip of Your Tasty Beverage?

Recently, the husband and I went to a local pizza restaurant. Before the owner rang up our order he warned us, "Our soda machine is out of order; would you like a drink from the cooler?" Bryan said, "Yeah, sure."

You know that giggly feeling you get when you know something someone else doesn't, and you know when they realize what you know, it's gonna be, like, awesome? I'd seen the cooler on the way in. It wasn't full of Coke products (an impossible dream north of the Mason-Dixon), or even Pepsi products. It was full of Marsh brand soda.

My excitement made time freeze as he slow-motion turned to the cooler... I saw him see the soda... then, no wait, that can't be right... is that really??... right here in a restaurant? Then his face registered the full horror, and he said, "Aww, man! I feel like I'm eating at my cousin's house."

We had a healthy debate about why a restaurant would possibly stock a cooler with generic soda. First, this pizza joint does a lot of takeout business, but they also have seating for about 30 in their dining room. It seems like a costly risk, when you could just pay a few cents more for real drinks. Don't worry; our story did have a happy ending. (The pizza was fantastic, and the owner doesn't even look surprised when you bring in a big gulp from the gas station next door.)

I've never had good generic soda, but I've had a few good laughs at their names. Since supermarkets are regional, and all brands have their different spun-off brand names, I thought it might be fun to share our favorite generic soda names.

In Georgia, I lived near a FoodMax. FoodMax's generic brand was called "Southern Home" and they worked some variation of the name into each of their drinks:

Dr Pepper = Dr. S
7-Up = Southern Up

Some of the fruity ones get fun, too. Like when the off-brand starts trying to squeeze too damn many words onto the can. Like "lemon lime-o super sizzle berry blast." I mean, that just sounds too exciting to drink, then it goes flat before you get it to your lips.

Let us have it, commenters. Let's hear your funniest off-brand soda names. You can even give us a quality report if you managed to choke down any of it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was thinking Dr. Thunder was one of them as well. BTW, I didn't think you could screw up grape soda, but that generic grape was terrible. Oh well, pizza was good.

Dorothy said...

Hope all is going well with you two! I can't think of a funny soft drink right now, but we were traveling thru Arkansas a long time ago and saw a billboard advertising Griesedieck beer. I thought it was the funniest thing I had heard in a while;-)

Bubbernem said...

I'm Baaaaack! Just for the record, Save a Lot in Jackson, MS has adrink called "Bubba Cola". It relates to an RC Cola and is actually pretty good. It does have a really neat name.

Mrs. Cooper said...

We have around here Dr. Perky as generic Dr. Pepper and Limon Up for 7up. Not LEMON up, mind you, Limon Up.z

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