So... Alright - Soda Soda Soda

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Geoff dives into the forgotten sodas of our past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And there was just driving down the sidewalk, not even in Mueller, on the other side of the street, on like 51st Street, I guess. Just this little security robot who looked, I'll be honest, really, really cute. He was like a little rectangle guy just wheeling. And then he had kind of like a flattish domed head. And he was kind of adorable.

And he said security along the side. And I guess he just drives around and makes sure construction sites are okay. Or well, I don't even really know. But yeah, he was just driving down the street, flagging his security badge. And I recognize that robots are patrolling the streets. And that's probably a scary thing. But I'll be damned if they don't make them look adorable like Wally. So it's hard to take him seriously, let alone be threatened by them.

At least so far, I'm pretty sure if I saw one of those Boston Dynamics robo dogs walking down the street, I'd be pretty fucking terrified. Spent some good time in the office this week already and got some more to do. It's it's feeling really good. We're really, really putting the time in over there. And I feel like I feel like the benefits are already starting to present themselves. We just filmed a video today that went from idea on Saturday to fully filmed on Tuesday, and that felt very good.

Made me pretty damn excited for the future, the immediate future, as we continue to get the office turned up and on and tweaked and built out. And before you know it, I'll be doing break shows and who knows what else. It's it's really finally coming together and I'm pretty jazzed about it. Let's see what else is in the notes before we dive into sodas Oh, here's one. I wanted to do I wanted to talk about directors that have done wildly different productions like for instance Bob Clark Directed Porky's which is an incredibly offensive raunchy sex comedy from the late 70s early 80s and then he also directed a

Christmas story, which is one of the most heartwarming comedy from the late 70s early 80s and then he also directed A Christmas Story which is one of the most heartwarming holiday family friendly films of all time. Pretty crazy swing of the pendulum there between those two films and so that got me thinking about other directors that have done similar and so I was gonna dive into that but then I got distracted by today's topic that I'm very excited to talk about. Soda's. I don't know why.

Actually, I do know why. I was browsing around the internet and I landed on Diet Pepsi Jazz, which was a black cherry French vanilla soda I had never heard of. Introduced in 2006, Diet Pepsi Jazz was a diet soda available in three different flavors, black cherry and french vanilla, weird, strawberries and cream, and caramel cream. They're really pushing the vanilla slash cream angle, huh? Pepsi announced that the soft drink was the new sound of cola in its ad campaign before discontinuing the jazzy new edition in 2009.

That existed for three years. It existed while I was doing Rooster Teeth and I have no memory of it. I mean, I was a Coca-Cola guy back then, but still Coca-Cola Black, here's another one. Do you guys remember Coca-Cola Black? It's that, let me refresh your memory. Coca-Cola normal and then B-L-A-K, black, right?

That's how you know it's cool. It was Coke coffee. I'm just gonna read the synopsis here from this website. You ever wish your soda tasted more like coffee? For a brief period of time in 2006, Coca-Cola made your dream a reality by releasing the coffee flavored Coca-Cola black. The beverage company worked for two years developing

the recipe in the hopes of tapping into the premium coffee market. Coca-Cola officially discontinued Coca-Cola Black in 2007, but continued to sell off its remaining stock into the following year. That actually hit pretty hard in a little town called Buda, Texas, in 2006, 2007, where Rooster Teeth World headquarters were and the convenience store down the road had it. And Bernie and I went through a phase where we loved it. We were obsessed with it.

We tried to drink it every day and when it went away, we were fucking bummed. Looking back on it now, I think it was probably terrible and I was convincing myself that I liked it because I hadn't had iced coffee yet, which is a much better version of that drink. Do you guys ever have Coca Cola Black? This is one of the first ones on this list I've ever heard of. So there's a bunch of stuff in here. I think we should just go through it. I was thinking about this the other day.

Like one of the bummers when you quit drinking alcohol, or at least when I quit drinking alcohol, was that you feel like you lose a lot of choice, right? Like every restaurant in Austin has 10 different mixed drinks you've never heard of. And then there's a million wine and beer choices. And there's you can fucking throw a shoe and hit eight microbreweries from any spot in Austin. You know what I mean? And so I had to learn to replace what I. The reality is, I remember when I quit drinking, I was bummed about giving up all this choice, all this opportunity for choice. And I felt like I had dialed it down to basically diet Coke, diet Pepsi and diet Dr.

Pepper. But there was, you know, clearly coffees and juices and teas and a million other drinks for me to try. In addition to the fact that the soda companies were cranking out some of the wacky, I mean, a lot of this was before I quit drinking, right? But listen to some of this stuff. I was talking about this one with Eric and I have no memory of it, but he remembered it immediately in 1993. Coca-Cola wanted to capitalize on counterculture and grunge.

So they created a soda called OK Soda that was, you know, totally just like a attempt at appealing to anti-establishment with a product, which I guess ultimately didn't work. It didn't work in the sense that I have no memory of it, and I was the age they were probably trying to reach at that time. It had some really cool art looking back on it now. I recognized immediately Charles Burns,

who did a comic called Black Hole, he did some of the art for the soda cans, which are actually pretty badass. I don't know how I didn't notice it at the time or maybe I just saw through the attempt at the time and ignored it, but I really kind of wonder what it tasted like. I'm kind of bummed I never explored okay soda back in the day. Similarly, I have no memory of Pepsi Wild Bunch. Do you remember in 1991 Pepsi Wild Bunch. Do you remember in 1991, Pepsi Wild Bunch, which was three new flavors that they claimed enhanced the taste of their soda?

They had strawberry burst, tropical chill, and raging raspberry. The only problem that I guess it came in the three pack, so if you just wanted one of them, you were stuck with the others as well. So I guess maybe in hindsight, that wasn't the best idea. It didn't last even a year before they got rid of it. Pepsi AM, speaking of bad Pepsi ideas, Pepsi AM launched in 1989. I do remember this.

This was it was meant to be a soft drink for breakfast. Like it was essentially an energy drink 20 years before its time. It was a breakfast soda that had, I think, like 25% more caffeine than a regular Pepsi. And so it was like a highly caffeinated breakfast soda you would replace your coffee, which is essentially an energy drink, right?

Pretty funny that they were so far ahead of the game, they caught no traction. They launched it in 89 and it was discontinued in 90. One of the most famous discontinued sodas is Tab. I don't know if you are familiar with Tab. It was launched in 1963. It was Coca-Cola's first diet soda. So this existed way before Diet Coke, right?

They created Tab, which was a calorie-free soda that sucked. It genuinely, honestly sucked. I had a stepfather, I've had two stepfathers, but my first stepfather who I don't talk about much because he's a real piece of shit. Really not a big fan of that dude. I have no idea if he's still out there in the world, but if he is, maybe you'll hear this.

Real piece of shit you were. Anyway, he loved tab soda, and he and my mom were made for, I want to say seven or eight years. I was maybe from like seven, maybe five to 11 or 12. They were married somewhere around there. I could be fudging that a little bit, but they were married six or seven years. And so I have some pretty solid foundation. Like most of my childhood involved him.

And the thing that I remember the most about him, other than that he was a fucking dick bag is that he drank tab soda like it was going out of style. He loved it and so there was always tab around. And so on occasion when there was nothing else in the fridge to drink and I couldn't be bothered to drink water, I would pop a tab and oh my God, every time you have a tab, you're surprised at how bad it is. And you think, how can anyone like this?

And yet they did. It survived for 57 years. They didn't, they didn't discontinue it until 2020, until fucking COVID. I don't know if COVID is the reason it went, or just finally they were like, stop beating this dead horse and let it go, good Lord.

Do you remember Coca-Cola C2? It was half the carbs, half the calories, but all the good taste. It was an early 2000's soda that was, once again, satisfying the carb conscious consumer. It was right around the time. I think it was like their answer for Adkins, maybe. It was right around the time. I think it was like their answer for Adkins maybe.

And it lasted about three years before I think it seeded all of its ground to Coke Zero, which took off and just really honestly dominated from the point it hit on. I mentioned Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke, but I really mostly drink, if I'm drinking sodas, I'm really mostly drinking Coke zero or Pepsi zero Going further down this list Do you guys remember JASTA soda?

it was a Called JASTA with guarana and I remember it was marketed as maybe being like an African soda it had a black panther on it and it was, had kind of like a African font and it was really, really, really bad. I was in Columbia, South Carolina in two, I'm gonna to say 1996, I went to Columbia, South Carolina for a summer because I was accepted into the Army Advanced Photojournalism School, which was a really prestigious and

really tough assignment to get. They basically took you out of the military and put you through this super, super abbreviated master's program in photojournalism at the University of South Carolina during the summer semester when most of the students were gone. I think they only sent like 20 people a year to it, somewhere between like 12 and 20 a year to it. And I also believe I was the second to last class to go through before they discontinued it at least that was the case back in the nineties maybe it's back now I don't know I don't have any idea. What i was exceptionally lucky to be offered it and accepted into it.

And i got to live a fantasy of being a college student for a summer in the middle of being in the army. I turned 21 there actually. I was there during my 21st birthday and so all of the advanced journalism school students took me out. I was also exceptionally young to be in the class. Like I said, you typically are offered that gig eight to 12 years into being in the military

and I got it. I'd been in like maybe three years. So I was considerably younger than everybody else in the school anyway. But when I turned 21, they all took me out. My memory of turning 21 is with all of the students from the Army Advanced Photojournalism School of 1996, I guess it was. Anyway, this isn't about that, but it is about that summer. That summer, I met a group of traditional skinheads. Now, that's a title fraught with complications, but these were

traditional skinheads. Think they're not sharp skinheads, which are skinheads against racial prejudice, but they were non-racist skinheads. It's a whole thing, right? But there's racist skinheads and there's non-racist skinheads. Some are sharps, but some are just called trad or traditional skinheads, which are just, I guess like in their mind, the closest to the original

vision of what a skinhead was, which was essentially a soccer look. And I don't know. Anyway, I don't want to sound like I was hanging out with a bunch of racists because I wasn't. These were cool people. But I met them. I was in the punk scene at the time, and I asked if I could essentially in bed with their group for the summer and just chronicle their lives, photograph everything they did, go to all of their parties, all of their shows, some of them were in bands,

go to their band shows, go to their family picnics, everything, every opportunity I could get to access their world I asked for, which was a scary thing to do. I was walking down the street and I saw these kids hanging out on the steps of a bank and they were pretty intimidating and pretty scary, tons of tattoos and dressed up like skinheads and punks.

And I mean, it was the scene I was in, but it's an intimidating scene and it's hard to make friends, especially in a new environment. And I walked by them a couple of times and maybe like the third day I saw him out there, I just said, fuck it. I didn't see any racist flags on any of their clothing. I felt like I felt like they were maybe they were safe.

So I just walked up to him and I said, hey, what kind of skinheads you guys? And they asked me why. And I was like, I'm just curious. And they were like, you know, we're traditional skinheads or whatever. And I said, okay, cool. My name is Jeff. I'm in town for the summer.

I'm a photography student and in town for the summer. I'm a photography student and I would love the opportunity. I know you guys don't know me, I don't know you, but I have a feeling we're into the same stuff. And I would love the opportunity to photograph your world. And they were like, sit the fuck down right now, come on, let's be friends. And then I became really good friends

with some of these guys and they were really cool. Guys and girls, they were lovely. And they became a lot of my community when I was living in Columbia, South Carolina at the Advanced Photojournalism School. All of that to say that a big part of hanging out with those guys was sitting on the steps of that bank. That was like their spot in the town where they watched everything go down. If you live in Columbia, That was like their spot in the town where they watched everything go down. If you live in Colombia, I don't remember exactly where it was. It was at the end of the area that's called Five Points, which is kind of like

their drinking bar hangout part of town. At least it was 25 years ago when I was there. Think Bourbon Street, think Sixth Street. That's what Five Points was like. And so they would sit at that at that bank pretty much every day. No, none of them were 21. well, a couple of them were 21. Most of them weren't though. And so, you know, in the daytime when they were killing time

and they weren't at work, that was the hangout spot. And pretty quickly, I don't know if this is why, but it definitely was a fringe benefit of them being there, I discovered early on, is that because it was a college town and that was the area where college kids hang out, there were always people handing out free shit. And it could be anything, right? It could be a new trail mix or whatever.

But I remember specifically the Josta people all summer were just begging people to take free Jostas up and down Five points that entire summer there were people with Josta polos that were like young trying their hardest to be hip and just Try doing anything they could to get people to take free fucking Jostas And so we were always just sitting there and it always ended up that we had like 20 Jostas by the end of the day Then they would just be like they would get to the end of the line, they'd be like, just take as much as you want.

We just got to get rid of this shit, you know? And it was terrible and nobody liked it. But it was free. And free is the most delicious flavor of all. At least it is when you're 19, 20 years old, right? And so I had a summer there where I spent most of my days that I wasn't in class or That I wasn't following them to other things just sitting on the steps of a bank just slamming free cans or Bottles of JASTA with guarana. I remember that was its selling point. It had guarana, which was

Some root or element or something that was caffeine like. Anyway, it was dog shit, but I drank it constantly that summer. And it is the thing I remember most probably about my time in South Carolina. I remember that. And I remember that all the liquor stores had giant red dots on them so that they were easily recognizable. I dad, they called them red dot stores. And if they sold liquor in South Carolina,

it had a red dot or multiple red dots on it. And that was just a local custom they have there. I also remember I watched Annie a bunch that summer. And I don't remember exactly why. Just remember I watched Annie like three times with friends. What a weird memory. I'll have to dive deeper into why the fuck I was watching Annie so much.

That's the summer I turned 21. Does anybody else remember Jasta with Guarana? It's such a formative memory in my 20 year old brain for such a brief soda to have existed in history. Oh man, obviously there's the most famous stuff like new coke crystal Pepsi. Everybody knows those but I'm more looking at like Pepsi Kona. Well, there you go coffee Cola. I guess Pepsi had their own version of Coke black called Pepsi Kona Which was an experimental fusion of coffee and cola aimed at riding the wave of America's new coffee obsession.

This was in 1996, so even well before Coca-Cola tried it, they tried and failed. It lasted, like most of these sodas, less than a year. Coca-Cola Life launched in 2013 to bridge the health trends with soda cravings by sweetening its soda with stevia and cane sugar and it's like a green label. I guess it only lasted till 2020. That's a long time. I don't remember seeing it around, but it looks like Coke light in Europe, right? It looks like the green Coke you see overseas. So maybe it's the same. I'm not sure. Oh man, maybe the grossest thing I've ever seen and I still want to drink it. If you're a child of the 80s, you probably ate hubba bubba bubble gum.

There were three big bubble gums. There was Bubblicious, Bubblyum, and Hubba Bubba. Those are the good ones. Obviously, there was Fruit Stripe, there was Wrigley's Bevy of Gums. There's all that other bullshit, but the Fun gum that you ate when you were a kid, big leach you as well. But the pack gum you would get hubba bubba, bubble yum or bubble issues. And they were those were the heavy hitters of gum in the 80s.

And I guess in 87, hubba bubba launched a soda, which attempted to bottle the nostalgic bubble gum flavor in fizzy form. It didn't last long. In 1997, the Clearly Canadian Beverage Corporation, which I assume is what produces Clearly Canadian, which is a drink in the 80s that I drank constantly, constantly, like a clear fruit seltzer kind of drink. And then it went away.

But it's back now. And I've had some recently. I think we might have even talked about clearly Canadian on. Probably fuck face. It was probably long enough ago to have been fuck face anyway. I guess they released a soda in 1997 called Orbits that featured floating balls in the liquid. The product was not well received and was discontinued after its release.

No shit. Gross. Oh, cactus coolers. I remember those. I don't have any funny stories about cactus cooler, but it was a mid-80s tropical flavored soda. I remember Orange Pineapple Blast. Yeah, that sounds about right. But the label really takes me back. What was your favorite discontinued soda or

drink that's no longer available that you remember that nobody else remembers? Feel free to send me an email to Eric at Jeff's boss.com. I'd love to know. I'd love to get into the weeds a little bit more with this stuff. It seems like a limitless supply and some of these are super obvious like jolt cola. I'm sure everybody remembers that Do you remember D in L I do oh my god D and L is 7up upside down launched in 2002 Dnl was a quirky caffeinated twist on 7up Its name and bold green color literally turned the classic soda upside down. Huh. I wonder what it tasted like.

I guess it's just because it was caffeinated. Weird. It only lasted three years. It's three years longer than I remember it. 7-Up Gold. Does anybody remember 7-Up Gold? Anyway, there are so many of these fuckers that you just have never heard of. Has there ever been one that you like, I remember, like I was saying earlier, looking back on it now, it was disgusting. But there was a time in my life when I had convinced myself that I loved Coca-Cola Black and I was genuinely upset when they discontinued it and we couldn't find it

anymore. As a matter of fact, I think we talked about it on probably the R.T. podcast a bunch, maybe even the drunk take back then. Was there ever one that you you fell for hard like Dr. Pepper, Red Fusion or Sprite? I do remember Sprite remix, tropical Sprite remix. And then got addicted to it, fell in love with it. And then they fucking pulled the rug right out from under you and said, no more surge for you, soda fan.

Those days are behind you. Let me know. Like I said, let me know. Eric at JeffSpots.com. What's the wildest, weirdest discontinued drink you can remember? I'm sure I didn't even scratch the surface with all of the ones that have existed. I'm only looking at stuff that was in America anyway. I bet there's some really wacky and wild shit

throughout the rest of the world. I'd love to hear about it. I'd love to know what do you want back? What are you mad they took away from you? What is your Pepsi Blue where you're just like, Oh, I loved it so much. I don't think I ever had Pepsi Blue, by the way. I have no idea if it was good or not. But it does look appetizing. I do like a blue drink. What's your favorite color for a drink? We can't pick clear, clear aside, like you I do like a blue drink. What's your favorite color for a drink? We can't pick clear. Clear aside, like you've got to pick a color. What is your favorite color to drink?

I guess my most common would be black, right? That's what sodas, most sodas are, but man, if I see a blue drink, I get excited. I really do. Like blue Gatorade. Man, this podcast is making me thirsty today. Anyway, that's my mediocre dive into sodas of yesteryear. I told every old soda related story I could think of. Turns out there were two or three. I owe you guys a song of the episode and I have one handy I remember just How about the old punk rock song Debbie Thompson bondage by the welders?

I just discovered the welders and I've been going through their stuff really fun band They've got some good songs Debbie Thompson bondage is a fun one to sing along to though obviously the They've got some good songs. Debbie Thompson Bonage is a fun one to sing along to, though. Obviously, the subject matter is highly distressing, but it's just a catchy song. So hopefully you'll enjoy it and hopefully I'll see you here next week for another episode of So Alright. Alright. This is the end of the show.