Top 10 Disgusting Beverage FAILS
#10: The Thanksgiving Dinner Holiday Pack
Top 20 Disgusting Beverage FAILS
Jones Soda have managed to co-exist with the heavyweights by carving out a niche for themselves with their unique photography-based bottle designs and willingness to embrace odd flavors. Yes, they offer up standards like Root Beer and Cream Soda, but they also do unusual flavors like Peanut Butter and Jelly, Chocolate, and FuFu Berry. It’s the specialty and holiday releases where things get really odd. The 2007 Gingerbread Man flavor? That we can get behind. This Thanksgiving sampler... not so much. The 2005 “National Pack” comes with the following flavors: Turkey & Gravy, Brussels Sprout with Prosciutto, Cranberry, Wild Herb Stuffing, and Pumpkin Pie. The 2006 variety added an “antacid” flavor! Yikes. Not exactly refreshing.
#9: Maxwell Ready-to-Drink Coffee
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Introducing a beverage that NOBODY needed. Making coffee is simple. Add hot water to ground coffee beans in a filter, and voila. Alternatively… stop at a drive-thru on your way to work. If you’re really pressed for time and don’t care about quality or taste whatsoever, instant coffee can be made, well… instantly. With these options available, taking coffee and putting it in a cardboard carton, to then be poured out into mugs and reheated in the microwave had no justifiable reason to exist. In the end, it wasn’t quicker or more convenient, and it certainly didn’t deliver a superior taste to a fresh brewed pot.
#8: Pepsi AM
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Sure, Maxwell House kinda blew it… but when it comes to revolutionizing the concept of the morning beverage, there have been far more spectacularly bad ideas. There are a lot of people who struggle to face the day without a morning dose of caffeine. Hoping to cash in on this demand, and maybe even convert some coffee drinkers, Pepsi unveiled Pepsi AM in 1989. To be clear… this wasn’t some revolutionary new type of beverage. It was good old-fashioned Pepsi cola with the caffeine level jacked way up. If your stomach is churning at the thought of starting your day with soda… you’re not alone. It was discontinued just one year later.
#7: Vio
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It was only a matter of time before the leading soft drink manufacturer made an appearance. Vio is a flavored, carbonated milk beverage, which the Coca-Cola company introduced to American markets in 2009. To the shock of nobody who wasn’t working for Coca-Cola, it was deemed a failure and soon pulled from production. In their defense, such beverages do succeed elsewhere in the world - in Japan, they’re actually quite common. This is simply a case of trying to push a market way outside of its comfort zone. That being said, an updated Vio has since been introduced in India in 2016, where the product has seemingly fared better.
#6: Budweiser Extra
Can’t we just keep it to one vice at a time? In the early 2000s, when energy drinks were all the rage, the quote unquote “King of Beers” decided to jump on the bandwagon by pumping a variation of their ever-popular beer full of caffeine. Boasting 6.6% alcohol and a hearty dose of caffeine, the beverage was certainly sending your body mixed messages. Leaving aside the fact that numerous studies have proven caffeinated alcoholic beverages to be incredibly dangerous… this brew was just downright disgusting. Oh, they also liked to refer to it as “Budweiser B-to-the-E” like someone’s deeply uncool uncle. You know… just to make you cringe twice as hard while drinking it.
#5: Orbitz
Generally speaking… feeling a solid object hit your lips while you’re drinking is cause for alarm. Is it a bug? Did someone mistake your beer for an empty and put their cigarette butt in there? With Orbitz, there was no mistake… apart from it generally being a bad idea. Produced by The Clearly Food & Beverage Company of Canada, this unique non-carbonated, non-alcoholic drink was advertised as a "texturally enhanced alternative beverage." Released in 1997 and disappearing soon after because apparently people don’t like to find jelly balls in their drink, it remains a novel, albeit misguided footnote in the history of beverages.
#4: Tru Blood
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For starters… can you say “false advertising?” This carbonated beverage is not, in fact, blood - human or otherwise. It is, however, a tie-in to the hit HBO series “True Blood,” and the blood beverage that the vamps in the show consume to quench their insatiable thirst. For diehard fans of the series, this remarkably accurate-looking replica is sure to get their hearts pounding. Unfortunately, the marketing department decided to treat this beverage as more of a collector’s item than a viable product, slapping on a hefty price tag that scared away many would-be faux-vampires. Oh, and did we mention that most bloodsuckers in the show couldn’t stand the stuff? Not exactly a great endorsement.
#3: Ranch Dressing Soda
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Like Jones, Lester’s Fixins is known for taking soda pop to strange (and often exciting) new places. This soda is without a doubt meant as a novelty, but it makes you stop and wonder… how far is too far? Some of their concoctions are bizarre, but nonetheless inspire a desire to give them a try - take bacon, PB&J, and pumpkin pie. Ranch flavor on the other hand? The mere thought of it makes your stomach do somersaults. Based on their advertising, “weird” is clearly the angle they’re going for. With this particular flavor… we wish they hadn’t been so successful in achieving that goal. The smell is apparently repulsive, and the flavor has been described as at best unremarkable.
#2: Coca-Cola BlāK
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How do you connect with trendy young adults? How about making a mysterious “black edition” of your cola? Sure, that’s great and all, but if you REALLY wanna get the people talking, you better drop a letter… and randomly capitalize the K! Silly branding aside, Coca Cola BlāK just didn’t work. Why? Because its whole gimmick was that it was coffee-flavored. Consider it Coca-Cola’s own attempt to capture the coffee drinking market. They gave it a sophisticated-looking bottle that screamed “flavored coffee” and hoped to connect with the masses. Connect… they did not. It earned a few devotees, but mostly people preferred to keep their coffee and cola separate. It only lasted 2 years. Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few dishonorable mentions! New Coke OK Soda Boomerang PBR Coffee Life Savers Soda
#1: Cocaine
This drink promised serious levels of energy and wasn’t afraid to invoke highly addictive illicit drugs to make that clear. The can even featured a font that looked like bumpy lines of white powder. The marketing was so problematic, the FDA actually had it banned on the grounds that Redux Beverages "was illegally marketing the drink as both a street drug alternative and a dietary supplement." They compromised, and rebranded it as “No Name,” before eventually reverting back to the original name. Branding aside, this drink is also a bad idea for consumers. The caffeine and taurine levels are drastically higher than the competition, so much so that doctors have publicly warned against drinking it.
