Exotic Soda Pops Reviews

I got a lot of sodas from the Blue Sun Soda Shop in Spring Lake Park, MN.  So many curious beverages to try!  I somehow limited myself to about 28 bottles of pop.  Come with me, as I restrict myself to savor a bottle every 4 days (to hopefully keep the sugar from killing me).  

Ginger Man Soda

By Maine Root

Breads and beverages have gone together since that ancient day when someone's sourdough accidentally fermented into beer.  Similarly, imagine the great taste of spicy gingerbread cookies in a frosty glass!  Maine Root makes some fine root beers and ginger brews, so I had some high hopes for Ginger Man Soda.

Unfortunately, I can see why Maine Root does not include this beverage on their website.  It doesn't really taste like any gingerbread cookies I can remember.

A simple (and typical) gingerbread cookie recipe I found online includes ginger, cinnamon, cloves, molasses, and vanilla.  I can maybe get a sense of vanilla from the soda, but none of the other dominating flavors.  

It's sweet, with a cola-brown color, and the ingredients list "cane juice", but ironically I don't detect any molasses flavor.  I mentioned the vanilla.  I maybe get a sense of root beer.  Other flavors are hard to pin down.  

It's not BAD, but it's not the taste of gingerbread cookies (nor gingerbread) I was expecting.  

I still hold high hopes for Maine Root's seasonal Pumpkin Pie Soda.

Fritzkola Kirsch 

By Fritzkola (Order from here and search for "Fritz")

Not so sweet, but that's kind of a good thing.  I estimate each bottle to weigh in at 100 calories.  It absolutely tastes like cherry apple cider, which is pretty much what the ingredients say it is.  The cherry flavor makes for a somewhat heavy taste.

Carbonation is not so strong; it's easy to drink on a warm summer day.

I reviewed Apple-Beer earlier, and I was disappointed that Apple-Beer basically had no juice in it, especially given that Apple-Beer heavily touts its old world heritage.  In contrast, Fritzkola Kirsch is basically carbonated water and fruit juice with some sugar; which is what I'd expect from a German soda pop.

The funny faces on the logo are part of a larger story; Fritz-Kola is kind of like the Ben & Jerry's of soda pop in Germany.  These 2 friends came up with an idea to start a soda business together, made a heavily-caffeinated cola in 2002, and started selling it in Berlin bars out of a beat-up VW van.  It took a lot of hustle and sleeping in that van, but now Fritz-Kola is sold all over Europe.  Now they're diversifying into peculiar fruit flavors.  

Lime Soda

By North Star Craft Soda

The Mojito.  The Margarita.  The Gimlet.  The Gin & Tonic.  These great Summer drinks all have the great taste of limes in common.

North Star's Lime Soda doesn't taste like real limes.  It tastes like the mighty flavor of lime candy.  The lime candy flavor is strong in this soda.  And check out that marvelous green color!  

My wife says: "Yuck.  Too sweet.  Too fake."

This soda is very sweet and syrupy.  It's not crisp.  It's not complex.  I wish I could say more about it, but there's not much more to report.

I liked it.  Sometimes you want to drink a big glass of lime candy.  But I'm not in a hurry to get another bottle of it.  It's just as well; I can't find it on their website.

Black Cherry Soda

By Manhattan Special

When I was a kid, sometimes we would go to picnics with coolers full of small-company locally-bottled sodas, and my favorite flavor was black cherry soda.  I have no idea why big national bottlers don't make black cherry, because it's awesome.  There is a Cherry Crush, but it's only available regionally.  I miss black cherry, and I have no idea why I can't get a straight-up non-caffeinated black cherry soda at my local Target.  

Manhattan Special Black Cherry is good stuff!  Not too sweet, not too fizzy, nicely balanced.  Very flavorful.

The cherry flavor is very rich.  The color is marvelously dark.  The natural flavor and color is reassuring.  

This is honestly the best straight-up black cherry soda I've ever tasted.  Even my wife likes it!  

Contains: Carbonated water, cane sugar, vegetable juice for color, natural flavor, citric acid, sodium benzoate (preservative), and caramel color.

Exotic Soda Pops Reviews

I went to the Blue Sun Soda & Sweets Shop and bought dozens of bottles of sweetened carbonated beverages with my wife for our anniversary.  During quarantine, Blue Sun requires you to wear a mask while shopping.  It's a very interesting outfit, which bottles several of their own lines of fun beverages at their factory.  Sadly, they do not sell ice, so if you want to drink beverages right away, you should buy ice and drinkware beforehand.

Included in this review.

After visiting the Blue Sun and putting some bottles in your ice-filled cooler, I encourage you to work up a thirst and let your beverages chill by taking a walk in the lovely nearby Springbrook Nature Center.

Reviewing these fun beverages will give me something to do during quarantine.

Love is totally punk rock.

 Love Potion No. 69

By Real Soda in Real Bottles, Ltd. (order from here)

I shared this with my beautiful wife, for our anniversary.  It's sweet, but not too sweet for me nor my wife.

I used to feel so punk rock when I drank this back in the 1990s, and I was a Generation X slacker hipster.  It was made by the Skeleteens back then, and it seemed really spooky and cool.

This beverage is pale purple in color; I fear that my photos don't do this purple color justice.

The taste is hard to pin down: flowery? spicy? herbal--like herb tea? a little grapey, maybe?  It tastes like you just stepped into a pagan supply store and everything smells a little like patchoulli.

The ingredients mention this herb blend:

Siberian ginseng, Jasimine, Buchu, Dill Weed, Gingko Biloba, Clove, Echinacea, Damiana, Kola Nut, Dong Quai (Angelica), Brazilian Guarana, Gotu Kola, African Capsicum, Chamomile

That's a lot to look up; more than I am willing to look up, anyway.  My mother can confirm that many of these herbs were prescribed for her when she was dealing with menopause, so maybe this blend will jiggle your hormones and actually stimulate amorous feelings in you.

Like ginger beer, but apple-flavored.

 Apple-Beer

By SodaBeers

The website reports: "Blended apples with herbs and spices."

In the history, the website explains:

Almost a century ago Bavarian biermeisters developed our unique formula as an alternative to beer. They blended Sicilian apple with natural herbs and spices calling it “Fassbrause” – the soft drink with a head. This remarkable beverage was prepared and delivered much like beer, in wooden barrels, sitting on the back of a horse-drawn wagon.
In the early 1960s, we brought the drink to the Rocky Mountain. We honored its origins by calling it “Apple Beer” identifying it with other traditional sodas such as root beer and ginger beer.

And it is tasty.  Not too sweet, not too tart, and lightly carbonated.  A great sweet apple flavor, not like sour apple candy.  Non-alcoholic, and perfect for kids with a convenient screw-off bottlecap.

I was a little disappointed by the ingredients:

Purified carbonated water, pure cane sugar, citric acid, yucca extract (a natural antimicrobial), apple and other natural flavors, caramel.

I concede that this is GREAT for an American soft drink, but I was expecting more from a beverage touting its old-world heritage and "blended apples with herbs and spices."  It's basically just another soda pop.  I don't HATE Apple Beer, I'm just disappointed.

If you're looking for something more old-world, please consider these alternatives:

• Sparkling cider and sparkling apple juice: Not too hard to find in the USA.
• Apfelschorle: Popular everywhere in German-speaking countries in bottles, you can be like those hip European kids and make it at home by mixing apple juice with mineral water (or just club soda).  No sugar, no coloring, all natural.  
• Hard cider: Not appropriate for kids, but a naturally fermented carbonated apple beverage, and a traditional American beverage since colonial times.

"Serenity" and "Blue Sun" are Firefly references.

 Root Beer & Vanilla Bean

By Serenity Sodas

"Ooh, this is GOOD." -- my wife, who loves root beer.

Sweet and syrupy, it's lightly carbonated.  It tastes like what you'd expect: a mix of root beer and vanilla cream soda.  It's not too complicated, but also not too flavorful.  It's made with sugar, not corn syrup.  The taste somehow reminded me of marshmallows.

Ingredients: Filtered carbonated water, sugar, natural and artificial flavors, artificial color, sodium benzoate, and citric acid.

Bottled by Blue Sun Bottling Co., Spring Lake Park MN  55432

Finally remembered to include the cap.

Lucky Ginger Brew 

By Boots Beverages

This has the kind of gingery spicy ZIP you'd hope for from the Lone Star State, where the most of the wild animals have weaponized themselves.  Too spicy for the wife.  It's no ordinary drink mixer!

Sweetness is nicely balanced.  It's made with real sugar, not corn syrup.  The apperarance is cloudy, like you'd expect from ginger juice.

If you like Reed's Strongest Ginger Brew or Blenheim's Red Cap, Boots' Lucky Ginger Brew is worth checking out.

Bones 4 Miniatures: Gray!

Normally, I like to set up a scene where the adventurers in the batch are assembling to fight the monsters in the batch, but this batch is all monsters!  I guess we can imagine a brave Carnivorous Pudding (with its Acidic Ooze sidekick) adventurously blobbing along, devouring revenants (and a couple golems), slowly making the world a little less undead.  Of course, the end result of this is a lot of big, bad, man-eating blobs.

What the hell did I do to these blobs?  Okay, let me explain: one of my favorite video games is the award-winning critically-acclaimed farming simulator Slime Rancher.  The deadliest slime in the game is the Tarr Slime, and it's all black with a rainbow swirl.  I assume that this color scheme is an attempt to simulate the rainbow sheen of an oil/water interference effect, as if the Tarr Slime is a deadly ambulatory tar pit.  This seems to describe a Carnivorous Pudding pretty well, so I used holographic glitter paint to attempt to simuate a rainbow interference finish on the Carnivorous Pudding and Acidic Ooze.

If you can't get past this paint job, imagine I'm giving the Twilight "sparkly romantic monster" treatment to The Blob.

These grave-robbing hungry ghouls will make a nice appetizer for our amorphous heroes!  Welcome to not being the top of the food chain.  Ghouls eat the flesh of the dead--they usually incapacitate people with their paralyzing touch, then kill them and eat them--but they will also eat it right out of the grave.  I theorize that a paralyzing touch doesn't work on an amorphous monster with no central nervous system; but even if it did, what would happen?  Would a Carnivorous Pudding congeal into a statue?  Or would it collapse into a puddle? 

There's a castle with a moat!  What's this swimming in the moat?  Everybody sing:

Zombie Shark doo doodoo doodoodoo
Zombie Shark doo doodoo doodoodoo
Zombie Shark doo doodoo doodoodoo
Zombie Shark!

Because sharks are scary and zombies are scary; what if we combined them?  But it turns out that Carnivorous Puddings can't drown, and shark bites only split big Carnivorous Puddings into many little Carnivorous Puddings.  If the zombie shark eats the Carnivorous Puddings, the Carnivorous Puddings could eat the shark from the inside. 

First to notice the Black Pudding oozing through the front door is a Wight employed as a doorman. 

Responding to the ruckus is a flesh golem and his female companion, kept by the master for security and some amusement.  I tried to go with a true blue for electricity with these two.

Soon a mummy and his mistress are brought into the fray.  She's an aristocrat like the master, she is exotic, and she has so many fascinating stories.  (Side note: the earliest movie I can find with a revived female mummy is Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971); in the Universal movies and the early Hammer movies, the mummy menaced living women, who he considered reincarnations of his beloved Princess.  Here, I was inspired by Hammer's The Mummy (1959), where the marvelously imposing Christopher Lee plays an unstoppable brute motivated (and, finally, controlled) by his love for his Princess.)  I tried to go with a teal theme with these two.  Normally the top of the mummy princess' staff should be orange to correspond with the sun; I went with an emerald color to indicate that her source of life has changed as a result of her reanimation/rejuvenation.

And finally the master vampire and his bride must address this amoeboid invader.  For these two, I went with black/gray and a blood red color scheme.

Personal Note

I had kind of an emotional breakdown while painting this batch of miniatures. 

As I write this, the COVID-19 pandemic is killing thousands of Americans every day; like a September 11th attack every 3 days, like a Vietnam war of American deaths over the course of 2 months. 

Against this backdrop, I see my 17-year-old cat Hansel painfully hobbling on wobbly legs, emaciated to half his weight, and I realize that I must take him to the veterinarian.  And then I am moved to tears by the final episode of Midnight Gospel, where a man my age interviews his sweet mother as she is dying from late-stage cancer. 

And I am painting these vile undead revenants, imagining ambulent corpses in various states of putrescence.  Painting these is something I used to do for an escape, but it seems that there is none for me.

I took Monday off work to grieve, even before I take Hansel to the vet. 

After visiting the vet, tests reveal that Hansel's kidneys are failing, his heart murmurs, and he has arthritis.  Hansel eats little, he doesn't need the litter box.  All I can do is hold him and stroke his fur, desperate to provide some form of familial consolation.  The decision to end his suffering is straightforward, if emotionally painful; and with a return to the veterinarian, Hansel is now free from his burden of agony. 

Rest In Peace
Hansel
2003-2020

Bones 4 Miniatures: Black & White!

What's going on here?  Is it a badass Elven diplomatic visit to the Drow?  Or were these Elves caught snooping around underground, and a Drow matriarch will now decide their fate?  I had these Elves and Drow miniatures in my Bones 4 rewards, and they all fit into a single batch; I expect the stealthy subterranean Drow to wear black, so why not dress the Elves in High Elf white and call this batch Black & White?  Those ebony-skinned Drow were never going to fit into the color wheel, anyway.

These elves are a little rougher & tougher than I'm used to seeing Elves.  I thought it would be boring to just paint them in all white, so I did some pale pastels.  And there are 6 of them, so I did the color wheel in pastel.

These Drow look terrifying and aristocratic, as you would expect.  Again, boring to just paint them black, so I did dark colors.  Again, I had 6 of them, so I tried to do the color wheel in dark colors.  I painted their skin with a dark purplish gray rather than straight-up black, because it looked more naturalistic, and because they would just disappear into silhouette if I painted them flat black. 

The Dark Elf Queen on Throne by Bob Ridolfi sadly isn't poseable, so she can't really get off her throne.  I tried to make the throne look like the basalt I saw on Minnesota's North Shore of Lake Superior; this basalt is extremely hard and semi-crystalline, but very brittle and nearly impossible to carve.  Similarly, the throne is magnificent, but the details are crude; I the seat isn't curved, and there are chips in various places.  I imagine the Drow used various magical abilities to get the normally almost unworkable basalt into this magnificent spider throne, then they quit when they got tired and decided this was 'good enough'.

A word of advice: if you plan to paint this swell Drow Queen miniature, don't glue the Queen to the throne until you're done painting both the queen and the throne.  There is a very visible but difficult-to-paint area between the queen's back and the throne; so I recommend you paint the queen and the throne, THEN glue the queen to the throne.

The Drow worship Lolth, a spider goddess, so spiders are a big thing for Drow elves (note the queen's spider throne).  Big spiders are an even bigger thing for them.  This giant Cave Spider by Kevin Williams is the only spider I got with my Bones 4 Kickstarter rewards.  I was inspired to paint it blue with beige spikes after learning about Cobalt Blue Tarantulas and a newly-discovered electric blue tarantula.

Bones 4 Miniatures: Purple/Violet!

It's another lovely day underground!  Always the same cool temperature, always soothingly dark.  Certainly there is no better day for a clan of Gnomes to explore a treasure- and monster-filled cave.  Of course everything is in various shades of purple and violet, as the dial on the color wheel is pointing to Violet for this batch.

Here is our brave clan of gnomes.  Gnomes are about half as tall as humans and can see twice as far (and in full color!) in dim light.  They can magically speak with burrowing animals once per day and cast little illusion spells to help them survive in a world of big scary monsters.  Of course they make excellent miners and prize gemstones very highly.  As proud, magical beings, these gnomes are attired in purples and violets, with gold accents.

Purple shriekers like these don't attack adventurers per se; but if you get close to them, they emit a piercing scream, which tells any predatory monsters within earshot: dinner has arrived!  Intelligent monsters sometimes deliberately plant shriekers around their lairs to serve as living burglar alarms.

At last we approach priceless cave crystals, guarded by deadly violet fungus.  Those fungi don't look like much, but they can lash out with deadly tentacles, slathering unknowing passersby with a horrible flesh-digesting goo, which eventually reduces their hapless victims to puddles of raw nutrients which the fungi can then feed from and grow spores in.

My Little Pony Miniatures: Glitter!

It's a lovely day for a Pony picnic!

From the left is Alfa with her sister Proxima.

In the center is Dazzle with her sister Razzle.

From the right are Brandy with her sister Meade.

Happy April Fools!

Seriously, these are paint experiments.  I got some glitter paints, I wanted to see how they looked on various materials, and I had all these My Little Pony blind bag miniatures gathering dust.  I picked out several miniatures I didn't like much, and I decided to turn them into custom-painted original characters.

First I wiped the miniatures down with cotton balls soaked in acetone; this removed their cutie marks and (gruesomely) their eyes, and hopefully any mold release and other coatings, as well as fingertip smudges.  Then I soaked them in soapy scalding water just to be on the safe side.  None of this appears to have damaged or marred the ponies' plastic surfaces, unlike what the acetone does to Reaper Black Bones miniatures.

Each My Little Pony blind bag miniature has a little LEGO-like peg hole in one of their feet; I'm not sure why, but it accomodates a 24X machine screw, so I used those instead of glue to attach the ponies to painting pedestals.

The blackish ones were originally opaque pastel colors; I primed them black to see how the glitter would look on black.  The others are all cast in translucent plastic with some glitter inside.  Then I primed all of these with Acrylicos Vallejo spray matte varnish .

The 1st pony of each pair got FolkArt Glitterific Silver acrylic paint, and the 2nd pony of each pair got FolkArt Glitterific Clear Hologram acrylic paint.  Their mane and tails got a second coat of these, but I can't really tell the difference.  The paint is thick, like petroleum jelly, but the glitter is dense enough that it still covers well.  I can only apologize for the photos; they really do not do these glitter paints justice.  However, the multicolor hologram-like sheen of the Clear Hologram paint is really spectacular.  Only the black figures (Alpha and Proxima) hint of the multicolor nature of these glitter paints.

Then they each got a coating of satin polyurethane varnish.  In retrospect, I should have used a gloss varnish; the satin varnish really mutes the colorful holo glitter reflections.

The 1st (black) pair and 3rd (orange & yellow) pair were glossy lacquered with spray lacquer I got at a hardware store.  The 2nd (pink & blue) pair was dull lacquered.

Then I glued on googly eyes.  Googly eyes make everything better.

I looked into tiny stickers to use for cutie marks (my wife calls them tramp stamps), but they would need to be smaller than 1/4" in order to fit on a tiny pony's flank, and I couldn't find any this small; plus I kind of felt like it was cheating.  So their tramp stamps are lame and poorly defined.

Although I am presenting this as an April Fool's joke because I usually paint Fantasy Role-Playing Game (D&D) miniatures from Reaper Miniatures, there are numerous connections between My Little Pony and Dungeons & Dragons; I blogged about this 8 years ago.  Now there is Ponyfinder, a rich collection of fan-published rules for playing various Pony characters, in various Pony races, fighting various Pony monsters, in the D&D-inspired Pathfinder RPG.  You can even buy special Ponyfinder miniatures, but I think it would be cheaper and more fun to get a blind bag My Little Pony miniature and repaint it.

Bones 4 Miniatures: Blue!

I have returned to my color wheel schedule.  It's a new day, and blue is a fine color to reflect the fresh, clean energy of Spring!

It appears an outdoor gathering is in progress, with esteemed community members collecting near a memorial to brave local heroes.  There is the town chaplain (in muted blue vestment) and the town wizard (in mystical blue robes).  The event is catered by the tavern's serving lady carrying a tray, and a milkmaid carrying cow-fresh moolicious milk; both ladies are garbed in shades of blue. 

The statue has cracks and pits in it which clearly suggest weathered stone, but some parts of the statue were too long and thin to survive if they were carved out of stone.  So I imagined the statue was made out of stone and bronze, I tried to make the bronze look like the patina had worn away, but I think I kind of botched it due to haste. 

I hope that wizard has some powerful spells prepared, because whereas you or I have to deal with picnic ants, this garden party is about to be raided by fierce goblins!  Barely attired in blue fabric, these are the last of the organized goblin tribes in the Reaper Bones 4 kickstarter rewards; only straggler goblins remain. 

Again, because of the blue theme, I painted their armor and weapons as bronze with a grayish patina.  The patina is worn away at abrasion points.

Unfortunately, I kind of rushed this batch, and I discovered that I missed some spots, even on those goblins.  You would think that I would have extra time during the COVID19 quarantine, but I've been working from home and I feel like I'm busier than ever.