The Coke Freestyle

Anyone who knows me, and some folks who follow this blog, and especially my French Fry Diary closely, know that I am a Coca-Cola man. I will always take a Coke over a Pepsi, a Coke over coffee, heck, even a Coke before a water. It's just the way I prefer my refreshment, and my caffeine.

The last few years a phenomenon called the Coca-Cola Freestyle machine has come to my attention. Previously it was only available in the south, but recently a few have popped up in many local Burger Kings. I was elated, but not by the Burger King part, but this truly was a reason to go to Burger King.

The Coca-Cola Freestyle is a machine, like a thin soda machine, but the features are the alley where the soda is dispensed, and the touch screen above it. The touch screen is where the magic happens. You get to choose the brand of soft drink, it's sugar content and the flavor of it.

For instance, you can choose from Coke, Sprite, Minute Maid, Fanta, Dasani, Hi-C, Powerade, Vault, Pibb, Barq's, or Seagrams. Then you can choose if you'd like caffeine or sugar (the diet soda variety), and then you can even go farther and get your selection in a flavor of your choice like vanilla, lime, lemon, grape, orange, cherry, raspberry, peach, strawberry, lemonade, fruit punch or even cherry vanilla.

Literally, if you have the stamina, and are thirsty, and Burger King doesn't throw you out, you could be there all day. Truly Coca-Cola heaven.

Quicksand!

Quicksand ~ I bet you never knew Mickey Rooney made a film noir, did you? This lost flick from 1950 stars Rooney as a good old American kid, almost a grown up Andy Hardy without the smarts who wants to take a flashy girl, played by Jeanne Cagney (Jimmy's sister), out and impress her. He sneaks twenty bucks from the register at work, fully intending to return it the next day, and chaos ensues. She's not the innocent girl she seems, and is involved in shady dealings, including the creepy and fearsome Peter Lorre who runs the local arcade.

Though for the most part forgotten, this is a pure example of film noir, as our mostly innocent protagonist falls deeper and deeper into a criminal whirlpool of quicksand, thus the title. Taken from Cornell Woolrich story and deftly played by the cast, this film was also one of the first to feature product placement - keep an eye out for Pepsi and Bit-O-Honey.

Quicksand does have two failings, and they're not all that bad, and of course I'm excluding the, er, intriguing fashion of the time. It suffers from the Woody Woodpecker syndrome of "None of this would have happened if only he'd gone to the police in the first place." Also, it's hard to ever forget that Mickey Rooney is anybody other than Mickey Rooney. Still, it's an intriguing time capsule, and a great lost film noir.

Pepsi Throwback

When I first heard of this I was intrigued and had to find some. Pepsi Throwback is basically Pepsi Cola with sugar instead of the corn syrup normally used. Supposedly it tastes like Pepsi used to back in the day, before the Health Nazis ruined everything that was tasty in this country.

Just for the record, Pepsi Throwback is a different formula than the sugar-for-corn-syrup variation that is kosher for Passover once a year. It should be noted that while I’ve never noticed a taste difference between kosher and regular Pepsi, there is a significant and yummy difference over at the Coca-Cola camp. Kosher Coke rocks.

After much searching I finally found some Pepsi Throwback at a local Wawa. At the first taste, it was as if it was 1975 again and I was drinking from a swirled glass bottle. The taste was a rush of flavor, flavor I hadn’t had in decades – now this was Pepsi! I really did not expect the taste to be so different and exhilarating.

A second gulp and a third made me a bit dizzy. This stuff was out of the range of Jolt and perhaps more Red Bull. I was surprised. Great for a sip, but not for a whole bottle. Bring on the regular Pepsi. For those who enjoy the Throwback, it’ll be out there throughout April. And for the record, a Mountain Dew Throwback is also available, but my mind boggles at what that tastes like... possibly a twenty-four hour sugar high per ounce...

Super Bowl Aftermath: Commercials

Despite one of the better (or at least more interesting) commercials this year being banned from being broadcast, there were still a few ads that stood out during this year's Super Bowl.

The main idea is to surprise, entertain, and most importantly let the viewer remember the name of the product when it's all over. I mean everyone remembers the amazing Big Brother commercial from 1984 - but come on, who remembers what they were selling?

Let's start with a good one from Doritos that aired early in the game...

It met criteria by making me laugh and I knew what they were selling. On the bad side, there were a few that creeped me out. Like the NBC ads for "Heroes" where the casts of that show, "Medium" and "Chuck" lipsynced to an old Motown tune. As a matter of fact, all of the commercials for NBC shows were pretty bad, and disrepectful to the shows themselves. Were they trying to turn folks off?

None of the Coke, Pepsi or Budweiser ads did anything for me, and that "Pepsuber" bit not only made me not want to drink Pepsi but also stop watching "Saturday Night Live." Speaking of bad commercials, what was up with that Cash4Gold.com one with Ed McMahon and MC Hammer? Was that for real, or just a cruel joke?

A joke that worked and that I loved was Alec Baldwin for Hulu...

My absolute favorite of the night however was the CareerBuilder.com commercial with the fuzzy logic ad...

Although I could see it getting very annoying if it starts playing repetitively in general circulation.

So anyone know who won the game?