Tuesday, November 21, 2006

why did NOBODY mention this to me?

SEATTLE (Reuters) - After introducing the world to new soda flavors like fish taco and salmon, Seattle specialty beverage maker Jones Soda Co. is offering a new flavor: Green pea.

Green pea, along with other unusual sodas such as turkey and gravy, dinner roll, sweet potato and antacid flavor, will be part of the company's $10 to $15 "holiday pack" of bottled drinks available nationwide.

Peter van Stolk, chief executive of Jones Soda, said on Monday the collection of strange-flavored sodas usually sells out quickly, even though he can not stomach the drinks. Past flavors included broccoli casserole, corn on the cob and Brussel sprout.

"Why people buy it is beyond me. I can't drink a bottle of this stuff," said van Stolk.

Jones Soda, which sells traditional sodas alongside more exotic flavors like fufu berry and green apple, first introduced the holiday soda pack in 2003, gaining notoriety for its turkey and gravy flavor soda.

"We have the market share leader in turkey-flavored beverages," said van Stolk. "We know we can't compete with Coke or Pepsi by playing their game, but we know they're not going to come out with a turkey flavor or antacid flavor."

Asked if there were any flavors that were off limits, van Stolk said he put his foot down when it came to curried chicken flavor.

"Fish taco was just nasty and we tried curried chicken. That was just wrong," he said.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.


the above article, in which i draw your attention to the last quotation, would have been VERY HELPFUL to me about 150 years ago when i was deciding against chemistry as a career because "chemistry is boring". now, it wasn't that i thought that chemistry itself was all that boring, because you could do some cool things in chemlab. no, i'm not going to tell you what they are. it's possible mrs. barnhart uses the web and i don't want to get in retroactive trouble for publicizing my antics now. still, i thought that all chemists had to grow up and work at dow and babysit reactor chambers for the rest of eternity. if i had ONLY KNOWN that some chemists get to grow up and make curried chicken flavored sodas, i think i'd have seriously considered the field a little further. beyond that, how often do you get to make your boss go on record with reuters saying "That was just wrong." and not get fired? wow, i would love that job!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So, did you never see Willie Wonka when you were a kid? I know you had to have heard about the folks designing the pouches of dried nourishment for astronauts. It's not that much of a stretch to imagine a drink flavored like peas, is it? I'm curious as to whether the "holiday pack" includes a green bean casserole flavor. I'm sure you would have been wonderful at this job, but I would have forever thought of you as world's tallest oompah-loompah.