by Matty Boy Anderson 12.25.07

Welcome back and merry Christmas everybody; we here at the Pod hope like damn you're having a great one. Hopefully you're reading this after a splendid holiday repast, and we can offer some much-needed respite from all the family hubbub as we sick ourselves out for your viewing pleasure!

For part two of our holiday extravaganza, we'll be choking down Jones Soda's 2007 Christmas Pack. As with the first installment, the taste testers are Myself, Kiki (who took the pictures), Brian (whose name I always type as "Brain"), and Phillip. Because of the astonishing crappiness of the "stocking stuffer" that came packed with the Xmas Pack, we again utilized the Chanukah Pack's trusty dreidel to determine the order of the beverages we'd be sampling. I may not know much about the culture of Judaism, but that dreidel wanted us goyim dead. Or at least to suffer greatly.

The Jones Soda 2007 Christmas Pack

The pack looks very handsome. What I really like is, the red and green stripes suggest not only Christmas cheer, but a hint of toxicity. Sort of like when somebody who lives on Elm Street has a dream, and they see some everyday object with red and green stripes on it, and they think "Oooh, Christmas? Oh no; FREDDY!!!!" before their bowels and innards are sundered into packing peanuts. You can't see it in the lousy picture I took (above), but there's a teddy bear in the lower left corner with stitched-button "X" eyes. If you only give it a casual glance, it looks like the bear is stone dead, in cartoon pictography. If there's anything I love, it's a holiday tinged with dread. The drum pictured is the one Jones will beat a funereal tattoo upon, as your corpse is lowered into a cold grave by pokerfaced pallbearers. One of the flavors is truly that bad.

The back of the box features Santa's List, complete with naughty/nice collation. Since the names weren't punny when I shouted them aloud, I'm guessing they're the employees at Jones responsible for these novelty brews. Maybe Seth left the toilet seat in the Jones Soda employee bathroom up, your guess is as good as mine.

The flavors for this final round were (as dictated by dreidel) Christmas Tree, Sugar Plum, Egg Nog, and Christmas Ham. Ironically, at first we seemed to be more afraid of the Christmas Tree flavor (being that it's not a food, at least not for non-beavers). Why is this ironic? Read on.

1. CHRISTMAS TREE

INITIAL THOUGHTS
M: WTF will it taste like?!
P: Mmmm..... pine needle juice.
K: Looks like NyQuil.

SMELL
M: Offers no clue.
B: Cream soda w/ light pine
P: Hard to pin down-- rotting cake on Christmas Eve?
K: Smells like Gramma.

TASTE

M: Like an Xmas tree smells + mouthwash. Mediciny.

B: Strong pine aftertaste which I couldn't smell

P: Like a Christmas tree smells-- but kind of sweet-- it looks like re-agent.

K: Like you ate one of those smelly Berenstain Bears books.

OTHER COMMENTS
M: Hard to choke down. Ugh.
B: Tastes like a Christmas tree-- smells like car freshener mixed with cream soda
P: fucking weird

2. SUGAR PLUM

INITIAL THOUGHTS
M: Gonna be REAL sugary.
B: Seems too sweet; cool color
P: Looks awesome
K: Light blue-- exactly like the fairies in your head. I hope we got the worst one out of the way...

SMELL
M: Subtle. Japanese soda?
B: Faint, familiar sweet smell that I can't place
P: Kool-Aid and pixie dust mixed with champagne
K: Like Icee stuff-- very faint

TASTE

M: Light grape soda. What I figured a Flaming Moe would taste like.

B: Very sweet + light

P: Seems similar to grape soda but there is a definite difference.

K: Like Icee stuff that's melted.

OTHER COMMENTS
M: Awesome pale blue color!
P: Plum good

3. EGG NOG

INITIAL THOUGHTS
M: Never had egg nog. No clue what it tastes like.
B: Yeah! Egg nog is delicious
P: i loves me some egg nog
K: I wish this were last

SMELL
M: No idea.
B: Not much smell
P: Definitely smells like egg nog, but slightly diff
K: Lemony-- doesn't smell like egg nog-- hesitant

TASTE

M: Cream soda, hint of bubblegum?

B: Kind of egg nog, but with soda texture it ends up tasting more like creme sodas.

P: Can almost taste nutmeg, a good cream soda and is a pretty on target imitation.

K: Very thick-- candy-like aftertaste + a thick coat

OTHER COMMENTS
B: Much rather the real thing
K: OMG the ham is next

4. CHRISTMAS HAM

INITIAL THOUGHTS
M: no way will this be good
B: Uhhh.... no
P: Miss Piggy's urine sample
K: Nasty-- this can only be nasty

SMELL
M: SMOKY HAM as soon as the bottle was opened.
B: Ham w/ Hefeweizen? Has salty smell?
P: Fire-roasted pork-- you can smell the flesh burning
K: Ham fat.

TASTE

M: GODAWFUL. REVOLTING. UGH. bongwater???

B: Not unlike sucking on chimney smoke.

P: Liquefied pig ass and smoke-- imagine bacon poured down your throat, only soda bacon!

K: Horrible. My tongue is sweating. It can't cleanse itself of the taste fast enough

OTHER COMMENTS
B: Completely unappetizing
P: Fuck you Jones Soda crazies!

That's all for this year's sodas! We'd like to thank everyone who participated (and of course, Jones Soda too), and we'll be continuing with more exciting updates after Christmas, so stay tuned! 2008 is going to be a big-ass year for the Pod, and you won't want to miss a second, even in the waning days of 2007! Buckle up Chico!

Big shit's a-comin' folks!
-MBA