In the coming weeks you may notice a somewhat different type of review appearing on the site on Wednesdays.  I just wanted to give you all a heads up on what was happening before it actually happened. 

The drink site ThirstMonger.com contacted us and asked if we would write the review for what will basically be their “deal of the week”.  So approximately every Wednesday we’ll post a review for the beverage they sent us and if you like what you read then head on over to ThirstMonger.com and purchase it.  This allows us to keep a steady stream of different beverages within our hopper while growing our numbers.  The amusing part of that last sentence is that I really don’t care what our numbers are.  As many of you know I’m not big into social media and self-promotion so the word of mouth/search engine way of growth is something I’m perfectly happy with.

What I could not turn down though was the steady stream of different beverages that will be coming our way.  Even though I don’t care if the site blows up with eyeballs I still want to have new material for you all to read.  The concession that I had to make here is that not all of the reviews will be sodas.  With that said we’re a soda review site first and a “beverage” review site somewhere around third.  So while you may see the occasional non-carbonated beverage reviewed you’ll still see at least one new soda reviewed every (ok, mostly “every” because sometimes I get lazy or busy) week.

So there you have it.

TL;DR – We’re going to start reviewing a drink every week sent to us by ThirstMonger.com and not all of them will be carbonated.  We’ll still post soda reviews weekly.

Ciao

~A

This message won't be up forever as I'm not huge into social media... although I probably should put more of an effort into it.  The long of the short of it is that our previous Facebook Fan Page locked me out from being admin for some reason.  I'm listed in certain areas... I just can't post as the website on it.  My correction (after longer than I wanted to wait) was to make a new facebook fan page!  So if you're a fan on Facebook head on over to our new page and "Like" us there.  For you non-facebookies, keep on truckin'.

New (Sorta Improved) Facebook Fan Page!!

When I have a slow weekend I don't make commercials for fake Coke products, but there is someone out there who does just that. Or has done it at least once.

For a few days the internet was fooled by the Coca-Cola Bag, an alternative to the practice in Central America where someone purchases a Coke and then has it put into a Ziploc-esque bag to carry around. This way, they don't have to come back to the store to return the bottle for the recycling deposit. The only difference is the bag is biodegradable, and shaped with the traditional Coke-bottle curves.

Sadly Coke has distanced themselves from this idea. I suppose there isn't enough BPA in the bags. Adds flavor. Enjoy the video below, and to the man doing the voice over, good luck getting over your horrendously sounding sore throat!

Source: Inhabitat

Fact: Japan has more vending machines than people. That's not really a fact. Maybe they have more vending machines than children. Still, they are certainly the kings of vending machine availability, selection and general weirdness. 

After years of vending machine dominance, it occurred to someone that these machines may be using quite a bit of power. Thankfully Coca-Cola and Fuji Electric Retail Systems (no relation to the camera people) have teamed up (Coke x Fuji?) to bring the world a vending machine that uses no energy for 16 hours per day. If my math is right, that means it's only draining electricity for 8 hours. Crazy!

The hours it is sucking power are at night when more capacity is available. After a two-month test this summer, we'll find out if the machine is ready to blanket the rest of Japan, selling cans of iced coffee, horse placenta, and salted watermelon soda.

Source: Engadget

Little did I know that trying to breathe new life into the news portion of this site would completely jinx my ability to find any soda news thanks to Mayor Bloomberg completely dominating that category. Go try to search for recent soda news right now. I dare you. In fact, try the search "soda -ash -ban -tax -taxes" and you still get 99% news on the soda ban and soda taxes. It's like Google is saying "sorry, that's really all we have right now. Deal with it."

So enjoy the picture below of a kid getting rescued cause he got his arm stuck in a soda machine. This is probably the first news I've seen in a month somewhat related to soda that isn't about taxing it or banning it or financial reports or how many tumors it will give you or whatever.

Source: NBC San Diego