Fire Brands, maker of the Skittles drinks and Warheads sodas, just dropped another vibrantly hued, nostalgia-infused line of sodas: Kool-Aid Sodas! There are five flavors in the lineup: Blue Raspberry Lemonade, Orange, Grape, Black Cherry, and Sharkleberry Fin. (Oddly, there’s no iconic Tropical Punch.) After months of hunting, I finally located all five flavors at Ohio’s favorite international and everything store Jungle Jim’s (shoutout to my good pal Mark JungleJims Borison). And today, I’m going to try all five and rank them from “Oh no!!” to “Oh yeah!!”
This is far and away the worst flavor in the lineup. Not only do I not taste lemonade, but I also don’t taste raspberry and I also don’t taste blue. It almost reminds me of a blue raspberry Seagrams or Smirnoff Ice—but without the alcohol. I can’t say I’ll be grabbing this one again, nor will I be finishing the one in my possession.
It’s very difficult to mess up an orange soda, but somehow they managed it with this one. I traditionally love orange sodas, but the artificial orange flavoring in this soda reminds me of the artificial orange flavoring typically used in candy rather than soda. Also, who thinks of ORANGE when they think of Kool-Aid? There is nothing Kool-Aid-like about this whatsoever.
Perhaps I just don’t remember how Sharkleberry Fin tastes, but this soda tastes like someone shoved a bunch of bubblegum in the bottle and then removed some of the sugar. The artwork on the bottle shows a banana, a strawberry, and an orange, but I don’t taste any of those things. While the bubblegum flavor is decent enough to rank above the previous two, I still don’t love it.
Much like orange sodas, it is difficult to mess up a grape soda. But thankfully, in this case, Kool-Aid Grape Soda hits the mark. While I will still take Sprecher’s Grape Soda over this one any day, I can enjoy and respect this for what it is. This is classic grape soda done well.
I don’t even like black cherry. Black cherry is historically one of my least favorite flavors whenever it appears as a snack or drink flavor. But Black Cherry Kool-Aid Soda delivers on a flavor that is unmistakable Kool-Aid coded. I think of all of the flavors in this lineup, this is the only one I believe I could identify as being a Kool-Aid product. Though I have my own personal qualms with black cherry as a whole, I’ve got to respect what’s been done here.
Born and raised in the city that produces DUM DUMS, Tyler Bowers is a writer, a content creator, and a social media influencer. In addition to running the @TeamSupernovaFB social pages, he streams on Twitch (most notably completing Demon's Souls without dying), and is an avid lover of traveling and trying new foods. Tyler is an advocate and enjoyer of Faygo--especially Faygo Grape, Cream Soda, and Firework. He dreams of one day doing a Mountain Dew-themed Good Mythical Morning episode with Rhett & Link, and he will stop at nothing to get Pepsi to #BringBackSupernova.
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Tyler Bowers
Griffin Parker
Will Morgan
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