Twisted, Zesty or Feisty: Choose Your Flavour Adventure

Hmmm, do I need to take
the Myers Briggs test before I choose my soft drink?

When I was a child (yes,
this is going to be a what happened to
the good old days post), the soft drink options were straightforward. You
choose from the Big Three: Coke, Pepsi and Canada Dry Gingerale. A handful of
secondary brands – Sprite, Orange Crush, Fanta – had brief runs before they
were swallowed up by the Big Three.

The decision was simple
if you craved Cola – Coke or Pepsi. You choose one or the other and were
fiercely loyal to it. Along the way, Pepsi dared to introduce the blind taste
test: Can you tell whether it is Coke or
Pepsi? It was a brilliant marketing tactic in some ways. Despite what the
TV commercials implied, most of us loyalists were offended and refused to
participate.

(Okay, I admit I was
never actually invited to take the challenge so I did not have the opportunity
to proudly decline. But I swear on a stack of bibles that I would have.)

But times have changed.
Oh my, how they have changed! Modern consumers apparently demand a plethora of
choices with sexy names.

What got me thinking
along these lines was the new commercial for Diet Coke XTRA Toasted Vanilla.
Apparently vanilla on its own is just, well, vanilla. You have to toast it before it becomes a delicacy. But the
real bite in this high octane drink comes from the extra dose of caffeine.

I went to the Coke
website to see what flavours currently exist. If you want the hard stuff (no
wimpy diet soda for you), your colourful choices, complete with their unofficial
tag lines, include:

Strawberry
Guava (life’s a beach)Twisted
Mango (wild child)Zesty
Blood Orange (you’ll dance)Feisty
Cherry (has an attitude)

You must understand that
these concoctions are not just drinks. Each is a lifestyle defining choice. For
example, the descriptor for Zesty Blood Orange direct from the Coke website:

cracking
open a can of zesty blood orange is an experience unto itself. you hear that
fizz and taste that zesty blood orange flavoured goodness, and your senses just
come alive. you’ll dance. you’ll
LOL. you’ll stand up on your desk and
yell “CARPE DIEM” and everyone will stare at you awkwardly.

If these choices do not
light your fire, try these specialty sodas: British Columbia Raspberry (Silly
me, I did not know that B.C is the raspberry capital of Canada), Georgia Peach
(I will let you draw your own associations) and Coca Cola de Mexico (Does it
come with a worm at the bottom of the bottle?).

Truthfully, for health
reasons, I seldom consume soft drinks these days. That is fortunate since I do
not see a flavour aimed at

aging
baby boomer, change impaired, oh my aching back, no caffeine after 6:00, less
is more, hold the dairy and glutton

Soft drink flavours as a
metaphor for our life choices – welcome to the new age, 21st
Century.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also
the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which was
a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s
website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

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