Pun Salad

Your intrepid reporter noticed dinky little (8oz.) bottles of Coca-Cola BlăK in the Waterboro Maine Hannaford. (And I hope you appreciate the extra effort in getting the typography right here.) The cost was $1.49; since I was in the statist hell that is Maine, I also had to kick in five cents bottle deposit and probably about 7 cents sales tax.

The idea is that it's Coca-Cola with some coffee extract thrown in. And, gosh, that's pretty much what it tastes like. You get 45 calories and 46 mg of caffeine, almost enough to keep you awake while driving from Waterboro to Rollinsford, NH.

See, this is why I'd be a lousy reviewer. I didn't like it much, and I think $1.49 for 8 ounces of anything liquid is pretty outrageous. But maybe you'd like it; maybe you'd be wowed its subtle interplay of flavors. Assuming that there is a subtle interplay of flavors, because I am not one of those people who can detect a subtle interplay of flavors.

But if you're looking for my opinion: looking for cold, brown, and fizzy? Go with Diet Dr. Pepper. Looking for hot and coffee-flavored? Go with coffee. You're welcome.

More information at the corporate website here, includes flashy graphics and sultry feminine narrator.

An actual review from Consumer Reports here. They like the French version better, they claim it's heavier on the coffee.

This, for me, raises thorny questions: did Consumer Reports send someone over to Paris to taste-test the French version of BlăK? How does someone get that job? And doesn't that mean that subscription prices for Consumer Reports are probably just way too high?