11.27.10
Shirakiku Ramune Drink (melon)
This last weekend in November brings us to the last two ‘snacks’ from Bubbles and they would be [drum roll please] Ramune! She found a flavor I have not seen around these parts and that is melon. I’m not a huge melon flavoring fan but I do like the taste of fresh melon. This Ramune is dyed green so it makes me think of Honeydew melons and I can’t really shake that impression when I take a swig of the pop. It’s not exactly 100% Honeydew either but it’s more Honeydew than cantaloupe (and very much less watermelon) so if there is a Japanese melon which is similar in flavor to a Honeydew, this is probably that. The flavor also likes to travel up you nose and into your sinuses when you take that first initial drink so if you don’t like melon than that sensation will be particularly unpleasant.
I am not sold on this melon Ramune because there is a hint of manufacturedness in the taste. On the other hand, there is also a nice backdrop of melony goodness which I’m a bit surprised to find. It’s a weird dichotomy but for me the slight labbyness of the taste is enough to make me less of a melon Ramune convert than just the straight decent melon flavor would have. It’s probably close enough that some people won’t even notice the slight flavoring flavor while others will be turned off by it. I think that everyone will agree that there is also a nicely fruity melon flavor in there too.
As to the sweet, this is a single sugar Ramune (high fructose corn syrup) so it comes off as a nice crisp soda rather than an overly sweet soda. It still has a tiny carbonation issue but I’m not as bothered by that in this Ramune. My theory is holding true about less sweet seeming more carbonated.
I’m still giving the gerbil ball drinking platform the evil eye because it’s still stupid. A reader commented a while back that the ball will fall forward into the ball hole if you drop your Ramune, thereby preventing a massive spill. Some Ramune will leak out while the marble is flopping into place but I thought that might be a good reason to give points to the gerbil ball dynamic. Then today, as I was trying to remove the ball stomper from the top and it skittered off the bottle to parts unknown in my kitchen (and then became a cat toy because my cat is faster on the AWOL ball stomper uptake), I decided I was in error. If I’m going to have a thing I have to take off anyway, I would prefer a bottle cap which is less likely to go flying around unattended when I take it off. I can also use a cap to reseal the bottle so when I drop it I lose no soda. Plus, I just really hate the general shape of the Ramune bottle mouth.
At this point in time I might as well give up my crusade against the drinking shape because they aren’t going to become wise to their stupid ways anytime soon if they haven’t already. For the sake of keeping the Ramunes in line for rating, I’ll still consider the idiocy of the bottle mouth and marble stop but I’m tired of mentioning it. For future reference, any soda which gets a suddenly brilliant insight to a human designed drinking mechanism will probably get more pea points than its Ramune counterpart. I’m just saying.
For the decent melon flavor, the crisp and not sweety sweet taste and the impression of almost decent carbonation, I’m going to give Shirakiku Ramune Drink (melon) a
Rating of 3 wasabi peas out of a possible 5 wasabi peas.
