2021 Christmas Presents – page 12
Some people might find the entire notion of sending a box full of soda to somebody for Christmas really weird… but you haven’t heard the requests I get to bring Cheerwine with me when I travel out of state for something. This part is TOTALLY realistic.
Though we DO now have to ask what the contents of these cans would actually taste like. I mean, even if we stick to the idea that this is “real life” Far Out There merchandise and not in-universe stuff, the cans still have to have SOMETHING inside of them, right? Like, those cans of “Duff Beer” you can get at places like FYE don’t actually contain beer, but they still have SOME kind of real drink. I’m almost afraid to ask what flavor comes to mind when people think of beards.
You mean they don’t have Cheerwine everywhere? Now that really is weird….
Well, I hadn’t even heard of “Cheerwine” before now, so…
But you know what is really wierd? Not everywhere has red frogs confectionary.
It’s a cherry-flavored soda readily available in the Carolinas but very sporadically distributed anywhere else.
Also, I now really want to find some red frogs.
Red Frogs…actually sounds like something you might have made up as a FOT confection. Yet again, truth is stranger than (potential) fiction…..
Cherry isn’t used as an artificial food flavouring in Australia, due to it being the flavour given to out medicine, so “Cherry Flavoured” snacks are considered to taste like medicine here.
Does that mean that cherries don’t sell well in supermarkets, because they would be perceived as a fruit that tastes like medicine? That would be oddly reversed from reality (the original being perceived like the imitation)
I tried to think of what they use to flavor medicines here, I guess probably the most common would be mint? But they still put mint in candies and everything else anyway. I guess it’s so ubiquitous it’s not uniquely identified with medicine like cherry would be down there.
I had never heard of “Vegemite” (or Marmite either) until a few years ago. I think it was in a song or something, someone compared it to something in a negative way as if it was really bad, so I looked it up. Then I really wanted to order some over the internet to see if it was really all that they said. But for what they wanted to charge I could have just about traveled to Australia myself to buy it.
Vegemite is great. It goes with nearly everything. And you don’t need much of it.
Disclaimer: I grew up Australia.
Vegemite’s STRONG, it’s a concentrated flavour hit. Like, in Terry Prattchett’s The Last Continent (a diskworld series book), one of the jokes is essentially the MC making effectively Vegemite by trying to make some soup with beer (due to not having water), falling asleep with it over the fire, and essentially boiling all the water & alcohol away to make what would likely become the XXXX equivalent of Vegimite after he leaves.
I remember after reading that I thought “Yeah, I can see how that works out”.
“I’m almost afraid to ask what flavor comes to mind when people think of beards.”
I am a recovering beardy. There are two beard flavours. The classy one is: “shower gel”. The cheap one is: “rancid pork pie crumbs cut with stale soup”.
Classy beardies shower daily.
I’m thinking that if you think of beards at all this time of year it’s probably Santa related, so they’re probably the sort of typical christmasy flavored peppermity/gingerbready seasoned sort of flavor.
In reality, though, it’s probably just Root Beerd.