Crave Original and Strawberry Chocolate Milk

Every year, my university has an exhibition similar to a smaller scale, collegiate Fancy Food Show. The entire stadium is converted into a hall full of booths, presentations, and contests. Last year Ted Allen and the New England Patriots cheerleaders came. For me, it's a chance to scout out interesting brands and new products- test items always seem to be given to hungry college guinea pigs!When I went this year, I was immediately drawn to the Crave line.One of my favorite beverages is chocolate milk, and I'd never seen a flavored variety outside of the ubiquitous Hershey's offerings. I took a sample, traded business cards, and two weeks later, arrived home to see two cases of Crave on the doorstep!
Needless to say, we've been drinking chocolate milk for weeks. We've been passing it off to neighbors and family and have toasted to the glorious chocolate cow. Crave's original flavor is a very sophisticated cocoa flavor that belies its presentation. In all honesty, I found that its flavor was more developed than that of Cocoa Metro's. It had a creamy, airy consistency like a frothy milkshake when chilled, with a very bold flavor, but not one that is too sickly sweet or sugary. It's just chocolate. Really, really nice chocolate. The bottle it comes in is all metal so it's easy to chill it for a little while and keep it cold. I find that chocolate milk like this is really best served ice cold. It's such a fantastic drink, but calorically, it's not your best bet. The benefit of having a screw on top makes it easy to take quick sips every so often when you're craving sugar and then pop it back into the fridge.
With that as our standard for excellence, we figured the strawberry chocolate milk would have to be pretty good to beat the original. It's deceptively similar to the original in color, providing an iocane-esque conundrum for all you Princess Bride fans out there. Unfortunately, this idea wasn't so tasty in reality so much as it was in conception. This milk was billed as tasting like a liqufied chocolate-covered strawberry, but it didn't resemble one at all. It was an unfortunate combination- the dairy equivalent of mixing all the sodas at the soda machine together. It wasn't that there was anything particularly bad about it, just that it was strange. Luckily, the strawberry flavor, a mere whisp of cough syrup, faded out as quickly as Gael Green's ugly hat phase did and receded to that chocolate flavor we knew and loved. Like the original flavor, it was much better chilled and lost the bulk of the sharpness from the strawberry. However blah it was, it definitely intrigued me. We've seen it with cupcakes, peanut butter, and Kit Kats- are gourmet chocolate milk flavors not far behind?