Maine Root Pumpkin Pie Soda

I can't quite tell what this soda's angle is. It was put out on the shelves after Halloween, yet has a jack-o-lantern on it. Because I totally didn't find this until after Halloween, I'm going to say that this is for Thanksgiving, for the college student stranded by themselves over break with little else to eat on the holiday except for this soda and McDonald's and day-old bakery rolls. Forever alone.

This makes for a depressing Thanksgiving, if you're drinking it for its intended purpose. I've tolerated selections from Maine Root in the past, and have enjoyed their stranger selection of flavors. This was a new one in the supermarket. Unfortunately, there are some flavors that just shouldn't be incarnated into carbonated form. Jones has exhausted that list to the point of insipid novelty, and now Maine Root is jumping on the bandwagon with their pumpkin pie soda. Even the kitten was kind of skeptical.

A few years ago I totally "wasn't" into Harry Potter and I "didn't" go to three of the midnight book releases and "never" cried at the end of the seventh book. Now I'm over that noise despite seeing some of my old high school friends totally cosplaying the crap out of those books, but was piqued by this soda as a result of a years-old curiosity surrounding the omnipresent pumpkin juice in the book series. I was hoping this would be quenching, rich, and almost vegetal in flavor with a deep underlying spiciness and sweet hint of brown sugar. It was basically all of that, reversed.

Imagine the weak, generic scent of a votive candle- the vague mishmosh of spices that somehow loosely translates to the flavors of fall and appeals to the sensibilities of people who consider Jersey Shore quality theatrics. That's what this taste like. It's overly sugared and smells synthetic, and completely lacks pumpkin. The sugar content in this is through the roof. It tastes closer to some of the pumpkin-shaped candies of the season than it tastes like its gourd brethren. And let's be serious- simply saturating it with an asston of orange food coloring doesn't make it taste more like pumpkin. Keepitcoming Love liked this soda because it did have a persistent and strong fresh nutmeg and cinnamon stick flavor, slightly sticky, dry texture included, but I wasn't sold on its weak flavor. I can't enjoy anything that wins the first place slot in the Family Feud question, "Soda that best resembles a Yankee Candle."