Maizena

I see this at every grocery store, in a cheerful assortment of flavors, but I've never seen anyone buy it. I now know why.

It's sort of the low budget equivalent of Qwik. It's made with milk, comes in the same basic flavor assortment, and ever has a cheerful little mascot. The difference is, this is made with corn starch. Now, doesn't that just sound like a bad idea to you? I don't think I've ever used corn starch in my life, and definitely not in a beverage.

According to the instructions, one little packet of this whips up to a full five servings of piping hot corn drink. I opted to just make half the package, which was way more than enough for your average 2.5 kids, I feel. Especially considering no kid in their right mind would drink any of this.

It was barely even a beverage, honestly. I ended up with violently strawberry scented Pepto-Bismo colored water on top of the cup, and a good half inch of corn starch silt at the bottom. The powder got this weird skin over it as soon as it touched water, and flatly refused to dissolve, no matter how much I stirred. So I eventually I gave up on that and just tried to drink around the clumps.

What was kind of cool about this, is that even though it smelled insanely strawberry-y, it had no strawberry flavor whatsoever. Really. It tasted like nothing in particular. Kind of corn starchy, really, but no surprise there. It was definitely unpleasant, but I say if you're purchasing corn starch beverages, you probably know what you're getting into, so hey. No harm no foul, Maizena.