Ikea Food

 IKEA Food

I'd never actually sampled anything from the Ikea post-checkout foodish area before, mostly because when I walk by it I'm too busy trying not to collapse under a giant pile of random boards and screws that will never be compatible with any hardware I will ever own. But, INCREDIBLY, last week I was finally able to get out of the local modernist KMart with a manageable pile of crap, so I was able to finally check out the food section.

First of all, I think it's important you know that they sell caviar in toothpaste tubes. Alright, on to the things I personally ate:



 Elderflower Drinkbox
idk man, Swedish drink boxes seem really serious. Lingonberry and Elderflower are way too sophisticated for the cheez-it eating, dirt-covered child I was, that's for sure. But still. No child should have to be without Ecto Cooler. I'd give Sally Struthers 20 cents a day to fund that. Jokes aside, it's actually not too bad. It's more grape juice than flower, and it's got the same insanity sweetness that Hi-C had such good luck with, sooooo, that's alright then.






(No photo, b/c fuck these guys)
Kex Crackers
I would just like to mention these because of the disappointing fact that they aren't shaped like the entire alphabet, just the letters that spell 'Ikea'. What kid of shitty alphabet crackers can't be used to leave obscene messages on your coworkers' desks? Seriously now. Although, to be fair, leaving 'IKEA' spelled out in crackers on someone's desk is pretty confusing, and that's almost as good.


Daim 3 Pack
I just love to think that this is pronounced DAY-UM, and the spokesperson is this woman:













Rhubarb and Vanilla Tea
I have a soft spot for Rhubarb, the plant that clearly does not want you to eat it. The leaves are toxic, and the stems, though edible, are an aggressive laxative. Basically, there is no way you can eat this plant and not shit yourself. Also, when I was a kid, there was a big patch of it growing in the alley behind our house, next to the garbage cans. We didn't know how it got there, we never watered it, and somehow it managed to thrive in brutal ND weather. Personally, I think that is a sign that your plant has been channeling unholy forces, but my mom mostly just made pies out of it.

So back to the tea, which was actually a pile of pleasant surprises. First off, it was actual tea made from actual leaves, that appeared to have been harvested from an actual plant. So already a step way up from the usual 'tea' you get, which is a fine powder made from sucrose and lies. Secondly, it was proper black tea, not some weak green herbal bullshit thing. And thirdly, it was actually tasty! Really! Honestly, the worst thing I have to say about it is 'little heavy on the vanilla'.


Jelly Rats
The randomness of the gummy shapes is what got me. Rats? Really? Why? When Haribo makes some ridiculous shaped gummi, they at least give you a cute little drawing and backstory about how this dude is an Italian chef who just happens to work in gummi media only or something. This makes me feel like they'd run out of ideas at the IKEA gummy factory and did what I do when it's 2 hours before deadline and I haven't started the project: stare blankly around the room and go with the first thing I see.Also, they're grainy. And disgusting. Altho, according to Google Translate, their slogan is "good from aromatherapy" which is a pretty bold claim for both rats and gummies.

Cloudberry Jam
Which you spread on your sandwich made of dreams!!!

Bilar Chewy Candy Cars
Why are these cars? Why are they marshmallows? Why are they pastel? And most importantly, why am I eating them?

Thanksgiving Soda

Sam's Club Cider Apple Burst & 7-Eleven Apple Ginger Snap

Extreme Cider Apple! It's totally the experience of a crisp fall evening in front of the fire X100! Give it to your Grandma and BLOW HER MIND!! WHOOOOO!

Who the fuck is this drink for? Does anyone want extreme sparkling apple cider? On top of which, it's caffeine free, which I'm pretty sure automatically revokes your standing as an extreme beverage. Also it looks like cloudy urine. But what pisses me off most about this drink is that it actually DOES taste just like apple cider. Only carbonated, which is vile and the exact thing I do not look for in apple cider.

Where is this amazing flavor accuracy when they're dealing with flavors I actually am interested in tasting? There's 9 million different permutations of berry flavored drinks on the market, and not one of them can reasonably approximate the flavor of even one given berry, let alone several put together. But somehow WalMart's crack team of popologists can pull off cider apple.

And what's really incredible is that the Thanksgiving flavor line of soda gets even worse, in the form of a 7-Eleven Apple Ginger Snap Big Gulp. None of the words in that flavor have any business on a bottle of pop. They all appear to have escaped from the cookie isle, and I do not like it. As far as taste goes, it's much less impressively disturbing than the Apple Cider, inasmuch as it doesn't really taste like anything. It has a very watery apple juice base, with a hint of something that says to me 'mistook a vat of industrial cleaner for the Ginger Snap flavoring', and to top it off, there's no carbonation to speak of. If there's anything that bothers me more than cookie flavored pop, it's cookie flavored pop that doesn't even try. I pronounce Cider Apple Burst to be the superior crime against beveragekind and we move on.

Moxie

This particular beverage hails from the days when sodas were called phosphates, and they had to carbonate molasses cause they didn't have anything else. The intimidating duotone man on the label claims the beverage has been in existence since 1884, which means that it was probably the Ingalls girls' treat on those long sleigh rides to the nearest town's general store. Seriously, check the dates. I personally would've gone with the candied squirrel intestines or something, but pioneers can't be choosers. Actually, if I'd lived on the American frontier, I would've contracted smallpox and died at my first opportunity. In the womb, if possible.

If you've ever actually tried Moxie you'll have no trouble believing it was created in the 1800's. It tastes like something your local midwestern museum would serve as part of their annual ' In the Days Before Electric Lightsavaganza' festival. It smells like something you'd find in a 20's drugstore. Something with 'Bromide' in the name. Something that doubles as a cure-all for everything from cholera to losing all your oxen in an attempt to ford the Green River.

The taste itself is hard to explain in terms of actual flavor. It's more of an experience. A horrible, painful experience, comparable to drinking molten tar. This stuff was so strong I couldn't even drink a full swig of it. I had to sip it like it was a tea party. My mouth tasted like burning shoes days after trying this crap. I actually forgot about the bottle in my backpack for a couple weeks, and then tried it again, thinking once it'd had some time to calm down and think about why pop shouldn't taste like getting kicked in the face, it'd maybe be palatable. Wrong. It was just as vile without carbonation. Maybe worse, because there were no bubbles to numb my poor taste buds. And this was just the diet Moxie. Woe betide the fool what takes on the full-strength Moxie.

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.

Milky Way Slammer

To me, that sounds like a porno move, not a beverage. And not a particularly appealing move, either. Actually, I've been sitting here thinking about it so long that I've kind of grossed myself out, so I'm going to drop the porn metaphors, and just say that this is a very bad drink.

Not so much because it tastes bad, but because it actually does taste like a Milky Way bar. But it's a liquid. I felt unpleasantly like I was partaking in a candy bar that had, in fact, already been digested. This is not fun at all, and, in retrospect, even less appealing than the porn idea.

Dominade

Crystal Light for the S&M set, I guess. It was only 99 cents for two gallons worth of mix, making it the beverage of choice in the cost-conscious dungeons. My only hope is that they marketed it like Sunny D.

"Let's see, we got a glass of my cum, your own urine, brown stuff...Hey! Dominade!

Yeo's White Gourd Drink

I can still taste the horror of this one. Actually, it sat in the back of my refrigerator for a couple of months before I could even work up the courage to open it. This is because I've never tasted a gourd in any form, much less as a beverage, which seemed like the worst possible medium for my first gourd-related experience.

And even though I was expecting the worst, I was still taken aback at the pure unmitigated wrongness of this drink. There are no currently-existing flavors to describe it. It had kind of a peanutty-old sock flavor, a little bit like soy nuts, only gamier. Gordish, I guess. I don't know. Not helping was their decision not to carbonate the damn stuff, so you could experience the gourd flavor in full effect, without any tangy bubbles to distract the taste buds. The harnessing of CO2 for beverage purposes is one of man's greater triumphs, and makes even the most retarded store brand pop not just drinkable, but enjoyable. Thank you, Carbon, Oxygen.

The can proudly proclaims itself an 'Authentic Asian Drink' which I feel is pretty obvious, considering that if it was an American pop, the can would have something along the lines of 'XXXTREME ALPINE MIST POWER GOURDO CODE BLANCO BLASTOFF!!!!' spalshed across it in fonts of varying color and extremeness.

But even after all the aforementioned, the thing that really amazes me about the White Gourd Drink is that I didn't get it at an Asian grocery store. I found it in a major chain market, which means that of all the canned beverages floating around the entire continent, this was one of the most mainstream ones available, and therefore chosen to be stocked as a regular item at a major US grocery store. What the hell else is over there that didn't make the cut? The mind boggles.

Vimto

This is much less exciting than it sounds. The UK entry into the 'red' flavored soda category, this tastes much like Big Red, Faygo RedPop, Barq's Red Creme soda, and every other red flavored pop you can get at the finer gas stations and aged hotel vending machines. The sickly sweetness of corn syrup and red dye No 40 are present throughout, with notes of that indefinable but distinct flavor of cheapness and failure. No one ever actually has a thirst that only a red soda will quench, they just drink it because it's the only thing that's never sold out at 3am in Akron.

Milo

I think I bought this just because of the waaay too excited dude on the front. The drink itself is purportedly a 'nutritional energy drink', but I can't say it did anything for me, energy-wise. I had been hoping the drink would do for me what it had done for Milo, but with an excess of neither caffeine nor sugar, and a taste comparable to those gritty Carnation Instant Breakfast drinks they used to make, I could find no convincing reason for this drink to exist.
Not that the actual breakfast drinks made much sense themselves. Carnation made such a big deal out of the fact that they were the perfect breakfast for important, on-the-go people who didn't have time to fuck around with a waffle before running off to decide world policy, but honestly, have you ever tried to drink a glass of that stuff when you're in a hurry? It's like trying to chug a glass of damp chalk. At least a you can eat a granola bar on the bus without having to worry about people spitting in it if you take your eyes off it for a moment.

Coca-Cola Chocolate Flavor Rage

I can understand if you're not familiar with this one, I don't think it ever made it past its test market of Midwestern towns with a population of <1000 .="" actually="" any="" are="" br="" denizens="" failures="" hilarious="" majorly="" matter.="" on="" out="" people="" prairie="" proverbial="" report="" tend="" test="" the="" they="" things="" to="" unlikely="" where="" who="">
"No, I'm serious, it was chocolate flavoring, and you put it in your Coke! I saw it with my own eyes!"
"Sure you did Ed, suuuuuure you did."
" I'm tellin' the truth! Rip to rage!! Rip to rage!!"

Sac Sac Orange

I don't know which is better, the name Sac Sac, or the illustration of the orange totally blowing the aforementioned all over the can. I was a little afraid to open this because it came to me from Japan, and we all know about bukkake. Maybe orange juice is the newest permutation in ejaculation fetishry. God knows I'm not in on that particular grapevine.

All in all, the drink turned out not to be that scary, although after the Day Babies, I really don't want anything suspended in my beverages, natural components of the fruit or not.

Bubble Gum Soda

The Hubba Bubba soda, of course, is from the 80's, and can therefore be excused as another wacky relic of a coke-damaged decade. Although I do think the diet option was a nice touch, if you're concerned about your figure, but just can't resist the gum-flavored refreshment of Hubba Bubba.

No, what worries me is the Shasta, which I picked up just this year, albeit at a Pamida, something else I thought disappeared in the 80's.
Shasta has appeared with this drink to fill a need which does not exist. Two, actually. The first, for pop that tastes exactly like bubble gum, which we've been over, and the second, tiny little cans. Why? Who do you know out there that simply cannot handle a full 16oz of pop? I'm seeing 7up and Coke doing this now too, and it worries me. Have they calculated the exaaaact amount of bubble gum soda modern man can handle before suffering dire consequences? What exactly is in this little can of horrors??
These are the things that worry me late at night. But in summary: bubble gum has no business coming in liquid form, and in this I also include fluoride flavors that you get at the dentist's. Everyone asked for the bubble gum one time, and then spent the next 20 minutes sorely regretting it. Gah.

About Beverages

Ah, beverages.

I LOVE beverages. They may be the one thing in my pointless meandering little existence that frankly makes it all worthwhile. Some people create things of great beauty and inspiration, some find themselves in helping others, I really really like Diet Dr. Pepper.