Coca-Cola Move

Product circa: 2023

One of the weird LTOs that Coke offered in the 2023 era, all of which had concept-y names that had no bearing on the product itself.

This tastes like a fruitier Coke, and I can detect coconut, but no pineapple, as the internet had been saying.  The Zero Sugar version is a damn good approximation of the full sugar.

Coke keeps being restrained with the amount of additional flavoring that they add to the variations, while Pepsi continued to be bold with theirs.  And that's why Pepsi flavored colas are always better.

Gatorade Mashups Cool Blue + Fruit Punch

 

Product circa: 2025

Note: This is a Presumptive Ephemeral Nom.

A cool idea.  This sounds delicious, right?  For whatever reason, it's not.  They don't marry at all.  I'd rather have each constituent product individually. 

Mountain Dew Fruit Quake

 

Product circa: 2022

These are post-hoc thoughts from memory.  Ostensibly a fruitcake-flavored Dew (I love fruitcake), instead this is really perhaps the best fruit punch soda I have ever had, with a heavy concentration on cherry.  Fantastic.  I hope they re-release it with a more welcoming and crowd-pleasing name/branding.

Gatorade Passionfruit

Product circa: 2023

Note: This is a Presumptive Ephemeral Nom.

A subtle but accurate passionfruit flavor, and a bit of sourness.  Very nice.  I'd love to have access to this regularly. 

Lay's Sweet & Spicy Honey

 

Product circa: 2024

I've eaten a few bags of these already.

There is no honey flavor in this whatsoever.  Instead, the honey is simulated with a combination of various fruity flavorings.  You will get a grape candy flavor, along with maybe peach.  There is also a heavy dose of savory here, like onion, mustard, soy sauce, and MSG in general.  These are also very spicy.  Not punishing like the "red hot" snacks, but a handful of these will have your throat burning in a great way that you won't expect.

One of the oddest snacks I've ever had that is still VERY enjoyable.

Froot Loops Icee

 

Product circa: 2024

I'll usually bypass even the most esoteric of slushy products, but I had to try this one out at Target.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have the signature bergamot flavor of Froot Loops at all, and instead it tastes precisely like a melted assortment of Skittles candies.

Lay's IHOP Rooty Tooty Fresh N' Fruity

 

Product circa: 2024

The taste of strawberry candy first, and it's a little tangy.  Remarkably close to something like a pie filling.  Buttery maple comes in next, like a cheap pancake syrup.  Bacon fat is an ingredient here, which is commendable, but it's hard to detect; it takes a few bites before your tongue gets used to the buttery fruit in order to notice a light smokiness.  

The first few chips are very off-putting, but I'm embarrassed to say that after you eat a few, these become pretty tolerable.  Definitely up there as one of the most bizarre chips I've ever eaten, up there with Lay's Cappuccino and Lay's Chicken and Waffle.

Coca-Cola Dreamworld

 

Products circa: 2022

My bottles haven't aged great, but to me this tastes like Coke with an added streak of fruitness.  I've seen a few online sources claim mango flavoring has been added, along with a few others.  Not bad.  But I really just wish that Coca-Cola would dispose of these artsy names and actually tell us what to expect from the product.

Starburst Fruity Slushies and Sweet Fiesta

 

Products circa: the 2010s

There's not much to say about these.  They are very tasty, but not drastically more remarkable than the original flavors.  Though I do tend to think that the Starburst variations are always better than the original flavors, I never met a Starburst I didn't like.

Coca-Cola Y-3000 and Ultimate

 

Coca-Cola Y3000 - God, the marketing copy is so exhausting.  We get it, this is what Coke from the Future would taste like.  AI Coke.  Yeah.  After tasting this myself, it was hard slogging through the Google search results to see what others actually thought of it.  Most opinions hew close toward "fruit candy".  The closest my own brain got was "rainbow sherbet" or even blue raspberry.  Regardless, "artificial fruit" is definitely the vibe here.  It's pretty tasty, but not tasty enough that I'd want to have permanent access to this.

Coca-Cola Ultimate - Made jointly with Riot Games, the marketing says that this is flavored like "+XP", which is short form for gaining character experience in a video game.  Fine.  This stuff is very subtle, and I actually went through several bottles and a 12-pack just to research it more heavily.  The internet opinions on this product are all over the place, and frustratingly so.  My take is that this has a generic fruity flavor which I can't pin down (but leans "green"), and is slightly sour.  And it's not lime.  So the closest I can peg here would be white grape or unripe mango (if you've ever tasted one).

Mountain Dew Baja Laguna Lemonade & Baja Point Break Punch

 

Products circa: Spring 2024

Laguna Lemonade: Tasty enough, but with a fake-tasting mango flavoring that pales in comparison to the Mountain Dew Mango Gem released a few years ago.

Point Break Punch: A fruit punch that's decidedly more "tropical" in flavor than the other million fruit punch Dews that have been made.  But something is off with the balance of the sweetness... either there's too much sugar, or not enough acidic bite.  But a nice change, overall.

Mountain Dew Maui Burst

 

Product circa: 2020 and onward, only at Dollar General stores

My hype for this one didn't help.  Supposedly a pineapple Dew, the fruit flavoring here is so subtle that is tastes straight up bland.  I'll be on the lookout for more to make sure it wasn't just the can I bought.

Mountain Dew Summer Freeze

 

Product circa: Summer 2023

Not the first time a "rocket pop"-flavored soda has been released.  Unfortunately this seems to have a quality about it that I can't help describe as a "deadness".  It's missing something to make it lively.

Mountain Dew Thrashed Apple

 

Product circa: 2021, only at Kroger supermarkets

A bright green apple flavor combines with Dew's citrus base to create a tart-yet-sweet mixture.

Mountain Dew Green Label

 

Product Circa: 2017

Released alongside White Label, which I don't think I ever tried.

I'm not a fan of green apple, but the application here is subtle.  Despite the zero-calorie sweetener added, this manages to taste refined, and surprisingly good.  No kiwi detected.

Mountain Dew Game Fuel Mystic Punch

 

Product circa: November 2023

A slightly sour fruit punch Dew to cross-branded with the video game Diablo IV.  Not a particularly special fruit punch flavor, but for whatever reason, it tastes really great.  One of the best Dews I've tasted in the last 5, or even 10 years.

Mountain Dew Holiday Brew & Merry Mash-Up

 

Products circa: holiday seasons 2017 and 2018-2020, respectively

Holiday Brew: Evidently this is just a mix of regular Dew and Code Red... so it's just a "diluted" Code Red?  It certain tastes like it.

Merry Mash-Up: I can detect cranberry in this, but otherwise it just tastes vaguely like a "red" Dew.  I'd love to see them take another try at a cranberry Dew!

Gatorade Flow Watermelon Mist

Product circa: summer 2018

Gatorade Flow has existed as an off-shoot of Gatorade for a few years now.  Supposedly Gatorade Flow products taste or finish "smoother" than the original drink.  Personally, I notice no difference.  With that said, some of the other Flow flavors have tasted just fine.

This stuff tastes exactly as you'd expect: liquefied watermelon candy.  I can't detect anything additional that would make it taste unique.  It's too sweet.  If they made it a bit more tart, it'd be a more refreshing and unique product.

Gatorade Flow Watermelon Mist: - Passable
Original Gatorade(Orange, for comparison):- Good

Mountain Dew Mango Heat

Product circa: Autumn 2016

More and more you'll find that food companies are adding spicy touches to products for which they're otherwise inappropriate.  I find this trend mostly boring, and I wasn't exactly excited when I cracked open this bottle.

This product was issued as yet another Mountain Dew Game Fuel, in recognition of the release of Titanfall 2.

Mango is much like its strawberry, watermelon, and banana counterparts: the flavor used in candy and beverages bears very little resemblance to how its natural version actually tastes.  With that said, I'm fine with how "fake mango" tastes.

Your sip will start with a very pleasing fruity flavor before you soon realize that, as this is a modern Mountain Dew variation, it uses 0-calorie sweetener along with sugar.  It takes a swallow to discern the spiciness that's added to the drink.  It's not unpleasant, but it's also not pleasant.  After a few sips I really start to enjoy the "fake mango" flavor(despite the sweeteners), which is the same as any other mango soft drink.  It's enjoyable stuff, and it would have been refreshing in the right circumstance, if it weren't spicy.

But so long as Pepsico keeps adding silly sweeteners to new products, they'll never garner more than 2 NOMS.


Mountain Dew Mango Heat:- Good
Original Mountain Dew(for comparison):- Great 

Watermelon Oreo

In what seems like a joke, Oreo has issued a Golden Oreo with watermelon-flavored creme.  They did this a few months ago and you can still find them as of this posting.  I respect Oreo's tinkering with fruit flavors, but this seems like another one of Oreo's self-referential satires.

Surely Oreo couldn't have attempted to reproduce the taste of natural, fresh watermelon in their creme, right?  No, they couldn't; the flavoring in this creme is the exact same that you might experience in watermelon-flavored bubble gum, Jello, Kool-Aid, or Jolly Ranchers.

How is it, then?  Horrible.  The tasty vanilla cookie is immediately obliterated once the creme inside hits the tongue.  I even like watermelon candy, but its execution here is misguided.  I would even dare say that if the flavor of the creme had been faint, the snack might be interesting.  But instead, they overload the creme with artificial flavoring, and it feels like someone just smacked your tongue with a hammer.

And lest you attempt to acknowledge this food as simply a novel or even comical experiment and dare to enjoy it for what it is and no more, you will soon experience, after the swallow, a horrible and bitter aftertaste that forces you to regret what you've done, even if you promised yourself that you would not.

This is the second food on this site to receive 0 NOMs.

Watermelon Oreo: 0 Noms - Unpleasant

Original Golden Oreo(for comparison):- Great