Fanta Haunted Apple

 

Product circa: late Summer 2024, promoting the film Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice

I've been thoroughly enjoying the horrible reviews of this stuff that I've been seeing online, and so I was excited to find a bottle and waste my money on it.

Damn, I'm disappointed, because it's really not that bad.  Self-described as a spiced apple soda, the spice is clear on the nose, and the apple taste is somewhere between green apple and red apple.  The spice also makes itself known on the tongue, and it probably contains more than just cinnamon, but it's hard to tell what.  The flavors combine with a bitterness at the end that prevents this from being cloying.  Honestly, it's really not that bad.  I've tasted so many things that were worse.

Mountain Dew Game Fuel Tropical Smash

It was summer of 2017 that Pepsico released yet another Game Fuel variation called Tropical Smash. This product was part of a promotion with the release of the video game Forza Motorsport 7.

Once again, Dew has added zero-calorie sweetener to a drink that already has almost 200 calories. I'm not sure how many dozens of calories are saved by adding Ace-K and sucralose, but I must be the only one who thinks that the taste of the product suffers because of it?

Anyway, the onset of Tropical Smash has a similar feel to the iconic smooth sweetness that normal Dew has, with little in the way of acidic bite to balance it. As the name suggests, bright tropical punch flavors dominate the palate; although official documentation says mango and pineapple, I get mango and banana. Regardless, it's quite tasty. Unfortunately it's punctuated with the sharp pinch of zero-calorie sweetener.  And minutes after drinking, the aftertaste is probably the worst I've ever experienced.

The 0-cal sweetener always takes these products' ratings down by 1 NOM, but this is the best one I've ever had, so welcome your first 3-NOM product with 0-cal sweetener!

Mountain Dew Game Fuel Tropical Smash:- Great

Original Mountain Dew(for comparison):- Great