Phosphoric Acid and Plastic Utensils: An Experiment

The No Free Refills Science Division has been working on some experiments you can do with simple, everyday objects and soda. You’ll be surprised at the results. To try this experiment, which shows the effects of phosphoric acid on plastic utensils, watch the youtube video below.

Diet Mtn Dew Ultra Violet

On August 3rd, in the year twenty-oh-nine, Mtn Dew (the carbonated beverage so XTREME that it refuses to spell out its name in full) launched the new drink Diet Mtn Dew Ultra Violet at a VIP “release party.” Unfortunately, we at No Free Refill were not officially invited, so a few days later we went to our local (Asian) grocery and purchased the drink with, you know, real money. It was still so new, though, that the store didn’t even have it in its system, and the cashier had to ask us how much it cost. AND BOY DID WE TELL HIM (“I don’t know, like $1.50?”)

I would also like to mention right now that the soda is only available for the next 12 weeks. So by the time you’re done reading this review, it could be gone!

Tru Blood is Real

I enjoy the HBO series True Blood. It’s about vampires, and southerners, and it’s got Rogue from X-Men in it.  The main vampire is kind of a badass, and I like to refer to him as “Twilight.”

NOTE: THIS POSTING IS NOT ABOUT THE LAST FOUR EPISODES OF TRUE BLOOD, BECAUSE I HAVE NOT SEEN THEM YET! DO NOT SPOIL THESE EPISODES FOR ME OR I WILL COME TO YOUR HOUSE AND KILL YOU DEAD, LIKE BRUCE WILLIS IN THE SIXTH SENSE!

*SPOILER WARNING* Bruce Willis is a ghost the whole time in that movie. That’s why the kid can see him, because the kid sees dead people. *END SPOILER*

Sprite Green

This is not even what the bottle looked like. The actual bottle was 12 oz and had dimples on top. The lies continue.

Sprite Green is not a bad soft drink, considering it seems to be sweetened solely by lies.

Sprite Green is Sprite’s new no-High Fructose Corn Syrup drink. Rather than HFCS, it contains sugar and stevia, which is a natural sugar substitute.

Let’s look at the lies, shall we? Go ahead, boys, bring ‘em in! (Bags and bags filled with children’s letters to Santa Claus are brought into the court room. Each letter represents a lie. Because Santa does not exist, and neither do children.)

Lie #1: Sprite Green is Green (the color). It is not green. The bottle is green, but the drink itself, like all Sprite, is clear. Why call a clear drink “green?” Because this drink is made by liars. The men who created this drink live in a world in which the very sky itself hums with the pulsating mendacity of the damned. Glowing tendrils of lies arc from brain to brain, connecting all of the employees into one giant mass of lies. The ingredients even list “Ascorbic acid (to protect color)” Yes, it says on the label that ascorbic acid is there to protect color. What color? It’s clear, you lying bastards!

Soda Pops

Let’s be honest. Pop is great. Popsicles are great. The two items are so close in name, and yet so far in many other ways. Ever tried to freeze a can of Coke? Sure you have. Admit it. Well, there’s a problem.

Carbonation.

Coca-Cola Throwback

Coming soon. Look for it in your local store in 4 weeks.

-Curtis Retherford

Sierra Mist: Ruby Splash – Review

First things first: this amazing soda has a variant of the new Sierra Mist packaging. This means that as soon as you glance at the bottle, you will feel like you’ve stumbled into a season 2 episode of the X-Files, before it got all convoluted and broken. You’ll look around and you’ll see shafts of light cutting through the canopy, and suddenly you’ll be rustling through the forests of the Pacific Northwest, seeking some legendary bright pink Sasquatch beast who guards the ancient grapefruit bushels of legend. Well guess what? You’ve just found him. And the Cigarette Smoking Man? He’s freaking pissed. So high-five that fluke-man-guy, and tell him to crack open a bag of Sun Chips, because this metaphor is just getting started. Or, well, it’s halfway done, I guess. Welcome to Sierra Mist: Ruby Splash.

Diet Pepsi Wild Cherry

Pros: It’s diet soda.

Cons: It’s diet soda.

My girlfriend has started drinking Diet Cherry Pepsi. Excuse me, she has been drinking “Diet Pepsi Wild Cherry.” For some reason, Pepsi insists on adding certain adjectives AFTER the noun, as if we were speaking Spanish. Shit de bull. In fact, there should actually be a colon after Diet Pepsi. It’s the only way to make the “Wild Cherry” suffix make sense. Diet Pepsi: Wild Cherry. (Not be confused with Diet Pepsi: Special Victims Unit.)

So my girlfriend has been drinking Diet Pepsi Wild Cherry. I’m not sure when exactly my girlfriend started drinking DPWC, but I’ve noticed more and more empty 2-liter bottles in our recycling. So it’s clearly a problem.

Red Bull Cola – Live Taste Test

[The following is the transcript of a recording Adam Dorsey made while conducting a live taste test of the new Red Bull Cola drink]

This is Adam Dorsey. It’s Friday night. August the 7th, 2009. I had to go to three stores before finding a can. I’m home now and popping it open as we speak. Review to follow.

[Can opening and drinking can be heard on the tape]

Tastes like poison. Tastes like they forgot to make a cola, found themselves with a warehouse full of empty cans, and instead of finding some sort of cola-like drink to fill the cans with, they just ground up half of the cans, mixed up the ground aluminum with blood, and put it into the remaining cans as cola. Or maybe that blood taste is my body trying to put itself out of its misery.

The New Pepsi Logo

You will never be able to un-see this.

Drawn by Curtis, idea by Ben Whitehouse.

Also, from elsewhere on the net:

Some guy on Reddit had a PDF of the ridiculous marketing info some advertising company produced about Pepsi’s logo, pre-roll out. It is well worth downloading the PDF.

This image has bounced around the net so much that I have no idea where it originated. It’s not technically true, and the full, much more interesting story, is on the blog Brand New.

Slate, and many others, claim the new Pepsi logo looks like Obama’s logo. I think both logos happen to be circles.

And, for a bit on the history of various logos, Terry O’Reilly has a great episode of The Age of Persuasion all about Leaving Your Mark.

-Curtis Retherford