Review: Jones Soda Creepy Cranberry Soda (2006)
Sep 28th, 2006 by Steve
The 2nd bottled flavor found in the Jones Soda Halloween 2006 collection is Creepy Cranberry.

When I first saw this flavor, I immediately thought of the Cranberry Soda that was part of the 2005 National Holiday Pack. That beverage was sweetened with sucralose and did not taste very good.
Here's what we wrote at the time we reviewed that original Cranberry flavor:
The color was a non-offensive dark red. The scent was fresh and berry-like. Even the cover art was redemptive with two illuminated reindeer standing there in the dark. Could it really be as bad as the others?
Jones Cranberry Soda
(National Holiday Pack 2005)The predominant theme was that it tasted like cough syrup, specifically Robitussin. Amy didn't have good memories of that as a kid. She told me that she often would chase her cough medicine with a Hershey's Kiss to cover up the bad aftertaste. So needless to say, this flavor of Jones Soda was not going to be a winner with her.
Shortly after testing the holiday version of Cranberry we mixed all the flavors together and tried that. Not a good idea.
Thankfully, the Halloween version of this flavor, here called "Creepy Cranberry", was nothing like our previous experience. It helped that this was sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.
The scent was very berry-like, but you could tell there was a whiff of fakeness there. And then we finally drank… and didn't mind it that much.
We expected something pretty bad, but actually this was a rather tame drink. Perhaps too tame. Amy mentioned that it really lacked the tartness one would associate with a cranberry-flavored beverage. Overall, it was just bland tasting.
This drink was not as good as the previously sampled bottle of Lemon Drop Dead Soda. When stacked up against the canned flavors, it was better than Spider Cider and Candy Corn, but not even close to the goodness found in Berried Alive and Gruesome Grape.
As I mentioned in my Lemon Drop Dead review, it would seem that the bottled Halloween beverages are destined to be used as alcoholic mixers. The blandness, but unique flavor of Creepy Cranberry seems to support that theory.
Not great, but won't make you vomit.
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