Old Coke?

Swine flu, drugs and cheap labor aren't all Mexico has to offer America. There's soda, too.

The mineral water was an afterthought: I drink a lot of club soda because it's cheaper than the high-dollar sparkling mineral waters and tastes as good. This Mexican version is indistinguishable from it except that it was $1.29 for this little bottle, and the Best Choice two-liters I get are 99 cents.



The apple soda, Sidral Mundet was nice. But that was kind of an afterthought, to, something I noticed and bought out of sheer curiosity.

No, what I was gunning for was the Coke.

When I was a kid, there was Coke and Pepsi, and one was great and the other sucked. Then one day, Coke decided it wanted to suck as hard as Pepsi, and they brought out this vile, cloying stuff called New Coke.

And everyone made gagging noises and ignored an ad campaign that claimed everyone actually likes New Coke better than real Coke.

So then Coke relents and brings back the old Coke. Except they don't. They bring back a slightly less objectionable bastard child of Coke, Coca Cola Classic.

For awhile, they even pretended they still wanted to make New Coke, and you'd find both on the shelf, the New Coke gradually becoming encased in dust.

People hoarded the last remaining stocks of actual Coca Cola, but they couldn't hold out forever. The stuff was consumed, and eventually the brainwashing campaign and lack of a legitimate option (because it's not like you could decide you liked Pepsi after all), people eventually went along with the Coca Cola Classic lie.

My theory is Coke couldn't quite get the flavor right with corn sweeteners, and this little bait and switch was meant to muddy the waters for a switch from something people wanted to something Coke could make way cheaper. I've heard stuff to this effect over the years, but I've never dug very deep into it.

Anyway, for whatever reason, Mexican Coke is still sweetened with cane sugar. I assume, corporate recipes and franchises being what they are, that this stuff is the original recipe.

I like it. It definitely doesn't taste like Coca Cola Classic, but it's been far, far too long for me to remember accurately if this is what Coke tasted like when I first had some. Plus, many years ago I switched to Diet Coke and Diet Dew, and after awhile on that stuff, any sugared soda feels a little to thick and syrupy. But if I was stuck with no diet option, I'd take this over Coke Classic or (vomit) Pepsi.

I mean Pepsi, the only justification for it is that you can't have good without its opposite, evil. And that's what Pepsi is: bottled evil.

I do give them bonus points on having an appropriate bottle. More or less. It's supposed to be a pint bottle, but being Mexico, they give you 355 ml. Which is only 12 ounces, so that's wrong. The sort of bullshit corporations can pull when you buy into nonsense like the metric system. But the shape is right, it's class and could be used as a weapon.

And this is a valid concern since I had to go to my old neighborhood to find a Mexican market selling this stuff. It's the sort of neighborhood where you wouldn't want to have to defend yourself with a plastic American Coke bottle...