This is going to be the first time I try to formally review food or drink. I don't leave Yelp reviews or stupid shit like that, because I'm a grown up who realizes the one meal I get out of the hundreds prepared each day and thousands upon thousands each month by a person who probably isn't planning on having a career in a culinary preparation doesn't really deserve high praise or condemning hate. My usual method of "reviewing" food or drinks is by grunting and making noises that lie somewhere between dying from pain and sexual euphoria.
So am I even qualified in any way to talk about drinks or do I have any experience understanding what makes drinks good? Hell no. But let me drop my beverage bona fides for you so you know who you're dealing with, and why I do command authority when I talk about pop.
• Has drunk around 15 different flavors of Mt. Dew and can name them all in under a minute.
• Certified Mixologist, having created the delicious "Glowworm" and "Satan's Libations" through cafeteria drink combinations at MSU, as well as having created the outright abomination "Cascade."
• Could single-handedly keep the vending machine business model going with how much money I feed the machine.
• Still have Snapple Element bottles in my bedroom in Illinois.
• Easily goes through multiple 2 liter bottles of pop or sports drinks per week.
• Citrus soda connoisseur.
Look, I've guzzled down more questionable liquids than a porn star after wrapping up a shoot with a water break from the tap on set in Flint, Michigan.
So, there you have it. The DrinkKing and your gateway to learning that Japan has just as unhealthy and unusual soft drinks as America.
As mentioned above, I'm a citrus soda guy. Mountain Dew. Mello Yello. Sun Drop. Moon Mist. In my opinion, the Mt. Rushmore of citrus sodas. In fact, I would personally scale a sheer cliff and chisel these drinks into a rock face if it meant free pop for life. These guys are my absolute favorite ways to get that caffeine rush that gets my heart pumping arrhythmically.
But Japan doesn't have quite the same booming fat person market as America does, where you can throw high fructose corn syrup in a liquid full of artificial flavors and have a hit on your hands. Coke is readily available in Japan almost everywhere. And you can find Pepsi pretty easily as well, though it goes by the name Pepsi Strong. Dr. Pepper is probably the third most common American pop you can find. But Mountain Dew is not very easy to get, although it is in a small percentage of the vending machines that are somewhat nearby.
Trust me when I say that in my lead up before coming to Japan I did some research on what kind of drinks they had. And what I found was that after dark colas, like Coke, Pepsi, and Mets (a Japanese brand that yes, in addition to sharing the name, also uses the exact some font style as the New York baseball Mets), one of the next most popular soft drinks was Melon soda.
Now, I don't know what constitutes a citrus fruit (add that to the long list of things), but melon seems like a citrus fruit to me, so I figured these were going to be my fix if I couldn't find any other familiar drinks.
II. Melons In Japanese Culture
Fruits are be a big deal in Japan. In fact, a lot of students have said that a fruit is their favorite food, and I'm pretty sure I've never met a single person in America who picked a fruit as their favorite food. In Japan, fruits are very often given as gifts to superiors or to someone who has invited you to their home. But the melon is one of the fruits Japanese people get most hyped for, and peak melon season is typically from late Spring-through Summer. The expensive, high-end melons can sell for upwards of 10,000 Yen, or nearly $100.
I had heard about this, but didn't quite believe melons were that big of a deal until I walked into a grocery store behind a Japanese couple towards the end of May. There was a new melon stand set up right in the front of the store, and they both audibly gasped and began to paw through the melons.
If the melon as a fruit is akin to a religious experience, then drinking melon soda might as well be sacrament. And I treat every melon soda I drink as just that. A beyond holy taste of the unknowable. A brief gustatory perception of the divine on my tongue.
But I'll be honest, my first two times trying a melon soda, I wasn't too impressed. I picked up one from a supermarket the day I was moving in to my apartment, and had a second one was during my first trip to the local mall while I was eating some donuts from a place called...Mister Donut (I make incredibly healthy choices as you can see).
I was ready to give up on the melon soda dream. It just didn't make me want to literally drown my throat and lungs the way that cracking open a cold citrus soda does. And with Coke always available, I just figured that would be the most satisfying option for my caffeine addiction.
But then, the melon soda I got with my KFC about a month after I moved here seemed to hit the right notes. And then I finally got the courage and Japanese reading ability to confirm that this one green can that caught my eye in a vending machine was, in fact, a melon soda. And it delivered. So much so, that I wanted to pit the big melon soda brands against one another in a taste test/review.
So here we go.
III. The Challengers
Fanta Melon Soda
I decided to start with the Fanta, and I was actively rooting against it because it was American. Where's the fun in having the best weird Japanese drinks be an American one, right?
First off, the smell is pleasant. Not too strong. More fruity than sweet, and it's probably the one of the three that most smells like a typical pop smell. That syrupy and carbonated smell.
The color is the most natural of the three as well, being a darker, duller green. It's not overly carbonated. It may have the least noticeable melon flavor of the three, however. So if you're looking to really taste a lot of melon, this might not be the top choice. I've actually never drunk any other Fanta drinks (Orange Crush or Orange Slice being my orange pop of choice as a kid), despite many flavors being available in America.
Suntory Melon Pop
Next up, the Suntory Melon Pop. Now that's the kind of color you're looking for in a pop! A neon green that looks more like the super ooze from TMNT 2 than anything that exists in real life. It definitely smelled a lot sweeter than the Fanta. Very candy-like. Its taste was a little more vitamin-y(?) than the Fanta as well. Almost has that energy drink after taste. Again, the melon isn't super strong here. Then again, do I even know what melon tastes like? It may have a bit more of that melon musk in its flavoring than the Fanta soda though, which could possibly turn some people off.
Gabunomi Melon Cream Soda
Now for a special treat. This isn't a pure melon soda like the last two. This is a melon cream soda. It's the cream soda to root beer of the melon kingdom.
Its color immediately sets it apart, being a milky, pale green. I know what some of the dirtier minds are thinking.... It does kind of look like it has that thickness to it. It has the strongest smell as well. Kind of like old school bubble gum. Like a freshly unwrapped piece of Bazooka Joe bubble gum that half of the stupid comic wrapper still gets stuck on, and you decide just to eat it anyway with Joe and his girl on it. Its flavor is a bit bubble-gummy too. It's the smoothest of the three despite also being carbonated. It is also, unsurprisingly, a thicker and weightier and drink. It tastes like drinking still cool, melted ice cream.
Its taste will take you back to those long ago summer days. Playing baseball with your friends and going to get ice cream in a plastic baseball cap bowl after your game at Custard Cup, hoping you get the bowl of your favorite MLB team. Making a mess and staining your baseball pants when the ice cream starts to melt, get runny, and drip down over the sides, because you're too busy arguing about who will be the first to hit a home run.
Bonus: Mets Melon Soda
This drink isn't pictured, because at the time I bought these drinks, I had never seen this one before. I saw it for the first time probably some time in September. Having tried a Mets Cola, which is a Coke/Pepsi equivalent, and not really liking it, I was skeptical about a melon soda from the Mets brand, but had to try it anyway.
It was by far the worst melon soda I've tried. Too carbonated. Too bitter. Not sweet or syrupy enough. Like a club soda with the legally required minimum to dub it a "melon" soda. Full discretion, I'm not a fan of pops that are the more fizzy/tonic type drinks. So maybe this one is for those people, but it wasn't for me.
IV. Conclusion
I don't want to rank these, but I really don't think I wrote enough interesting things in the reviews to justify just leaving it at that. The Gabunomi is probably my favorite since it's just a bit different and unique in being somewhere between melted dessert and soda pop. I would probably choose Fanta as my favorite between the two melon sodas after comparing them in this taste test, despite wanting Suntory Melon Pop to be better, because where's the exotic-ness and excitement to drinking some Fanta flavor? I'm actually gonna say that the Gabunomi, which I normally drink straight from the can or from a 2 liter, tasted even better poured into and drank from a glass. Is there possibly a scientific reason behind this? Maybe, but not one I'm smart enough to know about or even make something up about.
I think it's also important to let you know that due to my life rule that requires me to finish any drink smaller than 1 liter in one sitting, I had to finish off all 3 of the melon drinks so they wouldn't get stale. I mean, that's just being smart and practical though.
Special Bonus 2: A music video for the song "Melon Soda" by Japanese band Tricot. I'm not a fan of how much melon soda it would seem they dumped out.
Well, that's all for the first review of Japanese drinks. I wasn't sure If I'd find enough interesting drinks to ever do a second one, but I'm pretty into some carbonated vitamin drinks these days, and I've found a few special holiday themed Pepsis. So I'm sure I'll get around to another one at some point.
So stay tuned as I continue to expand my palette and shorten my life span.
