43 New-to-Me ... #13 Big Red Soda

The story of today's layout goes back to 2011, when I was preparing for my 40 Things During My 40th Year project. I had started compiling my list of potential new-to-me items and learned about Big Red Soda on a Food Network show. Actually, they'd covered the name on the label and given it a vague, generic name, but I was able to suss out what the product actually was with a quick Google search. I was intrigued. 

During the course of my 40 Things project, I kept hoping to run across Big Red somewhere so I could try it. It didn't happen. It was one of a handful of new-to-me activities, locations, and foods that remained on my to-do list after the project ended. Therefore, when it was time to start 43 New-to-Me, Big Red jumped to the top of my list. While I hadn't gone out of my way to find it in 2012, I was going to do whatever it took to find it in 2015.

I used the website's FIND feature and discovered that there were actually a lot of stores in my area that carried Big Red.... and 99% of them were either somewhat-sketchy or extremely-sketchy liquor stores. The next day while Trevor was at school, Steve took an early lunch to go with me to the least-sketchy of the liquor stores. My hope had been that by going to a liquor store at 10:00 am on a weekday, we'd have the place to ourselves. Sadly, not so. But we were the only ones in the soda section of the liquor store! We went to 3 places on the list and not a single one had Big Red. It was extremely disappointing, though all was not lost, as the gas station mini mart we visited is where I found the Sunkist Pineapple.   

A week or so later, I found a dusty 12-pack of Big Red soda, alone on a shelf. I was giddy. My teaching coworkers were coming over just days later, so we'd try Big Red together then. I poured it from the can (wow- it's REALLY red) into dainty teacups.

So how was it? Delicious! Well, I thought so anyway. It was fruity and sweet and creamy and yum. It smelled like bubblegum, but tasted like a mix of fruit punch and cream soda. It was almost sickly sweet, which is not a bad thing in my world. As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as too sweet. Some of my friends disagreed. No problem- more for me!