Tropicana Juice Sparklers

Tropicana Juice Sparklers were juice blends that also contained carbonated water to make them fizzy. My favorite was a blend of orange and passionfruit juices called Tropical Orange. I also liked the Wild Berries. I never noticed any other flavors, but this article says that there were two more: cranberry and grapefruit.

These drinks were sold in multi-packs of four 10-ounce glass bottles as well as in larger bottles. Check out this photo or this video to see if you remember them.

Tropicana Juice Sparklers were manufactured back in the early '90s. I used to buy them all the time until they went away.

Citra

I can't believe I'm doing another post about a soft drink so soon after the last one.

Well, maybe I can. After all, I did drink a lot of them in the past.

I have a feeling most people haven't heard of Citra, but it existed. Here's a picture of a can of Citra.

I never actually had a can of Citra. I only had it from a 2-liter bottle. Citra was a grapefruit-flavored carbonated drink that was around in the 1990s. The fact that I liked it is strange, because I don't like grapefruit, and I never liked any of the other grapefruit soft drinks I tried before this product came along.

Of course, it's gone now. I've heard that Fanta Citrus is identical to it, but I really don't know. Without having tried it or even seen it anywhere, I suspect that something is different--probably the sweetener.

Apple Slice

There used to be several flavors of Slice soft drinks. They all contained real fruit juice. It wasn't much--only 10 percent--but it was more than any other fizzy soft drinks had. I liked the mandarin orange, but my favorite flavor was apple. That's probably why it didn't last long.

Apple Slice was available briefly in the 1980s (late '80s, if I remember correctly). It was discontinued before the rest of the product line went away. It might have even been the first to go.

I haven't tried any other apple-flavored carbonated drinks. There are apparently a few still around, but I haven't seen them. If I ever do, I'll probably have to give them a try. Then again, maybe not. It just wouldn't be the same.

Dewey Stevens Wine Coolers

Am I the only one who remembers Dewey Stevens wine coolers?

These were around back when Seagrams and Bartles & Jaymes still made wine coolers, as opposed to the flavored malt beverages they mostly make now. Even though people still refer to them as "wine coolers," most of the ones made today don't contain wine.

Anyway, Dewey Stevens wine coolers were good. I'm pretty sure that the flavor was passionfruit, but I can't find any proof of that. In fact, I can't find much information about them at all.

Made by Anheuser-Busch, these coolers were billed as a lighter alternative to traditional wine coolers, and they had 1/3 fewer calories. The commercial even depicted women working out at the gym.

I thought Dewey Stevens wine coolers were great. They were sweet, but not overly so--very refreshing. As I recall, they weren't around long.