Salt water cheese flavoured sparkling water

Post 00027 | December 8th

Today on Tokimemo we are going into food reviews, or rather beverage reviews. I recently found a online dagashi store located here in Denmark. It must have been opened some time ago, as the clearance section was absolutely packed with goodies. There was no way I was going to let that chance pass me by, so I emptied my wallet in their direction. It was in this section I found this cute Squirtle can.

I just saw it was almost 50% off. I didn't notice the cheese wedges on the can. I didn't read "salt water cheese sparkling water" on the top of the can. I still haven't fully recovered from reading that. Normally you don't add salt to soft drinks, and carbonating dairy is the kind of thing that will make your mother hide the soda stream.

Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound (although that technically would annul the 50% off part). The weirdness didn't end at at the label. The pull tab worked opposite as you would expect, requiring you to yoink the entire thing off.

You would think this can was made for a Dragon Quest themed soda instead.

As for the taste: Nothing to write home about. Some sugar to mask the carbonation, and while it didn't exactly taste salty, it didn't have the refreshing quality you usually connote with soft drinks. I don't know what kind of cheese I was supposed to be tasting but the cheese seemed like a mouthfeel rather than a flavour. That said, the drink did expire a month ago, so maybe the cheese flavour has faded?

Reading the list of ingredients doesn't help much either: Water, fructose sirup, carbon dioxide, citric acid, salt, potassium sorbate, aroma. This is pretty much the most basic soda recipe with some added salt. What's more interesting is the "For sale in China only". While I'm not surprised there wasn't a market for Pokémon theme fizzy salt water in China, I am a bit perplexed as to how it ended up for clearance in Scandinavia. The can does have all its required import stickers, so I assume it's alright. However, while it was clearly labeled, I'm not entirely sure the shop was allowed to sell me this can as it was over three weeks past its last sell date at the time of purchase. I appreciate that they cut down on food waste though.

In conclusion: ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯