Royal Cornwall Agricultural Show, circa 1994
This highlight of the Cornish social calendar was understandably chosen for the local giveaway launch of LiptonIce, a beverage fondly remembered by no-one. Cold, fizzy tea in a can - call me a philistine if you will, but a failed Soda Stream experiment does not a viable retail product make. But then it was New and Exciting and (more importantly) Free. The same compulsion that drives anyone who has ever tried to carbonate the should-be-uncarbonatable (see milk in last week's QOTW) seemed to grip us all. The same reasoning too: "That sounds disgusting, but it might well be really nice. And it's free, you say? And I don't have to dig the Soda Stream out from behind that machine that turns radishes into malformed waterlilies and empty the spiders out in order to make it? LiptonIce me up, baby!"

However, sometimes knee-jerk reactions can be correct. It tasted like running your tongue under the rim of your gran's teapot, then hurriedly squeezing a Jif lemon onto your tongue to take the taste away. Or maybe cold stewed tea made with Junior Disprin and crushed-up lemon-flavoured calcium tablets.

The stall where they were giving it away was inside the showground and was rammed with yokels and tourists alike claiming their free can of ick (before taking one sip and throwing the rest away, of course). This meant the studenty types running the stall neither knew nor cared if people came back for another can - they just thrust cans into the seething sea of grasping hands.

Meanwhile, an enterprising young moglin came up with a plan....

Fill a 50 litre rucksack with free cans, procured over a hour long period. Collect some of the discarded crates from behind the stall to stack them in. Borrow appalling turquoise baseball cap from cousin (the sort of hat nobody but him would wear unless they were being made to as part of a demeaning temp job). Sell cans for 40p each to the huge queue waiting to get in to the showground. Make a speedy getaway before too many people notice they have paid for something that not only tastes rancid but that they could also have got for free. Go home and laugh and drink proper tea whilst laughing some more and counting earnings. And laughing.

I didn't get rich quick, but I did get enough to buy Sonic and Knuckles. And at the end of the day, that's all that matters.
(moglin shall make you writhe in her cage of torment on, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 10:51, 2 replies)

See also...
"Mir - the taste of Glasnost"

A foul-tasting canned drink from Russia that was launched in a blaze of glory.

Peppermint-flavoured. Fizzy. Like drinking extra-strong mints. Got a whole pile to give away in a town centre, still had crates YEARS later.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 11:17, closed)

You went home and drank proper tea?
You bastard, everyone knows that proper tea is theft!

Sorry

*clicks though*
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 13:16, closed)