Today, when at the grocery store, I saw a display of 16 ounce bottles of Pepsi. They were being sold individually, so I went up closer to check them out. These were not regular bottles of Pepsi, though. Oh, no, this was Pepsi Jazz, and diet Pepsi Jazz at that.

I guess they thought they had to “jazz up” the taste of Pepsi. So, I bought a bottle of Diet Pepsi Jazz Black Cherry French Vanilla, Diet Pepsi Jazz Strawberries & Cream and Diet Pepsi Jazz Caramel Creme.

The caramel cream was my least favorite, as it didn’t have a strong taste of caramel or cream. The black cherry French vanilla was too busy for me, but the strawberries and cream was really good. There was a slight taste of strawberry without overpowering the taste of Pepsi.

I found out there are many, many, MANY other flavors of regular and diet Pepsi. There is: Pepsi Lime, Diet Pepsi Lime, Pepsi Twist
Diet Pepsi Twist, Wild Cherry Pepsi, Pepsi Vanilla, Diet Pepsi Vanilla and Pepsi One.

When I was a kid, we had Coke, Pepsi and RC Cola. If you wanted diet soda, you had Tab or Fresca. That was it. Then along came Diet Rite Cola. Life was simple. You wanted a drink, you drank a little soda and they all seemingly tasted the same. Then the cola wars started.

If you were sick, you were given ginger ale. Plain old ginger ale. Have you shopped for it lately? Raspberry flavored, grape flavored, orange flavored and cranberry flavored ginger ale.

Why do we have to continually flavor things? Wasn’t life simpler when things were just, well, plain?