Faygo Pop of the Week

MOON MIST



Vaguely Mountain Dew-like, Moon Mist is what you buy at the convenience store when you only have a buck and it's Thursday night in summer and you're out with your friends (and they're over in the other aisle buying sunflower seeds and Slim Jims) and you want something to drink that has caffeine and might mix well with vodka, so you grab a 20 oz of Moon Mist and then everybody pays and you drive out to the bonfire going on at Andy's house.


That's Moon Mist.

Otherwise, you drink it in your basement while you play video games and watch 80s movies on TV all day because the thought of going outside in the 90 degree heat is too much for your summer lazy psyche to handle.

Moon Mist is radioactive yellow-green.


But it also comes, inexplicably in Red and Blue.



There's also the mysteriously vanished Morning Mist, which I assume was part of the Mist extended family along with Mists Red and Blue, but I can't seem to find any info on the web about Morning Mist other than the name. Who knows what happened to it or why... It's a MIST-ERY!

But there's always original flavor Moon Mist (in diet too) for all your summer basement video game playing needs.

With a real kick!

Faygo Pop of the Week

In honor of the amazing Ivan!

This week's Faygo flavor is...

ORANGE!!!



Orange pop was my childhood. Orange pop, Seven-Up and/or Sprite, Redpop, Root Beer, Cream Soda -- these were the only flavors of pop I could have as a kid because they didn't have caffeine in them and were therefore deemed "safe" by the parents. Seven-Up was pretty bland; Sprite was slightly better but a little too sour; Root Beer and Cream Soda were good with ice cream but that was a special treat kinda thing, not an everyday kinda thing. That left Orange and Redpop, and while both were suitably delicious, I was always more of an "Orange" girl than a "Red" girl. Red was a pretty good color in general and things that tasted "red" could be counted on to taste pretty good.

But I was a fanatic about orange. When other little girls were naming pink or purple or red as their favorite color, I was naming orange. I had orange backpacks, orange scrunchies, orange t-shirts and shorts. And when it was summer and I wanted something to drink with my peanut butter and jelly sandwich -- I wanted Orange pop.

There are many choices of orange soda out there (including the ever-famous Orange Crush), but when you are growing up in suburban Detroit in the 80s and early 90s, there's really only ONE kind of orange soda: FAYGO.

Faygo Orange has been a staple of my grandmother's kitchen since forever. On summer vacation, where we would spend all day at grandma's swimming in the pool and playing "let's pretend" games in the woods around her house, it was always Faygo Orange that we would come back to when our mouths were thirsty and craving a sugary carbonated kick.

Faygo Orange Pop began life in 1935. It wasn't the first orange soda, but it was the right flavor for a nation and a city (Detroit) in the midst of a harrowing, depressing Depression. What better flavor is there than orange to dazzle and delight and pick up one's spirits? Orange is zany, fun, off-beat, childlike. Is there any wonder the first network for kids, Nickelodeon, took orange as their signature color? Orange is the color of childhood, the color of letting loose and watching your cares drift away on the tops of soda pop bubbles.

We're firmly in the grip of summer now. July is right around the corner. Kids are off riding their bikes into a summer vacation that is in full bloom and seems endless. What better time to enjoy a Faygo Orange Pop (or in my case, Diet Orange, heh). It's like a drink made of summer.

Faygo Pop of the Week

Well, Memorial Day has come and gone and that means it is now officially Summer.

So it's time for a truly Summer Pop as the Faygo Pop of the Week. And what could possibly be more summertime than...



Root Beer!!!!

A Faygo flavor since 1910, Faygo Root Beer is the classic summer drink. In fact, Bon Appetit Magazine ranked Faygo's Old Fashioned Root Beer their number one best-tasting root beer.

I myself enjoy it in diet:



Also, the Faygo Kid is badass. Dude gets shot six times in this commercial and he still slaps Black Bart around. A classic Faygo root beer ad:

Faygo Pop of the Week

RED POP! A classic.


One of the original Faygo flavors, Red Pop started life in 1907 as a strawberry soda called, appropriately enough, Strawberry Soda. In the '60s the name was officially changed to "Red Pop" and sold in cans. Red Pop is available in regular or sugar free (if, like Alex Karras, you're trying to slim down).

Faygo also offers Original Red Pop made with real cane sugar (in bottles) for real retro enthusiasts.



For more retro Faygo commercials, go HERE.

Odds and Sods

Old school cool: Retro Candy Boxes! Mmmmmmmmmm! I really want to try the C. Howard Violet Gum because, well, it's violet gum! What the hell is that?!

Question of the Day: Candy cigarettes -- yea or nay?
(answer will be at the bottom)

Stone cold fox: Betty Draper! Mad Men season 3 starts August 16th!!!!!!!

I think I'm going to blog the third season -- recaps/reviews, that sort of thing.

I might never leave the house again: Beatles Rock Band comes out 09-09-09!!!!!

Speaking of candy..... : A friend you can eat! Mmmmmmm..... Ja.

Thing that annoys me: Salute Your Shorts is still not out on dvd

Other Thing that annoys me: The new TCM prime time opening
For some reason they changed the old intro to this new lame-o version. The twinkly music is annoying, the cgi is poorly done, and it's just basically stupid. Why is there a movie being projected onto a huge billboard in a dense urban metropolis??? Won't the huge skyscrapers make it hard to see??? Who wants to watch a movie on a roof??? What does any of this have to do with old movies??? What was so wrong with the old opening???

My new favorite books: Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin! "Winter is coming..." (I'm on the second book of the series, but the first one -- Game of Thrones -- blew my mind)

And now, finally, the answer to the Question of the Day:

Yea.

(With candy cigarettes you get all the benefits of cigarettes (i.e.: you get to look cool with a white stick dangling out of your mouth; you get to have something to occupy your hands and mouth that looks sophisticated and suitably retro; you can roll the pack up in the sleeve of your white t-shirt greaser-style; etc.) but with none of the cancerous side effects. The only drawback is that you can't blow cool smoke rings with candy cigs. Smoke rings are cool. But, on the plus side, they taste like candy and not like an ash tray.)

Faygo pop flavor of the week: 60/40

Garage Rock City: Woggle with me

There comes a time in every young punk's life where all he wants is some good basement music. The kind you put on in the middle of the afternoon, you've just woken up after being out all night drinking and riding around with friends till 3 a.m. and now it's time to play old Super Nintendo games and watch Tarantino movies on basic cable and eat sugar cereal for lunch at one o'clock. For these times, every young freak should choose the Woggles.

Has anyone ever studied the effect b-grade monster movies have had on Rock 'n Roll? I mean, this particular brand of low-budget schlock cinema practically invented the Cramps. Zombies, voodoo, radioactive mush monsters -- they're all the horrific grandfathers of garage punk, right?
Where would the American teenage summer vacation experience be without a cold basement on a sweltering afternoon, an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the tube, and chilled bottles of Faygo pop getting sucked down to the sounds of a band like the Woggles? If there ever were such a universe where this was not a stone cold reality, don't let me ever get warped into it through a black hole. I like my basements dank, the walls sweaty, the fluorescent lights on the fritz, and the rock loud and fuzzy.

Such is the sound of the Woggles on their album "Get Tough."