Pepsi Mont Blanc

To my recollection, Pepsi has come out with these odd flavors only 6 times. The first was cucumber, which I did not sample. That was followed by Pepsi White, Pepsi Shiso, Pepsi Adzuki, and most recently Pepsi Baobab. I don't include the Pepsi Strong Shot in this cavalcade of weirdness because it didn't taste different than the usual Pepsi. It was simply hyper-caffeinated and more carbonated.

In my opinion, Pepsi has been moving in a steadily better direction with it's limited edition flavor choices, and they've also been doing more beautiful label designs with each one of these. The Pepsi Mont Blanc label is lovely with a wintry motif that conveys the elegance of the dessert it is modeled after. Of course, it could simply be that Pepsi has made a flavor based on my favorite dessert and I'm strongly inclined to believe their synchronicity with me constitutes a "good choice."

I picked this up for 147 yen ($1.82) for a 490 ml. bottle at a Family Mart convenience store. I'm not sure why 10 ml. has been shaved off of the usual 500 ml. serving of these types of drinks, but there it is. It was just released today and should be around for a few months. Though it's unlikely to be on all of the "konbini" shelves for longer than the first month, it will show up at other shops after its initial release. Note that the Pepsi Baobab lingered in boxes at sad little discount shops up until sometime last month. I got the feeling it didn't sell particularly well though I did like it.

I had good hopes for this and when I unscrewed the cap and gave it a whiff, I was greeted with chestnut notes though they were fairly artificial smelling. The best way to describe the smell is like a cross between a cream soda and root beer. The flavor also carries a bit of a cream soda feel with a chestnut finish. I'm guessing there is vanilla in it and that's why cream soda keeps coming to mind, but there is also a bit of a brandy or liquor-type flavor going on. This would be intentional on the part of Pepsi because mont blanc desserts are chestnut paste which includes sugar and often brandy. 

This tastes nothing like Pepsi, and it is unique but fairly tasty. The first sip in particular tastes very good, but the finish feels a bit flat and earthy. I'm not sure what that is about, but it tends to fade a bit as you drink more. Still, I liked this, and while I wouldn't drink it everyday, it is a nice change of pace, especially if you want a sweet soft drink which you're having instead of a treat. Note that this has 42 calories per 100 ml. so drinking the entire bottle is 205 calories. You won't be saving yourself any calories by having this instead of dessert, but you will be having a novel experience.

Love Mode Ginger Zero

This soft drink has been around for awhile, but I've been too cheap to pay 147 yen for it. When it finally showed up in the local 99 yen shop, I took the plunge. This is one of those absurdly named and oddly designed items which is almost certainly going to be all potatoes and no meat, all style and no substance, and whatever else you want to add which conveys the idea that it looks exciting on the outside and is going to be boring on the inside.

I figure that any drink that is trying so hard to look exciting has to have little going for it. Beyond the bling-like design of the name on the front of the label, there is a sexually suggestive leather zipper on the side of the bottle which runs along the perforation on the plastic sleeve where you tear it and remove it. Also, pink ginger ale? Pink? For those who don't know, pink is generally seen as a color associated with sex in Japan. I think this is intentional design to try and make this drink look, well, sexier.

I didn't take a shot of the drink in a glass because you can see through the bottle. Suntory promotes this as being "sweet and dry". This is actually truth in promotion. It's a little sweeter than Canada Dry ginger ale and has a dry finish. It's made with a cocktail of artificial sweeteners including acesulfame K, Sucralose, and aspartame. Unlike most of the diet drinks I've tried in Japan, you can't detect the sweeteners so obviously. Note that I am accustomed to diet sodas and may not be able to taste them as clearly as someone who doesn't tend to drink them so often.

My response to this is a bit mixed. I think it's a good sugar-free ginger ale blend, but the ginger part is somewhat subdued. I actually liked it better as a stand-alone drink than Diet Canada Dry ginger ale and if they were both the same price and I had a choice and I didn't want to mix it with something (and I sometimes mix with orange juice), I'd go for this. I wish it weren't pink though. I keep thinking it should be tropical punch when I drank it.

CC Lemon Zero

C.C. Lemon is one of those drinks that I've had an interest in for quite some time because it is packed with Vitamin C and who doesn't enjoy a good lemon beverage? My former boss used to drink it on occasion and some of my students swear by it as a way of keeping colds at bay.

I don't like to drink my calories and I particularly don't like to drink sugary acidic sodas because they have a bad effect on the teeth. This is what has kept me from sampling C.C. Lemon for all these years. I especially wanted to try it around the time that the Simpsons were used heavily in their promotions as there were some nifty bits of swag available at that time. Unfortunately for me, the Simpsons aren't being used now when a zero calorie version is available.

I investigated the name "C.C. Lemon", but didn't come up with any explanation of what the "C.C." stands for besides the fact that it's supposed to be packed with a lot of Vitamin C. The American Wikipedia page says that there has been some controversy about whether or not the advertised amount of C is really as claimed, but the Japanese page doesn't mention anything about it. The weird thing is that they don't mention the amount of Vitamin C in terms of usual measures, but as the number of lemons worth of C. A 500 ml. bottle of C.C. Lemon zero supposedly contains 70 lemons worth.


The soda smells pleasantly lemony and you can tell it's lightly carbonated when you open the lid since it makes less of a "pop" noise than other fizzy beverages. The lemon flavor is pronounced, but not overwhelming. The sweetness level is just a tiny bit higher than I'd personally prefer and you can detect the fact that this is made with a cocktail of artificial sweeteners, but it's far less obvious than some of the other diet beverages I've sampled. After the first several sips, the artificial sweetener taste tends to mute (but not disappear) a bit as your tongue grows accustomed to it.

This was a very refreshing lemon drink with a good balance of flavors and a very mild citrus bite. It's flawed because I wish it had a little less of an artificial sweetener flavor, a little more carbonation, and a little more citrus bite and less sweetness, but it's pretty good for a diet version of a beverage. My feeling is that diet soda beggars can't be too choosy, but this is pretty good regardless. I will definitely revisit this if it doesn't end up vanishing as so many zero-calorie drinks in Japan seem to do.

Suntory's web site for C.C. Lemon is currently sporting a strange space ship made from a drink bottle motif. It includes a little Flash-based game, but you have to read Japanese to play it and some desktop pictures and a screen save that can be downloaded. Among the desktop pictures, I find the diagram of the internal structure of the imaginary spaceship rather amusing because of all of the lemon-shaped furnishings.