sprite

I have written about Sprite in these pages before. But just recently, I found some Mexican Sprite in my local grocery store, alongside a few other Mexican sodas. And it made me think: this is the perfect opportunity to do side-by-side comparisons of high fructose cane sugar Sprite and cane sugar Sprite, along with the inevitable bottle cap comparisons.

First, the taste: It is amazing when you taste these two sodas side-by-side. American Sprite, with its high fructose corn syrup, tastes metallic and flat. There is a sharp aftertaste, not necessarily sweet but more chemical-like. Mexican Sprite, on the other hand, tastes sweet and smooth and coats your throat with a sugary, but not too sweet, aftertaste.

The bottle caps?  Both pretty cool!  The American bottle cap is green, with Sprite in big, bold white letters. The Mexican bottle cap is blue with white letters. Not as bold as the American, but still clean and bright. Both "I"s are dotted with lemon/limes.

I also wanted to bring up the interesting contrast between a few other Sprite crowns that I have:

The white one is from South America--Santiago, specifically--and is a Sprite Zero, just for the record. It is difficult to read, and has the ingredients right on the crown. Not the best design, to be honest. It pairs well, though, with this blue Sprite crown that I have, which is sort of an "in-between" crown -- that is, on a design chart, it falls somewhere between the South American and the Mexican. It is blue, has Sprite across the top, but also has the lemon/lime i dot, as well as the ingredients. You can almost see the evolution!

I also have this really old Sprite crown: pre-lemon-lime i dot, and it includes the ingredients. The crown also has a crazy-looking font, as if Sprite is still searching for its identity.

All in all, an interesting range. The caps evolved nicely into the clean-looking design we have today, but the taste....well, clearly, Sprite would have been bettered served if it had stuck with cane sugar.