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What’s Bueno at the 99¢ Only Store: Shasta Diet Grapefruit Soda!
LIKE YOU I’m a big fan of Fresca. Have been since I was a little boy, sure.
Here’s some Fresca Fun Facts you might not know:
• According to Wikipedia, “according to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Fresca was the favorite drink of President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had a button installed on the desk on his Oval Office desk which would summon his military aide to bring the drink.”
• It used to irritate Ladybird Johnson to no end when Lyndon would toss his empty Fresca cans out the window of the presidential motorcade especially because she was knocking herself out doing that whole “Beautify America” campaign.
…Actually, I made up that second Fresca Fun Fact, because as it turns out – and I had no way of knowing this when I started this blog post – I could only come up with one real Fresca Fun Fact.
Anyway, I was very happy a few years ago when they brought back Fresca – even more so than when I found out they brought back Steak-Umms.
Technically, neither product ever went away, I just didn’t see them for years. But for our purposes here, let’s just say they brought back Fresca. (I think they’ve always made Boo Berry cereal, too, but did anyone actually see it in a store from about 1978 to maybe 1997? No. I rest my case.)
So recently I started re-drinking Fresca, and it brought me back to my boyhood years, when I used to drink the stuff, oh my, by the canful and then throw my empties out the back window of the family station wagon as we’d head down the Interstate on family vacations.
“Give Ladybird something to do,” I used to laugh to myself, imagining our First Lady at the side of the highway wielding a stick with a nail at the end of it, spearing cans and putting them in a burlap sack slung over her shoulder like someone sentenced to 120 hours of community service, all of this despite the fact that I was probably born after Johnson had left office, I think. (How the hell would I know – who do I look like, Doris Kearns Goodwin?)
Okay, at this point, I don’t know where I was going with any of—
Oh!
So Fresca’s good, sure, but I’m telling you, this stuff…?
Diet Shasta Grapefruit…? It’s like ten times better!
I like Fresca, sure, but it’s a little too goddamn sweet. The weird thing about Fresca is that it’s a “diet” soda, but it doesn’t make a point of telling you that on the front of the can. I guess you’re just supposed to know.
Shasta, however, makes regular grapefruit soda and diet grapefruit soda, and this diet stuff, I’m telling you, it kicks Fresca’s ass. And I don’t mention this lightly: I’m a big fan of Fresca – you know this!
Oh! I’ve come up with another Fresca Fun Fact:
• The only place I’ve ever seen Fresca on tap is at California Chicken Café in Woodland Hills. Every time I’m there, I get it, because how often do you see Fresca on tap, right?
Anyway, they sell this Shasta crap at the 99¢ Only store, so I guess that makes this this week’s What’s Bueno at the 99¢ Only Store? entry. You should pick up a four-pack! (It’s the 99¢ Only Store. They sell them in four-packs. For 79¢. Don’t try to make sense of it – it’s the 99¢ Only Store, for God’s sake.)
Tell ’em Ladybird sent you! Or Lyndon; I guess that would make slightly more sense.
No! Wait, wait, wait! Tell ’em Doris Kearns Goodwin sent you! That’ll liven things up!
Ted Parsnips
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