Things that make you go....huh?

Having been on holiday this week and with a  bit of spare time on our hands, we took a meandering drive to nearby Basingstoke to do our shopping at ASDA.  In the nearly 2 years that we've been in the UK, we've never been inside an ASDA, so we decided to go to change up our routine and just for curiosity sake really.  If you aren't already living in the UK, ASDA is one of the very large grocery retailers, probably on a par with Tescos in terms of price and not too different to President Hyper in Gauteng.

I still find it fascinating to wander around the stores and look at the products for sale, touching and seeing what is on offer in this amazing country.  I find it helps me to ground myself a little and every visit to a grocery store makes me feel more at home as more and more products become familiar to me.  Before you wonder why it's taken this long for me to venture into ASDA especially as they are widely found across the country, it's because we live in a village deep in the countryside of South England.  The nearest town only offers Tescos, Sainsbury and small versions of Aldi and Lidl...so Morrisons and ASDA are still a little foreign to us, and definitely places to explore....yes, I know, adulting is weird, even more so when you are in another country.

So on our foray I discovered.....this.


I mean....what the ACTUAL F?????!!!!!  What is THAT????!!!!!

I was thrown off balance a bit because the name is so familiar to me (ignoring the spelling), but that's where familiarity ended.  The colour of the label, the colour of the drink itself...the word DIET!  OMG, I've never seen a diet Creme Soda in my life, what is the world coming to?  How will you cure a hangover without any of the sugar found in the Green Ambulance?

So of course, I had to buy it, and see if the taste was at least the same.  It is not.  Just don't even go there if you are a born and bred Saffa.  The drink smells like vanilla ice cream and tastes like it too, absolutely not what I was expecting and nothing like our beloved Green Mamba.

This got us thinking about what our version of Creme Soda tastes like.  I know the Aussie version is quite different too but then it goes by a slightly different name (Creaming Soda) so I wasn't expecting it to be the same.  I know my colleagues at work will shake their heads when they hear about this and I'll need to try and explain why ours is so unique...so what is it exactly that makes ours taste so different?  I tried googling it but came up blank, everyone acknowledges there is a difference but no-one actually pinpoints it.  Hubby thinks it might be modelled on the greengage flavour that we know from jelly but I'm not sure about that.

Which got me thinking in a different direction.  What the heck is greengage anyway and who came up with that kak name?  I'll google it on a different day or we'll be here for days while I ramble on about flavours from our childhood.

So back to the suggestion that the SA Creme Soda is modelled on the greengage flavouring....no, I'm not convinced.  It's different to that.  And the flavour appears everywhere.  We have Neskwik, Fizz Pops, Fizzers, Jelly and even flavoured milk to mention a few.  But how would you describe it?  Any ideas?

All I know is that I have a nearly full bottle of the English version which will now be untouched because...well....it's ghastly....

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