Kotas Reviews A&W Root Beer Pop Tarts

Once in a great while, one comes upon an artifact from yesteryear. Seemingly lost in time, one finds that they appear to have stepped into an age which no longer exists but in the minds of people, and in fact may never have existed. There, one finds an A&W restaurant, and has a mug of root beer from their keg. I wish that is what had happened, but instead, I got Pop Tarts. Today we review A&W Root Beer Pop Tarts

Well, it being in a Pop Tart is new, for sure.

Named for Roy Allen and Frank Wright, A&W Root Beer has been a fixture in American Pop Culture since 1920. One of the first franchised restaurants in the United States to go national, today it is mostly known as a brand of root beer distributed by the Doctor Pepper Snapple Group. Occasionally one will find an A&W restaurant, usually on a secluded bit of highway, and it is often a surreal experience. When was the last time you had a frosted mug at a fast food place? Still, I do wonder at the pairing of root beer and Pop Tarts, of all things. Well, let's have a peek at 'em.

Double your...something something.

I'm not sure why there are sprinkles on this Pop Tart. They mostly serve to make it look dirty. The Pop Tart on the right also had way fewer sprinkles, again for unknown reasons. They smell vaguely like those weird gummy root beer candy things you see in "old timey" bulk candy stores. The crust is also brown, supposedly to resemble root beer. I'm sure it's fine.

Just....fine....

Well, it was not fine. The goo inside looks like...well, it looks awful. It smells like chemicals and fake root beer flavoring, and the taste is like you freebased a root beer gummy, burnt and terribly chemical. The overall experience is like eating warm, mushy ooze on a plain cracker while somewhere someone is burning a root beer gummy and making you smell it. It is freakin' god AWFUL how bad this is. I ate a single Pop Tart. I threw away the second. The remaining Pop Tarts were left on a counter at work to snare the next unsuspecting victim in their unholy clutches. May God Have Mercy on my soul for this one. This is the kind of thing I would feed people I hated and wanted them to suffer. No. Just...no.

On the FACE Rating System, this rates THREE frowny faces. Fuck this Pop Tart, fuck the box it came in, burn the factory it was made in to cleanse the world of its putrescence. Never Eat These. Ever. Don't even THINK about it, or They will get you. Who are They, you ask? Oh dear....THEY KNOW! It's too late for me, but maybe...RUN! Ia, Ia! Cthulthu F'gan! YOG SOTHOTH! IT STILL MOVES! 

Kotas Reviews Best Damn Root Beer

Root beer is one of those drinks that I have always enjoyed, but only when I remember that it exists. Rarely purchased, but often drunk, it resides as a "treat" beverage for me, mostly because the diet versions are almost universally not good to me. It also let me pretend to be drinking booze when I was a wee lad, because beer is beer, right? Well, let's see what happens when we add liquor back to a drink designed originally as a healthy alternative to water that didn't get you drunk. Today we explore the boldly named Best Damn Root Beer.

Can you back up that statement bottle?

 Many products have claimed to be the best, but so rarely does anything actually put it on the label as a part of the name. That takes some serious brass ones to declare that this root beer, above all over root beers both alcoholic and non, is the Best. I'll be honest, I never considered having an alcoholic root beer, though I have seen it used as a mixer in the past, so this is kind of a weird experience for me. Still, I do love the artwork, with the big foaming barrel. Let's see it in the glass.

Considerably less foamy than advertised.

That's a lot less foam than I was hoping for, but hey, whatever. I'm good at pouring I guess. Of course, the proof is in the tasting of the drink. The initial hit on the tongue is very sassafras, with a hint of vanilla and a bit of sharpness (presumably from the alcohol) that is actually quite pleasant. Then the aftertaste rolls in and you want to have anything else in your mouth but this taste, because it's like you took a big gulp of bar rag squeezin's. Because it only induces nightmares AFTER swallowing, you really can't spit it out to at least minimize the effect either! I wouldn't want my friends to drink this. I wouldn't want my DOG to drink this. I managed to get through a bottle though, because after a few mind blasting quaffs you sort of get used to the after taste, and then it becomes consumable, and that first taste is actually really nice. I don't know if I got a skunky bottle or what, but jeez is this bad. Best Damn Root Beer? My shiny metal ass it is!

As a side note however, I was advised to try it with ice cream, which I did with a second bottle. For whatever freakin' reason this totally works to murder the aftertaste and leaves you with a much better beverage. Why? I don't know, but if you must drink this, do it in a float or simply with ice cream. That makes it good, through some sort of dark sorcery.

On the FACE Rating System, this gets two frowny faces. It is saved from three because the initial flavor is quite nice, and it seems that ice cream acts as a mitigating factor. However, do not drink this, no really. There are better ways to have a boozy root beer that do not require incredible fortitude or copious amounts of dairy products to "enjoy". Fuck this root beer, you lying bastard.