Crush Orange

The bottle is a beautiful dark amber in colour, shaped like a rocketship or a building out of The Jetsons or something- retro-futuristic, very very nice. Sadly the tacky Crush logo is slapped right in the middle, almost but not quite ruining the rest. Like Thums up, Limca, EGB, and possibly a bunch of others, this bottle is Indian in origin and of the ‘drink and return’-type. For anyone who isn’t familiar with the concept, from what I understand once the soda is drunk the bottle is returned to where it was purchased to be sent back to the company, where it is cleaned and refilled. Often the bottle will show evidence of multiple uses in the form of scuffs etc, pretty cool. I always feel bad after drinking one of these and having nowhere to return it to. Yes I recycle it, but that’s nothing compared to the kind of recycling that it would have in store for it if consumed in India- while here it will be washed, melted down with a bunch of other glass bottles and other assorted rubbish and turned into god knows what post-consumer piece of garbage, in its homeland it would be washed, refilled, recapped and put straight back onto the shelf.

The soda itself is very orange, Fanta-coloured I guess, and smells pretty similar. Pleasantly fizzy. The taste surprised me- I was expecting to write a sentence-long review that either said ‘tastes like Fanta’ (thus awarding the drink a score somewhere between 60 and 70) or ‘tastes like Pakola Orange’ (giving the drink 7 or even a zero for the added lack of originality)- Crush Orange, however, sits somewhere in the middle of those too, although thankfully more like Fanta than Pakola Orange.

The initial taste of the drink is fairly flat and a leaning towards that of an orange sports drink (though heavily carbonated) or cheap supermarket orange soda, however the sweet lemony aftertaste (which kicks in pretty quickly, depending on how fast you swallow) is delicious, and saves the drink from being yet another sub-par entry to the orange soda market (which, to be honest, has got to be nearing saturation point). The aftertaste is slightly bitter, which is a negative in this case, and in most cases in fact. A bottle-full disappeared pretty quickly, I didn’t moan with pleasure after every mouthful but it went down pretty smooth and was refreshing and light.

Overall not too bad, I wouldn’t go seeking it out but if you stumble across it somewhere (and that somewhere doesn’t sell Pakola Ice Cream Soda) then by all means give it a go.

Post-review research led me to discover that Crush do a bunch of other flavours including, aside from more the traditional ones, blue raspberry, chocolate(!!), ‘fruity red’, sour peach, strawberries and cream, wild cherry and loads of other flavours. Expect to see more from Crush on these pages very soon.

58/100

-LC

Available at Hayat Hypermarket, Brunswick.