Sour Spray — Colonpipe

It's been a while since I've written an Exotic Beverage Review, so here's one in a slightly different direction.

I picked this stuff up at my local video store. Immediately, I got the urge to buy two cans, because this stuff clearly cannot last. This is another entry in the gargantuan line of sour sweeties, which seem to function entirely on the concept that the more disgusting a confection tastes, the more likely children are to want it. "Sour Spray" guarantees kiddies will love it by adding the bonus gimmick of being delivered to the taste buds in much the same way as Raid is delivered to insects -- by aerosol.

My immediate reaction to this was "Holy arsegiblets, Batman! This'll make small children think it's okay to eat bug spray!". My secondary reaction was "I'll take two!".

I had planned to make this a conventional Exotic Beverage Review, but the crap by nature defies the standard format of an EBR. It contains no truly exotic ingredients (apart from whatever the propellant in the aerosol is, evidently it's not hydrocarbon -- which cannot surely be a bad thing -- but the can divulges nothing as to what the gas actually is). The sugar content of the goo is not suprising, 10g in an 80ml serving.

The can is about the size of a handy deodorant can, the type women tend to carry in their purses. It's well sealed with a layer of shrink-wrapped cellophane plastic around the cap. The label on the can is also shrink-wrapped plastic, not enamelled painty crap like on most aerosol cans.

Click the jumpy jump to read more about this astounding aerosol --

The directions and precautions on the can are as follows, and I really wish I had made these up:

DIRECTIONS: open the can, spray candy directly into your mouth and SCREAM. Manufacturer assumes no responsibility for crazy outbursts, silliness and laughter you may experience. Do not mix with other whimpy candies. CAUTION: This candy does not cause boredom if used as directed.

So that's the joke warning panel. The real warning panel reads as follows:

WARNING: Contents under pressure. Do not puncture or incinerate. Exposure to high temperatures may cause bursting. Avoid spraying in eyes. Intentional disuse by deliberately concentrating and inhaling the contents can be harmful. Store below 120F.

Fair enough, says I.

But wait..

DIRECTIONS: open the can, spray candy directly into your mouth and SCREAM.

..and..

Intentional disuse by deliberately concentrating and inhaling the contents can be harmful.

I assume the screaming is due to the probably highly carcinogenic propellant you're not meant to inhale while the CAN IS SPRAYING INTO YOUR MOUTH HOLE speedily eroding your lungs and causing some kind of narcotic trip.

Or maybe I'm just too cynical.

A poorly translated Chinese paragraph on the side of the can suggests the can contains 28 feet of foamy goodness. Upon reading this, I immediately realised the potential for an..

UNAUTHORISED "HOW MUCH IS INSIDE"!

So, without further ado, I hereby rip off pay homage to Cockeyed.com:

Realising I needed a method to measure the output of the can, I quickly comandeered my kitchen bench and set up a high-tech measuring apparatus:

The plan was for the cling wrap to contain the overwhelming foamy madness, which would be distributed across its width in 12 inch sausages, as measured with pinpoint accuracy by my fluourescent green tape measure. It was a plan that could not fail!

Unfortunately, I'd failed to anticipate that the word "foam" is apparently a bad Chinese translation for the Chinese word that means "slightly damp snotty goo that turns to rancid fluid within seconds". So my nice foamy sausages speedily mutated into streams of unpleasant pink sticky matter. But one soldiers on, in true How Much Is Inside? tradition!

Here's the first ten feet of pink goop, which by now has congealed to a kind of Klingon blood-like substance. Thankfully, the cling wrap is containing it quite nicely, as the top left corner indicates. As hard as it's trying to escape, the surface tension of the Klingon haemoglobin is too strong to break the bounds of the plastic.

Here's a final photograph of the stuff as it begins to break through the gravitational boundaries of the cling wrap and starts to invade my kitchen bench. Ultimately, the final spray count got to 28 foot-long lines of pink crud, but the stuff was congealing and liquefacting and disintegrating and eating through my house so quickly I didn't have a chance to photograph it. I was too busy attempting to scoop up the plastic sheeting into a sort of bag-like formation before the stuff became a permanent part of my kitchen.

However, having proven the can did contain at least 28 feet of "foam", as per the label, I decided to get brave and sample a bit of the stuff.

I sampled the stuff. My tastebuds collapsed in upon themselves like a black hole, retreating from the seething pink goo I had so disdainfully thrust upon them. It felt like I'd sprayed rancid, carbonated vinegar onto my tongue. It's also worth mentioning that it's not at all possible to have any control over the direction and ferocity of the spray, so you might as well toss a handful of coins as to whether you want the "foam" to go into your mouth, down your throat or up your nose.

Curious as to how much crud remained in the can, I exhausted it into the makeshift cling-wrap bag:

I debated whether to drink the stuff, attempt to preserve it, or feed it to a homeless person and sit back and watch. After some deliberation, I decided the best fate for the red glowing bile was..

Never again. Ever.

As an addendum, however, I returned to the kitchen to discover the cling wrap had at some point failed me, and the red crap had actually stained my bench:

Never. Again.