Lemonade with a flashy label? (Sprite)

Member Name: shaneo632

Product:	Sprite
Date:	31/08/09 (13 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good taste

Disadvantages: But too similar to lemonade

Sprite belongs to a group of three drinks, including 7-Up and Lilt, that are essentially stuck in a rut of at times being quite indistinguishable to the average consumer. They're all lemonade-like drinks - some of them have fruity kicks, and at least one of them doesn't. Sprite would be the one that doesn't, and so, the creative team evidently realising this, they attempted to differentiate themselves through a clever marketing campaign about the origins of the name Sprite, which pertains to the use of a small CGI goblin that bears a scary resemblance to the Crazy Frog, in fact.

It's strange that the Sprite packaging puts an emphasis on the lemon and lime elements because, strangely, it's the one of the three where I find the fruit elements hardest to pinpoint - Lilt is the most pungent, and 7-Up has the very noticeable lime dash, but with Sprite, it essentially tastes, to me at least, like lemonade with perhaps a mild kick at best. It's not so much a criticism in this regard, but I'm less inclined to buy Sprite when out and about because I've had lemonade so much, and I don't generally think that the cheaper alternatives taste a lot worse.

A 300ml can of Sprite contains 144 calories, and a staggering 34.9g of sugar, which for a can is indeed a lot. One might expect that considering how some of the cheaper lemonades have near enough reduced their sugar element to very little, that Sprite might have been toned down some degree by now, but it still lags behind in this area (although they have released an absolutionist version called Sprite Zero, which is essentially a harsh change in taste from the normal Sprite, when one would simply prefer a more Diet version).

It's not that Sprite isn't thirst quenching or tasty, but that it's just a routine drink that doesn't really differentiate itself enough from the cheaper lemonades, in my opinion, to warrant either the price tag or the hefty number of calories in the bottle.

Summary: The lime is not pronounced enough but tasty still