| Product: |
Soda Stream Drink Maker |
| Date: |
03/08/01 (9507 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Cheap sparkling Drinks, Can make your own flavours
Disadvantages: Concentrates don't taste that good
I’m sure you’ve heard of Soda Stream, perhaps you even have one or know someone who has. Or perhaps you did have one, maybe in the 80’s seduced by the supremely irritating ‘get busy with the fizzy’ advertising campaign.
However, is it my imagination or are less and less people using them.
For a number of years now my local Sainsbury has not stocked any soda stream products. Imagine my shock, when researching this, to find that Boots had stopped as well. I am convinced that this could possibly be one of the biggest marketing flops of the last decade.
Lets start at the beginning …………………
Soda Stream is basically a kitchen appliance for carbonating water.
It consists of:
The drinks maker, now sold as ‘Fizz On-line’ (£34.99);
The plastic bottle, in 1 litre (£1.99), 1/2 litre (£1.79) and ¼ litre (£1.49) sizes, the drinks maker just holds one bottle but you could obviously make up more drinks if you had some spares;
The Co2 cylinder, which provides the gas, the usual size costs £11.99 to replace or £3.49 for a refill. The cylinder has enough Co2 to carbonate about 20-30 litres of water. When this is used up you take the empty down to your nearest stockist; pick up a newly refilled one, hand them both to the smiling shop assistant, along with £3.49 and you are ready to start again.
Start what again, you ask?
Well, making refreshing sparkling water drinks of course, straight from your tap, calorie free at just 10p a litre.
With no heavy drinks to weigh down your shopping and no plastic empties to clog up the land fill sites.
If you don’t like your tap water how about using filtered water or adding fruit juice to flavour it.
That is how I use my Soda stream.
Soda Stream Ltd have some different ideas ……………….
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br>Lots of FIZZ, lots of FLAVOURS, lots of FUN, SODA STREAM the FIZZ factory, proclaimed a leaflet I had actually requested from the Soda stream ‘helpline’.
You may have noticed similar helpline on packets of biscuits or washing powder. Have you ever felt the need to phone one? Having a need for further research I did, seduced by the “never too busy to help” above the phone number. I must admit I felt a bit embarrassed, but armed with a list of questions I eventually made the call.
My first question,
“Can you give me a list of all the Soda Stream flavours” hit the jackpot.
“Yes certainly, I will send you a list,” said the helpline operator.
“Can you send me any other information” I asked.
“All the information you need will be on the same leaflet, goodbye” Click…. burr.
They must have been having very busy that day.
Soda Stream now does a mail order service for all their products and most of their marketing is aimed at getting you to buy their consumables i.e. the concentrates. The full list being Bitter lemon, Cherry, Cola, Cream Soda, Dandelion & Burdock, Diet Cola, Diet Lemonade, Diet Tonic, Ginger Ale, Ginger Beer, Lemonade, Orange and Tonic all at £1.99 (to make up 12 litres).
As I said above I don’t generally use them as, I think, the taste is not usually as good as the original, but at around 26p per litre (which includes the gas) the are definitely cheaper.
We recently tried one of their new ‘Duo’ range of flavours. These come in packs of three (at 99p) and each single serving pack flavours 1 litre of water, this works out at around 43p per litre. We tried the Cranberry and Blackcurrant (out of a possible Apple & Peach, Orange & Mango or pineapple & Grapefruit) which tasted ok. We had also bought a litre carton of fre
sh cranberry juice for 33p which when added to the carbonated water tasted just as good but a lot cheaper.
As well as mail order the official stockist list is Asda, Co-op, Morrisons, Robert Dyas, Sainsbury’s (not in King’s Lynn) Savacentre, Somerfield, Tesco and Wilkinsons.
One problem I have had when purchasing the gas refills is that most shop assistants don’t seem to know what to do with them. Each gas cylinder has two bar codes one for an exchange one to buy, I was once charged £22.78 for an exchange, as I had been charged full price for the refill and my empty. It took a while for the manager to grasp the situation as well, although we were refunded in full (this was at Tesco’s, Gaywood, King’s Lynn).
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The Soda Stream does what it designed to do very well i.e. make sparkling drinks. It seems a shame that their marketing is and has always been aimed the ‘fizzy fun’ market when more people seem to go for the healthy option and could have endless sparkling water drinks at home.
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The hepline number is: 0800 626225.
They also have a website at www.sodastream.co.uk
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